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Static site generators

An article, posted almost 3 years ago filed in ssg, jekyll, jamstack, javascript, api, markup, markdown & static site generators.

Static site generators mix the maintainability of dynamically rendered sites with the speed and ease of hosting of static sites. It comes at a cost, which is interactivity. Hence typically static sites are enriched client side JavaScript communicating with API's, which has been labeled JAMstack by an org pushing this market.

I’m currently in the process of selecting a static site generator. Based on Github stars this is the current top 10 at Jamstack.org’s overview of static site generators:

  1. Next.js (JS/React)
  2. Hugo (Go) (Smashing Magazine was made with Hugo)
  3. Gatsby (JS/React)
  4. Jekyll (Ruby/Liquid) (powers Github Pages) (my review of Jekyll)
  5. Nuxt (JS/Vue)
  6. [Hexo](ht…

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How to REST?

An article, posted more than 4 years ago filed in rest, api, technology, computer, resource, manipulation, http, requests, post & delete.

Today I tried to explain REST (as in REpresentational State Transfer, not near sleep) to a manager and why some of the services deployed at the organization he was working for wasn't REST. While there isn't a formalized spec, there is a dissertation by the Roy Fielding, who came up with the REST-principles as a set of principles that guided him while shaping the HTTP 1.1 standard which only recently got a successor with version 2.0… REST is a set of principles/guidelines that are very stable & predictable. It is also very simple, and theirin lies both its strength, and the sometimes too loose application of its principles.

Apparently many developers didn't get 'the web' (HTTP) right, hence REST was developed as a basic set of principles to explain how HTTP is supposed to work. This is a list of my favourite parts, also based on some secondary resources.

Some key concepts.

REST is about …

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PHP revisited

An article, posted more than 6 years ago filed in ruby, php, bad, comparison, review, language, programming, experience, api & development.

I've been able to stay away from PHP-based projects for quite some time. Until recently. I needed a small API. The idea was that the API would be transferred to a relatively old server that had been running stable for years and the client didn't want to risk installing additional script interpreters on it. It might even have been my own suggestion, it would be a really small API, requiring no special changes on an already operational 24x7 managed server. On top of it I'd write a modern style front-end, running entirely in the browser.

Of course the API that was intended to be simple got a bit more complex. I wanted the API to output clean JSON messages, which required some data mangling, as data was stored in CSV's, TSV's, and misused XML-files or only accessible through crappy soapy API's. So what does present-day (well, the Red Hat PHP version I was able to use is still in 5.x-series) PHP look like? TL;DR: sometimes it was definitely ugly, but at I can happily live with the cod…

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Oktober 2010, denken over de toekomst

An article, posted more than 13 years ago filed in data, maandelijks, beschouwing, 2010, oktober, mobiel, aggregatie, api, stromen & feeds.

Mobile app development wordt steeds gemakkelijker met frameworks zoals Joapp, welke ik deze maand kon toevoegen aan het rijtje toe kon voegen als jQuery Mobile , jQTouch, PhoneGap en meer…  Hoe of wat mobile app development is iets dat bij The Bean Machine ondermeer onderdeel uit maakte van de discussie hoe we ons nu beter kunnen onderscheiden. Voordeel van deze frameworks is dat mobile apps in ieder geval niet beperkt worden tot slechts 1 platform, iets waar Jeffery Zelfman deze maand zeer terecht voor waarschuwde. Maar toch, mobile app development, misschien alweer een beetje laat?Misschien is een verstandige nieuwe weg om in te slaan te focussen op data management en aggregatie. Zie bijvoorbeeld hoe TripAdvisor een applicatie bouwde op basis van Facebook’s Cities I've Visited applicatie. In plaats van zelf steden aan te bevelen op basis van zelf verzamelde data wordt bij TripAdivsors Trip Friends gebruik gemaakt van een koppeling met Facebook. Apart toch eigenlijk, dat zel…

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