Development and Administration

• Communicating with REST: The Client/Server Model

  The client/server model is a very standard model with which to communicate. When I was first learning about the client/server model, I was using Sockets in C. In general, many programming libraries and tools are just “overlays” on top of more basic tools. PHP was written in (and based on) […]

• How to manage a cache

  Caching is definitely one of the most important parts of modern software. It can be the difference between a small script and full blown software. However, a great deal of people are perplexed by this concept when it first presents itself. In this article, I’ll discuss what caching is and […]

• Creating random passwords

  Creating a randomized password can be very quick and efficient. It’s important to have an unguessable password. Brute forcers rely on passwords being based on words. Try using this script to generate random passwords.   #!/bin/bash date +%s | sha256sum | base64 | head -c 32 ; echo

• The Importance Of Using Package Managers

  Before I got into this field, I hadn’t even heard of package managers. I remember the first time I worked with a professional developer. He was trying to get me up to speed on industry standards with a five minute tutorial. The first (and most important) thing he mentioned was […]

• Design Patterns: KVO

  KVO can be a very powerful and useful design pattern. Here, we’ll discuss how to make it work. First of all, you’ll want to create an observer to listen for any key posts. Here’s how you add an observer: [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(method:) name:keyValue object:nil]; Let’s go over this method. […]

• Dump MySQL databases

  This is a very useful script I picked up somewhere along the way. When run, this script will dump all mysql databases out and gzip them. If it’s run in crontab, you can schedule regular database backups. #!/bin/bash # Dump mysql dbs to appropriately named .sql files # mysql args: […]

• Clean Magento log files

  Bash script to clean log files This script is a must-have if you’re managing multiple magento websites. Log files can build up to multiple gigabytes. System resources will undoubtedly begin to suffer if you aren’t careful. #!/bin/bash rm -rf /root/logs_cleaned.txt for MAGUSERS in `ls /var/cpanel/users`; do MAGDIR="/home/$MAGUSERS/public_html/shell/log.php" if [ -f […]

• List User Accounts

  This is a fairly simple script, but immensely useful. Listing user accounts can be very important. However, there are commonly multiple lists of user accounts. One of them is “System users”, while the other is “cpanel users”. Here’s how to list system users: cat /etc/passwd | grep /home | cut […]