DEV Community: Joan Awinja Ingari

Uncle Bob's solid principles

Joan Awinja Ingari — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 22:05:36 +0000

Robert Cecil Martin, colloquially called "Uncle Bob", is an American software engineer, instructor, and best-selling author. He is most recognized for developing many software design principles including the one we will be breaking down today, SOLID principles.

What are the SOLID principles and why were they made?

SOLID is a mnemonic acronym for five design principles, used in Object oriented programming, intended to make software designs more understandable, flexible, and maintainable.

The goal of SOLID principles is to reduce dependencies so that engineers change one area of software without impacting others, make designs easier to understand, maintain, and extend.

What do the acronyms stand for, you ask?

S - Single Responsibility Principle
O - Open-Closed Principle
L - Liskov Substitution Principle
I - Interface Segregation Principle
D - Dependency Inversion Principle

let's get into it!

Single Responsibility Principle

This principle simply says, one class should only have one responsibility and one responsibility only.

we can achieve this by encapsulation, which is simply grouping related methods and variables together when making the class.

Here's a rough use case:

Uncle Bob wants to build a series of different buildings in his estate.

class Building(object):

Each building will have a name, a numerical identifier, doors and windows.

def __init__(name, building_name, doors, windows):
        self.building_name=building_name
        pin = random.randint(999, 9999)
        self.building_id=pin
        self.doors = doors
        self.windows=windows

Two of the most important things a building can do is provide accommodation and privacy and security.

def accommodation():
    pass
def privacy():
    pass

We can therefore conclude that all buildings in uncle bob's estate have the single responsibility of providing privacy and security by having the ability to accomodate its guests within the four walls

The building can have extended functionality such as car parking or a dining area, but this is not applicable to all buildings. This however can be achieved by inheritance which is guided by next principle ...

Open-Closed Principle

A module should be open for extension but closed for modification.

We should write our modules so that they can be extended, without requiring them to be modified. In other
words, we want to be able to change what the modules do, without changing the source code of the modules.

Lets improve on uncle Bobs estate:
He now has a base framework that will be used as a skelaton for all buildings in the estate. But, some buildings will require extra functionality than what is in the base framework. Aside from that the extended fucntionality might not be similar to all buildings. this however does not rule out that some buildings will share functionalities.Some buildings will not need extended functionality at all.

To achieve this, we create tiny interfaces that inherit from the building object. Say we want to add parking and dining functionality

class Parking_area(Building): #extends building
      pass
class Dining_area(Building): # also extends building
      pass

These interfaces can now he inherited by other children classes as so

class Manyatta(Dining_Area): 
      pass
#the Manyatta will have a dining area in it but no parking

class OfficeBuilding(Parking_area):
      pass
#The office Building will have a parking area but no dinning area

class Mansion(Dining_Area, Parking_area):
      pass
#The mansion will have both a dining area and a parking area. This is called Multiple Inheritance

We can therefore conclude by saying, instead of adding functionality to the base object, we can simply create custom interfaces and inherit from the interfaces. By this, we ensure that the first principle is achieved as well as fulfilling the second.

Liskov Substitution Principle

Subclasses should be substitutable for their base classes.

This principle was coined by Barbar Liskov in her work regarding data abstraction.

Uncle bob is not home today, so his son Wanzala will be running the show today. Uncle Bob taught Wanzala everything about building, so we can trust that his work is a continuation of his fathers.

We expect, he will use the same formulae and methods his father uses and more.

This is the liskov principle. A Derived classes should extend without replacing the functionality of old classes. Which means derived classes should be substitutable for their parent/base classes. Moreover, they can be usable in the place of their parent classes without any unexpected behaviour.

Interface Segregation Principle

The dependency of one class to another one depends on the smallest possible interface.

Instead of one huge interface, many small interfaces are preferred based on groups of methods, each one serving one submodule.

to explain this, lets add a mini mall to the estate.This mall will have a parking area for all the cars coming in.

class mini_mall(parking_area):
      pass

This parking area should have capacity for 20 cars, have a charging port for e-cars and a hose pipe to wash the cars.
The maisonette will only need capacity for two cars and a hose pipe.

