Untitled

[laitmatus]

Hoisting in Javascript

Originally Posted On...

Javascript is a high-level programming language. It has dynamic typing and an interpreted language, not a compiled language. It's used for adding interactive behavior to web pages and abstracting away from how browsers work.

Javascript is a high-level programming language. It has dynamic typing and an interpreted language, not a compiled language. It's used for adding interactive behavior to web pages and abstracting away from how browsers work.

We need to understand how Javascript is functioning in order to write the javascript code in a proper way but there are some weird parts also that you need to understand and when you understand, there will be an Aha moment for you.

So let's enjoy this journey together.

Before we start we need to understand how javascript is working:

There are two phases of the javascript code execution context.

Creation phase- In this phase, the setup of variables and functions in memory is to be done.

Execution phase- In this phase, code is to be run line by line and executed in such a manner that the computer understands the code.

Here are a few interesting things:

You can call variables and functions before declaring them, yes you heard that right!!

In javascript, you can define variables using var, let, and const keywords.

With var keyword:

This happens because of hoisting.

Now, what is Hoisting?

Hoisting is all about moving all the declarations at the top of the scope before code execution and this happens in the first phase of code execution. As stated earlier in the creation phase javascript allocates the memory to all variables and functions present in the program. If variables are declared with the var keyword stored with the value undefined and the function is stored with all the code they have in their body.

I’m sure that you know that Undefined and Null are data types in javascript and you don’t have confusion between undefined and not defined errors.

With let and const:

In javascript, let and const are also hoisted but they are temporary in the dead zone. So you can’t access them before assigning value to them.

With Functions:

Functions are fully hoisted so we can call them before their declaration.

Function expressions and class expressions are not hoisted.

I hope now you are clear about how hoisting is working in javascript.

Conclusion:

At first glance, it looks weird but when you understand how this concept works this will be fun for you and it will be helpful with your javascript journey.

Get In Touch With Us To Know More.....

[laitmatus]

Microservices

Originally Posted On...

There are many such issues as the size of the application increases, and become difficult to reason about, especially when a new team member is working on it. Sometimes you feel for the particular task that the other technology can achieve very easily which we are not using in our project. Most of these drawbacks are coming from the Monolithic architecture. Where all the functionalities exist in a single codebase. For example, arranging out applications in various layers like presentation, service, and database manipulation. This is what exactly defines the monolithic application.

Are you experiencing difficulties in managing your code?

Are you redeploying the whole application even for a small change?

There are many such issues as the size of the application increases, and become difficult to reason about, especially when a new team member is working on it. Sometimes you feel for the particular task that the other technology can achieve very easily which we are not using in our project. Most of these drawbacks are coming from the Monolithic architecture. Where all the functionalities exist in a single codebase. For example, arranging out applications in various layers like presentation, service, and database manipulation. This is what exactly defines the monolithic application.

Let me describe some drawbacks of monolithic architecture, then we will understand how microservices help us to overcome those drawbacks.

Difficult to adopt new technology.

Not reliable as a single bug can bring the whole application down.

Difficult to understand as the application grows large.

Time-consuming in the context of managing the code cohesion and for maintenance too.

So, those are the disadvantages where microservices come into the picture. What are microservices?

In simple words Microservices are small, autonomous services that work together. Ok let's break down this definition and understand it more precisely.

"Microservices are small" so there is no perfect measurement stated in any book that how small is small. But yes there are a few conventions that help to make our microservices as small as possible. Like it follows the Single Responsibility Principle. This simply means that a service should be responsible for doing one task only and doing it very well. Moreover, focusing on service boundaries on business boundaries, makes it clear where the code is located for the specific functionality.

autonomous services that work together" what this sentence mean is we should be able to change our service without requiring the consumer to change. One should think very carefully about what should be exposed and what should be hidden by the service. If one service needs to change and for that change, it requires additional coordination with other services then it is not an ideal situation. This decreases the autonomy. Services should be able to change independently of each other.

Benefits of microservices:

Technology Heterogeneity: This makes it possible to compose a system with microservices each one is implemented in different technology. It takes advantage of picking the right tool for the right job. As we can consider the case where if a specific type of data is stored in a specific type of database then system performance can improve. For example:

Resilience: In a monolithic system when service fails, everything stops working. Under microservice architecture, we can manage that if one component of the system fails and it doesn't cascade then you can isolate the issue and the rest of the system can carry on working.