The way to handle both needs without giving the other redundant functionalities is by creating a subclass charging_port that will extend parking area.

class Charging_Port(Parking_Area):
      pass

Then change class mini_mall to inherit from Charging_Port instead.

class Mini_Mall(Charging_Port):
      pass

Dependency Inversion Principle

Conclusion

Uncle Bob wrote the principles in a 2000 essay. click on this link to better understand where his mindset was as he was coming up with the principles.

Nevertheless, she coded: Linah Anyango

Joan Awinja Ingari — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 14:13:35 +0000

Linah is a Biology and Chemistry teacher at Regis School,Runda. In her 12 years of teaching, she has been coming up with innovative ways of improving learning outcomes among marginalized girls in Mombasa.

In her quest to inspire girls to venture in the STEM field, she started the Girls in STEM club in her school, where she trains girls in Digital Literacy, invites mentors to speak to them and also prepares them for various STEM fairs. She has also been running an after school free coding sessions for teens in Ganahola slum, Mombasa.

Linah is a renowned speaker in both local and international EduTech Conferences where she has shared her insights on the role of ICT integration in transforming learning experiences and improving learning outcomes.

As a teacher coach, she has coached over 300 teachers on integrating various digital tools in teaching and learning. When schools were closed due to Covid-19 pandemic, she ensured that learning does not stop by training and coaching her colleagues on remote learning. she has been a Microsoft Innovative Educator Trainer and Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert from 2018.

Linah has received several recognitions for her contribution towards transforming education and was listed among the Top 50 Teachers in world in 2020.

Linah is African region Advisory board member of the BETT MEA show, an annual EduTech event which brings together great minds in education from Africa and Middle east to share on best practice. She is also a board member of Beacon Teachers Africa, An organisation that champions Teachers empowerment and image building as well as child protection.

Moreover, she is also the founder of Kanyadhiang’ Briquettes, a community-based organisation in Homa bay county which seeks to solve the problem of water hyacinth infestation by converting them into clean energy through making water hyacinth briquettes. The CBO has not only been a good source of revenue for the women and youth in who are the members but has also helped to fight climate change through clean energy and reduced the water hyacinth menace in lake Victoria. Her zeal to transform her community has won her scholarship into leadership trainings such as YALI and TechWomen.

Follow her on social media using the following links:
Facebook
Twitter

Nevertheless, She coded: Sharon Telewa

Joan Awinja Ingari — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 13:30:43 +0000

Happy International Women's Day!✨💖👯

My name is just Sharon, I do not have any nicknames(at least that I know of)

Where do you work?

B. Braun Group

What do you do?

I work as an Innovation and Business Development Manager at B. Braun Group, a healthcare company that manufactures medical devices and solutions. My job entails identifying internal and external innovative ideas which we can develop into new products to protect and improve the health of people across the world.

Who or what inspired you to pursue the career you have today?

My high school Physics teacher inspired me to study engineering at the University. Since then, I've had an incredibly supportive network of mentors who have influenced the changes in my career path to what I'm doing today.

What is your favourite music genre?

My playlist has a little bit of everything - from Jazz to traditional Luhya music.

what is your secret talent that no one knows about?

Knitting and Crocheting

My advice for allies to support underrepresented folks who code is...

First, never stop learning. Stay curious and updated in your field.
Second, it is okay to have a non-linear career path. Keep an open mind and always be on the look out for new opportunities.

How do you keep yourself up to date in your field?

I read - a lot!

How would you describe your job to a bunch of 5 year olds

I find new companies which can be friends with my company, and we can all play together and make cool products that help sick people feel better.

What cool thing are you working on right now?

I'm currently supporting the roll out of our new company strategy. It's exciting to see how a company that was founded over 180 years ago is adopting new technology and preparing for the future.

What was your first job?

I was an ICT4D Intern at a Community Knowledge Centre.

What are the toughest challenges you've had at work?

Overcoming Imposter Syndrome and learning to negotiate and advocate for myself.

What upcoming technological innovation will dramatically impact the industry in the next five years?

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics are dramatically changing the Healthcare industry, from enabling early detection to AI-assisted surgeries.

What skill do you think everyone should learn?

Hard to pick one - but I'd say everyone needs to pay as much attention to their soft skills as they do to their technical skills. Emotional intelligence, great communication skills and creative problem solving skills will get you very far.

Have you taken a huge leap of faith at work? Did it pay off?

Yes I have. I quit my job to move to a new country for a 1 year fellowship program that had no guaranteed future after that. It did pay off. I experienced a lot of growth over the one year, and the work that I did during the fellowship built a foundation for a new job with the same company.

How can we follow you?

Follow me on Twitter

Nevertheless, she coded: Sylvia Mukasa

Joan Awinja Ingari — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 13:29:36 +0000

Happy International Women's Day!✨💖👯

My name is Sylvia, Some of my friends call me Sylo.

Where do you work?

GlobalX Investments Ltd/ GlobalX Innovation Labs

What do you do?

I am Founder/CEO of GlobalX Investments/GlobalX Innovation Labs based in Nairobi, Kenya. GlobalX's vision is to drive a more diverse, inclusive and competitive digital economy with a focus on emerging technologies, that opens up equal opportunities for all. Our main purpose is to use technology to provide solutions for businesses and for social impact. GlobalX provides opportunities for children, youth, developers & entrepreneurs/businesses to learn, innovate, and scale up their knowledge in hardware and emerging technologies. In a nutshell, GlobalX feeds into the innovation pipeline by closing the skills, funding and organisational/corporate digital transformation gaps. GlobalX focuses on SDGs 4 (Quality Education);5 (Gender Equality);8 (Decent Work & Economic Growth); 9 (Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure; 10 (Reduced Inequalities) and 17 (Partnerships for the goals).I am also passionate about empowering Women in Tech and contributing to the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Africa and globally.

Who or what inspired you to pursue the career you have today?

I love working in tech because first, I like to make positive impact in society through innovations. Secondly, I get bored easily, so I like to do stuff that keeps me engaged and allows me to try different things, discover and keep learning. Being in tech allows me to do this. I always look forward to creating or being part of teams that create solutions for humanity.

What is your favourite music genre?

I enjoy Classical Music

what is your secret talent that no one knows about?

I am an alto choral singer.

What is the best advice you can give to someone who just started their career?

Believe in yourself and seek all the support you require to succeed, but you must be ready to knock many doors.

How do you keep yourself up to date in your field?

I read widely, speak at and also curate/hold tech events.

How would you describe your job to a bunch of 5 year olds

Have you heard of, seen, built or learnt how to build robots? Coded using scratch? Heard of, seen or built a drone or best still flown one? My work involves helping build or giving guidance/teaching individuals or companies to build or do these type of things. My work also involves helping people who create these things start/run businesses, just like the shopkeeper where you buy bread from runs their shop.

What cool thing are you working on right now?

I am working on an initiative that aims to increase the representation of women in Artificial Intelligence. This was born out of my participation in the ITCILO AI Lab between Aug-Nov 2020.

What was your first job?

I was an operations trainee with Shell/BP.

What are the toughest challenges you've had at work?

Being able to fund/get adequate resources for some initiatives I am passionate about.

What upcoming technological innovation will dramatically impact the industry in the next five years?

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-related innovations are definitely the industry game changer. It is estimated that by 2030, AI will contribute $15.7 Trillion to the global GDP, making it the biggest commercial opportunity in today’s fast changing economy. AI basically refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think like humans and mimic their actions. The term may also be applied to any machine that exhibits traits associated with a human mind such as learning and problem-solving. From disease mapping and prediction tools; song or TV show recommendations from Spotify and Netflix; conversational bots for customer support and marketing; to delivery of blood to remote locations that would be typically hard-to-reach, AI has definitely had a major contribution so far and continues to.

What skill do you think everyone should learn?

Public Speaking

Have you taken a huge leap of faith at work? Did it pay off?

Yes I have-getting into entrepreneurship. It has paid off especially in terms of impact, growing my professional brand as well as making me learn about myself.

How can we follow you?

Follow me on Twitter

Nevertheless, she coded: Carol Kariuki

Joan Awinja Ingari — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 13:28:15 +0000

Happy International Women's Day!✨💖👯

My name is just Carol, I do not have any nicknames(at least that I know of)

Where do you work?

Facebook

What do you do?

Developer Operations at Facebook

Who or what inspired you to pursue the career you have today?

My Father-Dr Kariuki

What is your favourite music genre?

Anything danceable, but deep down I am a worshiper of Jesus.

what is your secret talent that no one knows about?

Sharp memory. Is that a talent? 😂

My advice for allies to support underrepresented folks who code is...

Stay curios but define your path. Look for people who will inspire you and then others will emulate that. Do the right thing, at the right time, with the right people. Love and care for those who you may perceive may be struggling with something.