Ease of deployment: As in monolithic applications one line change requires the whole application to be deployed again to release the change. While in microservices, we have the advantage of deploying a single service independently which carries the change and need not worry for the rest of the system.

Scaling: Obviously scaling everything as a piece is a tedious task to do. But this is not the case with microservices. We can scale those services which require scaling while it allows us to run other services on less powerful hardware.

Smaller codebase: In a microservice architecture it is possible to allocate a team for a particular service. And a smaller codebase makes the code clean and easy to understand for the team and newcomers also.

There are many more key benefits of microservices which are beyond this blog, though one should be careful before adopting microservice architecture with some of the drawbacks which should be taken care of.

Let me list out a few disadvantages here, Microservices communicate with each other via network calls, which may increase the latency.

Moreover, tracing the source of failure is difficult in microservices as each microservice has its own set of logs. This makes the debugging more challenging.

Application cost may rise with the microservices as it requires sufficient hosting infrastructure with security and maintenance support. An organization may have to acquire a team that can analyze and manage the services.

Conclusion

In my opinion, an organization can adopt the microservice architecture if they are willing to develop applications in a distributed environment. However monolithic architecture is also a good fit for small-scale organizations where the number of users of an application is going to be limited. But, when there are requirements like scaling, high modularity, and negligible downtime microservices architecture can be a good choice.

[laitmatus]

Frontend Management Using GULP.JS

Originally Posted On...

Gulp is dealing with rendered HTML content, compressing and minified assets, compiling Sass to CSS code, deploying files from development to the production side, automating the most frustrating tasks, etc.

Gulp is the task manager that helps with developing applications. It allows specifying tasks that for example process files or run different programs. The commands can be easily chainable which results in better re-usability. There can also be specified dependency between the commands.

What you should know?

It is a command Line toolkit (CLI based tool) so you should be familiar with the terminal. Also you should have knowledge of basics of javascript, installed node.js and also install Node Package Manager (NPM).

Why use Gulp.js?

Gulp is dealing with rendered HTML content, compressing and minified assets, compiling Sass to CSS code, deploying files from development to the production side, automating the most frustrating tasks, etc.

Gulp is the task manager that helps with developing applications. It allows specifying tasks that for example process files or run different programs. The commands can be easily chainable which results in better re-usability. There can also be specified dependency between the commands.

Introduction :

Gulp is a task runner toolkit to automate & enhance your workflow. It is used to automate slow, repetitive workflows and compose them into efficient build pipelines in web development.

Installing Gulp:

To check Node and NPM are installed in the machine or not run the following command:

Node –version npm –version

Install the gulp command line globally.

$ npm install --global gulp-cli

Create a project folder and navigate to it.

$ mkdir sample_project $ cd sample_project $ npm init $ npm install --save-dev gulp (It will install the gulp package in your dev dependency) $ gulp –version (verify your gulp version)

Create a “gulpfile.js” (or Capitalized Gulpfile.js).

-Create a file named gulpfile.js in your project folder. Role: The file called gulpfile.js holds the specification of tasks It will be run automatically when you run the ‘gulp’ command. It is written in JavaScript and therefore it is easy to use different libraries

Note: if you are using Typescript, rename to gulpfile.ts and install ts-node module and same for babel, rename to gulpfile.babel.js and install @babel/register module.

What are Tasks in a gulp:

The task is asynchronous javascript functions to execute it. There are two types of tasks, public tasks which allow you to execute tasks using the gulp command over all projects, and private tasks are made to be used internally, it looks like other tasks but the end user can’t execute them independently.

To register as a public task it should be exported.

Series() & parallel() are the composing methods that allow any number of task functions. They will execute tasks as per their names in series and parallel respectively.

src() and dest() are used to interact with files in your computer to read files from the source and end or put files to a destination within the stream. Here src can be operated in three diff modes: streaming, buffering, and empty.

pipe() is there to chain transform files.