How do you keep yourself up to date in your field?

What did you want to be when you were a young child? Connect that with the current state of the world and find that person with the technology that is available. Use your talents and skills and build relationships. Personally, I take time to think about my actions, and how they will affect the next person and what ripple effect that will have on others, and the entire world.

How would you describe your job to a bunch of 5 year olds

With Jesus in the vessel I can smile at the storm - This was a popular song back in Sunday School and when children are allowed to be creative and curious they grow up to be responsible future leaders of our society.
I hope I nailed this question 😄

What cool thing are you working on right now?

Learning about privacy and data at Facebook and how to use my social skills to bring the world closer together. Personal cool? Since I love singing, I am testing out how music works on Portal which is a new device From Facebook.

What was your first job?

Entrepreneur with a Salon App published on the Nokia Ovi Store back in 2011.

What are the toughest challenges you've had at work?

Work from home during covid times can be difficult. I am slowly mastering the law of Prioritisation.

What upcoming technological innovation will dramatically impact the industry in the next five years?

People First, over Technology. This is something we all have to think about so I am not able to answer this question in its fullest form.

What skill do you think everyone should learn?

Resilience. Consistency. Building relationships with people and keeping God close.

Have you taken a huge leap of faith at work? Did it pay off?

Trusting God with the unknown. Jesus walked on water, and therefore whenever I am in doubt, I just let go and let God. Paying off is never tangible, it's the many lives you get to inspire.

How can we follow you?

Here are my social media links:
Instagram
Twitter
Facebook

Nevertheless, she coded: Shufaa Yakut

Joan Awinja Ingari — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 13:25:53 +0000

Happy International Women's Day!✨💖👯

My name is just Shufaa, but some friends at work call me Shuufs😉

Where do you work?

At Swahilipot Hub.

What do you do?

I upload and delete photos for a living😅. You can call me a digital content creator.
I write creative non-fiction and short stories. I am also a front end web developer.

Who or what inspired you to pursue the career you have today?

Mahmoud Noor. Popularly known as mentor 001.

What is your favourite music genre?

I enjoy Soul, rnb, blues and classic

what is your secret talent that no one knows about?

Wont people know about it if I write it here? haha.Kidding. Secretly, I just do what I want, and when I'm in a circumstance to do it for someone, I make sure I'm going to benefit from it.

What is the best advice you can give to someone who just started their career?

Have goals and work towards them. Even if your current employment is not your passion or talent, make it a journey towards what your profession really is. Also, do not rush into entrepreneurship before doing a good research analysis.

How do you keep yourself up to date in your field?

I have mobile reminders, I journal, I make a to-do lists and most importantly, I have an accountability partner, my husband.

How would you describe your job to a bunch of 5 year olds

I upload and delete photos for a living😅.I tell my ten year old sister that all the billboards she sees, the advertisements on TV, the links she searches on Google, are designed by me.

What cool thing are you working on right now?

It's a secret😄. But yoh! Virtual Reality story telling. It will not be up until the next year, watch this space.

What was your first job?

A nursery school teacher

What are the toughest challenges you've had at work?

Clients never paying on time for a service they are already using. Dealing with a community of people from different backgrounds is always a challenge.

What upcoming technological innovation will dramatically impact the industry in the next five years?

Internet of things is growing very fast, soon enough we will be driving electric cars.

What skill do you think everyone should learn?

The Reading culture, and some coding

Have you taken a huge leap of faith at work? Did it pay off?

Yes i have, and yes it did. With patient and more work.

How can we follow you?

Here are my social media links:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
My Website

Nevertheless, she coded: Rachael Mwatela

Joan Awinja Ingari — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 13:25:01 +0000

Happy International Women's Day!✨💖👯

My name is Rachael, but my friends call me Raycee.

Where do you work?

Ona Limited

What do you do?

I am a Software Engineer.

Who or what inspired you to pursue the career you have today?

A guy named Arthur Kennedy is the who introduced me to coding and opened up my mind about technology. His patience and brilliance made me want to be more like him. I am really grateful to him for that and the amazing ladies from Rails Girls Mombasa and Nairobi who we not only gave each other hope in our coding journey but took up the challenge to teach and inspire others.

What is your favourite music genre?

Currently, I listen to a lot of amapiano and worship music.

what is your secret talent that no one knows about?

I make soap and sell them using my instagram page Nile Soaps n scents.
https://www.instagram.com/nilesoapsnscents/

My advice for allies to support underrepresented folks who code is...

Don't be afraid, allow yourself to make mistakes that is how you learn, ask the dumb questions and be very patient with yourself.

How do you keep yourself up to date in your field?

I try to read tech blogs, follow tech blogs on twitter, I recently started picking coding challenges on exercism and hackerrank.

How would you describe your job to a bunch of 5 year olds

See the apps you use on the internet? I build those😎.

What cool thing are you working on right now?

I recently worked on implementing a feature that allows you to link your your forms from ona to Tableau for visualization.

What was your first job?

Does an intern count? I am currently at my first job.

What are the toughest challenges you've had at work?

When I started out as an intern, I had to learn a new language within the three months. It was also my first time working on code that goes to production. It was the toughest yet the best experience ever.

What upcoming technological innovation will dramatically impact the industry in the next five years?

I believe machine learning and robotics is something people will embrace even more. 2020 has made us realize we don't really need to be at the same place to get things done therefore dependence on machines will increase as we move forward.

What skill do you think everyone should learn?

critical thinking. You might be a good developer but if you can't think how to implement your code, you will stay at the same place. As my mentor says, coding is easy as long as you know what you are coding.

Have you taken a huge leap of faith at work? Did it pay off?

I think pick up features or new technologies at work is always a leap of faith for me. Sometimes I might take longer to even deliver but my end goal is not to just complete but to come out better and with knowledge.

How can we follow you?

Here are my social media links:
Instagram
Facebook
twitter

Nevertheless, she coded: Dalia Abu Ghoush

Joan Awinja Ingari — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 13:22:26 +0000

Happy International Women's Day!✨💖👯

My name is Dalia, I do not have any nicknames(at least that I know of)

Where do you work?

Jordan, Amman

What do you do?

I am a Senior Frontend Developer.

Who or what inspired you to pursue the career you have today?

Unfortunately, during collage everyone I met was telling me that you're too spoiled to study or work in tech field so I challenged them and challenged myself to be where I am today

What is your favourite music genre?

I enjoy Pop, Rock, Classic Rock and Metal

what is your secret talent that no one knows about?

ummm I do read people sometimes hahaha

What is the best advice you can give to someone who just started their career?

Don’t take your career too seriously, because you may end up in a career you don't really love. Every person you meet is a potential door to a new opportunity. Be as social as you can

How do you keep yourself up to date in your field?

Reading, reading reading new articles

How would you describe your job to a bunch of 5 year olds

Computer does not understand human languages, it understands its own special language for instance, we have Javascript. It is a collection of simple English words like console, loop, object. We type these words using keyboard in Javascript to tell the computer what to do.

What cool thing are you working on right now?

React and React Native, they're awesome

What was your first job?

Drupal developer

What are the toughest challenges you've had at work?

When working with a guy who doesn't accept me "Female" as his boss.

What upcoming technological innovation will dramatically impact the industry in the next five years?

For sure the AI

What skill do you think everyone should learn?

Basics of coding

Have you taken a huge leap of faith at work? Did it pay off?

Yes of course I love what I'm doing but not always it pays off

How can we follow you?

Here is my social media links:
Instagram

Nevertheless, she coded: Celine Surai

Joan Awinja Ingari — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 13:17:19 +0000

Happy International Women's Day!✨💖👯

My name is just Celine, I do not have any nicknames(at least that I know of)

Where do you work?

I am an incoming software engineer at Slack. Will be working on the front-end.

What do you do?

I am a software engineer. I am also a you-tuber and make tech content specifically. I also write about technology, most especially software engineering.

Who or what inspired you to pursue the career you have today?

I have always been fascinated by tech ever since I was a kid. I particularly chose to pursue a software engineering career because I loved how it gave me the opportunity to solve problems as well as create things that are important for humanity. I also love how versatile my career is, especially because I am that person who enjoys exploring new things, hence as a software engineer, I am able to do a lot of different things.

What is your favourite music genre?

I love Afro beats, I listen to bongo a lot. Lately started listening to 'Amapiano'. We can say that I listen to a lot of African music

what is your secret talent that no one knows about?

I sing!

My advice for allies to support underrepresented folks who code is...

Be open to learning. Learning is something that is never ending in life and being open to it will for sure open a lot of opportunities for you.