Note: Before to put at destination we can apply operation on files . There are many modules available to make it easy. For example uglifyJS is a javascript parser, composer, beautifier toolkit, ‘rename’ is to change file name on production side.

For example:

const { src, dest } = require('gulp'); const uglify = require('gulp-uglify'); const rename = require('gulp-rename'); exports.default = function() { return src('src/*.js') .pipe(src('vendor/*.js')) .pipe(dest('output/')) .pipe(uglify()) .pipe(rename({ extname: '.min.js' })) .pipe(dest('output/')); }

Here all js files will be minified and renamed by filename.min.js and stored in the/dest folder. GLOB: it is a string literally used to match file paths.

For example:

‘src/*.js’ : will consider all .js files available in the src folder. 'scripts/**/*.js'’ : will consider all .js files in /script folder and in sub folder too. ['scripts/**/*.js' ’: '!scripts/vendor/special**'] : from the script folder it will consider all .js files except the folder /vendor.

Conclude: Gulp toolkit is very useful for web developers to make it easy on the production side of web development. Still, many features are there which will be discussed in part-2

Get In Touch With Us To Know More...

[laitmatus]

Originally Posted On.

Version Control Software keeps each and every modification in some special kind of storage/Data Source/Database. If someone wants to roll back a previous change or get some deleted piece of code or anything from the past, he/she can get it from version control.

What is Version Controlling

In A Nutshell, Version Controlling means Keep Track of the modifications and versions/file changes of your project in a collaborative workflow.

Version Control Software keeps each and every modification in some special kind of storage/Data Source/Database. If someone wants to roll back a previous change or get some deleted piece of code or anything from the past, he/she can get it from version control.

There are two primary types of version control tools:

Distributed

Centralized

Here Are Some VCS listed below

GIT

Mercurial

SVN (Apache Subversion)

CVS (Concurrent Versions System)

In This Blog, We will See about GIT and GitHub

GIT (/ɡɪt/)

First of all, Git is not an acronym or short form of some term, it's itself a word. Git is a Version Controlling software used for tracking changes in any given folder or set of files. Usually, we use it for coordinating work among team members of the project. And to keep track of file modifications by each contributing person.

Git was created by Sir Linus Torvalds for the Linux Kernel to contribute to other kernel developers.

How Does Git Work?

To understand How it works Let’s First understand its key terms.

Repository

A repository (repo) is a group of folders and files that you want to track modifications for your source control. After you initialize git in a folder you can be able to see a new folder with the name “.git” created in the directory. If you cannot see this folder please enable show hidden files. Please Do Not edit or delete this folder, otherwise, you will lose your past changes.

commit

commit, or "revision", is an individual change to a file (or set of files). When you make a commitment to save your work, Git creates a unique ID (a.k.a. the "SHA" or "hash") that allows you to keep a record of the specific changes committed along with who made them and when. You can Enter the Commit message while you are committing changes, Commit Messages are important as they will allow you and your collaborators to remember the state of your repo when that commitment is made.

Branch

A branch is a pointer to a specific commit. The branch pointer moves along with each new commit you make and only diverges in the graph if a commit is made on a common ancestor commit. There are various commands you can take in Git to work with your branches. Good practice encourages working from other branches and leaving the master branch clean. By creating a branch separate from to master and working from that, you can make changes without affecting the main progression line of the repository. Branching is very useful when more than one person is working on a project. Individuals can work on their own branches and later merge them onto the master branch.

That's All for Git for now. We will be doing some hands-on work in the Future. Let’s See about GitHub Now.

GITHUB

Github And Git are two separate things in the software world. Let's see the difference.

Git is a Version of Controlling Software That resides on your local machine.

GitHub is an Online Hosting platform for GIT Repositories. There are some other platforms like GitLab, bitbucket.. etc.

The benefit of using Github is that you can host your repositories online. And share and collaborate on your team’s work.

When a repository is created and used in a single machine it is called a local repository. When a git repository is hosted online it is called a “Remote repository”.

You can sync your local repo with your remote repo to push your committed code or changes in your filesystem so other users can pull your work and validate and integrate it into them.

Also, it serves as a backup of your repository. If something happens to your local machine. You still have your last committed and pushed changes to your work hosted online.

You can create publicly accessible repos or private repos. Private repos can be accessible to you and your team members whom you have invited.

Public repo is accessible to everyone on GitHub. You can also get to see others' public repo and take inspiration from them and you can publish your public repos to help others with your code. And build your project portfolio.

This was a short introduction of VCS, GIT and GITHUB.

Don't get confused with the words like repo, commit, push, pull, integrate.. etc in the next blog we will check out how you can create a local repository. How to commit changes, manage branches, create a remote repo and push and pull your local repo.

References :

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

GitHub: Where the world builds software

GitHub is where over 83 million developers shape the future of software, together. Contribute to the open source community, manage your Git

Get In Touch With Us To Know More...

[laitmatus]

Content Management System (CMS)

Originally Posted On...

A content management system (CMS) is a software application that enables users to create, edit, collaborate on, publish and store digital content. CMSes are typically used for enterprise content management (ECM) and web content management (WCM).

The definition of a CMS is an application (web-based), that provides capabilities for multiple users with different permission, n levels to manage (all or a section of) content, data, or information of a website project, or intranet application. Managing content refers to creating, editing, archiving, publishing, collaborating on, reporting, and distributing website content, data and information.

A CMS provides a graphical user interface with tools to create, edit and publish web content without the need to write code from scratch.

CMS tools are easy-to-use for newbies while allowing developers scope to play with code. Beginners can start at a basic level and pick up skills as they go along. It’s suitable for almost every type of website. If you ever run into difficulties with CMS, you’ll be glad about the strong community that’ll help you troubleshoot.

A CMS, ECM, and WCMS all manage content, but there are differences between them:

The CMS is the precursor to the ECM system. A CMS is a place to create, manage and store digital content, and works best with structured content -- such as documents and database records.

An enterprise content management system manages both structured and unstructured content. It includes software, strategies, and security to effectively manage content.

A web content management system is similar to an ECM system, but the differentiating factor is the WCMS is for web content -- such as product pages on e-commerce websites. It contains a publishing tool and facilitates collaborative authoring.

There are two types of CMS installation: on-premises and cloud-based. On-premises installation means that the CMS software can be installed on the server. This approach is usually taken by businesses that want flexibility in their setup. Notable CMSs which can be installed on-premises are Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress.org, ModX and others.

The cloud-based CMS is hosted in the vendor environment. With this approach, the CMS software cannot be modified for the customer. Examples of notable cloud-based CMSs are SquareSpace, Wordpress.com, and WIX.

CMS features

Features can vary amongst the various CMS offerings, but core functions include:

Intuitive indexing, search, and retrieval. These features index all data for easy access through search functions and enable users to search by attributes such as publication dates, keywords, or authors.

Format management. This helps turn scanned paper documents and legacy electronic documents into HTML or PDF documents.

Revision features. These features enable content to be updated and edited after initial publication. Revision control also tracks any changes individuals make to files.

Publishing. This functionality enables individuals to use a template or a set of templates that an organization approves -- as well as wizards and other tools -- for content creation and modification.

A flexible system, easy to extend and customize has thousands of verified third-party extensions, modules, components, and plugins that can be easily found online.

How to Choose a CMS Platform

Decide on Your CMS Vision: The most important question to ask yourself at the start of a CMS project is “What am I trying to achieve?" With a critical look at where you currently are, and where you want to be, you can start mapping out which content, data, tools, and integrations you already have - and which you need - to build your vision.

Understand CMS Features: After determining what you want to achieve from your CMS implementation, it's time to start selecting a content management system that will align with this vision. Certain characteristics of a CMS can help to move your CMS project along faster and speed up everyday tasks.

Think About the Cost: A crucial part of any CMS project is the cost involved. This is certainly true for an enterprise Content Management System which can amount to quite a hefty sum. Understanding the total fees associated with such a project means fewer unsavory financial surprises will come your way.

Calculate Your ROI: A CMS is an investment and therefore should guarantee you returns. So it makes sense that your first consideration should be to work out how much budget could be justified for this project, by calculating the return on investment.

Determine Your Budget: After estimating your returns, you can have a sense of how much the budget would be justified, and appropriate to the project's scale.

Get In Touch With Us To Know More...