How do you keep yourself up to date in your field?

Google is my best friend. I am always looking out for what is new in the field and learning it.

What cool thing are you working on right now?

Right now I am excited about finally launching a program that I have always wanted to start. It will be a mentor-ship program for women in stem. I have always wanted to empower other women and it means a lot to me that I am finally going to be able to do that.

What was your first job?

Worked as a student library assistant

What skill do you think everyone should learn?

I think learning how to code is fundamental, especially with how the world is quickly become technologically oriented

How can we follow you?

Here are my social media links:
Facebook
Twitter
You can also catch up with me on youtube at Decode Girl.

Nevertheless, she coded: Hannah Masila

Joan Awinja Ingari — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 12:23:51 +0000

Happy International Women's Day!✨💖👯

My name is just Hannah, but my friends call me Maslah.

Where do you work?

I am currently a freelance developer

Who or what inspired you to pursue the career you have today?

Love. I studied computer science in pursuit of love, and when love didn't work out, I started programming to spend time with my best friend who was a geek

What is your favourite music genre?

I enjoy Reggae and Bongo Flavour

What is your secret talent that no one knows about?

I can code in Perl

My advice for allies to support underrepresented folks who code is...

Practice. Join a community, learn. Get an accountability partner and practice some more

How do you keep yourself up to date in your field?

By Working. Freelancing keeps me on toes because I'm competing with thousands of talented individuals from all over the world

How would you describe your job to a bunch of 5 year olds

I tell computers what to do.

What cool thing are you working on right now?

I am currently web scrapping for UK project planning

What was your first job?

Software Developer at Andela

What are the toughest challenges you've had at work?

Context switching between languages or technologies

What upcoming technological innovation will dramatically impact the industry in the next five years?

It's already impacting .. blockchain, smart contracts etc

What skill do you think everyone should learn?

Skill - Programming
Language - Python

Have you taken a huge leap of faith at work? Did it pay off?

Yes. I had a Perl web scraper that I needed to update. It was old, ugly, messy. It used xml and wsdl, which I hadn't worked with before. But it really helped me understand a lot and learn a new language

How can we follow you?

On instagram, my handle is hanmaslah.

Nevertheless, she coded: Joan Nabusoba

Joan Awinja Ingari — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 12:18:20 +0000

Happy International Women's Day!✨💖👯

My name is Joan, but since I was named after my grandmother, my nickname is nyanya which means grandmother.

Where do you work?

I am a trainer on various Pwani Teknowgalz initiatives. I also work as a software dev on a couple of mobile app projects, through SuluhuTex

What do you do?

I code

Who or what inspired you to pursue the career you have today?

My awesome dad

What is your favourite music genre?

Kora, African blues, but I am always open to any

what is your secret talent that no one knows about?

I am good at video games.

My advice for allies to support underrepresented folks who code is...

Learn by doing and not just reading tutorials.

How do you keep yourself up to date in your field?

I create projects a lot, join communities, follow techies who inspire me. Whoa, there's a lot to learn

How would you describe your job to a bunch of 5 year olds

I work with computers

What cool thing are you working on right now?

A service mobile app that will involve asset tracking

What was your first job?

I was a primary school teacher after form 4

What are the toughest challenges you've had at work?

I am constantly overwhelmed with loads of work, but I am finding workarounds :)

What upcoming technological innovation will dramatically impact the industry in the next five years?

I don't know. Things change within seconds. Just ready for anything

What skill do you think everyone should learn?

How to treat people well. Hehe, on a serious note, Python

Have you taken a huge leap of faith at work? Did it pay off?

I took a project that I had no idea of the best backend. I was using Java for Android. With a hell lot of time learning and doing, I managed

How can we follow you?

Insta: joannabusoba,
Fb: @joannabusoba,
Twitter: @joannabusoba

Who's on your site?

Joan Awinja Ingari — Sun, 13 Sep 2020 01:57:45 +0000

Introduction

Website traffic refers to the web users who visit your site.
Web traffic is measured in visits and is a great way to measure an online business effectiveness at attracting an audience.
visitors come to your site because they are obviously interested in the content in there.

Aside from being able to check the number of times visitor have been to your site, It is also possible to get more details of the visitor by checking their user agent.

So what exactly is a user agent?

Everyone that is browsing the web right now has a user agent. It’s the software that acts as the bridge between you, the user, and the internet.

The User-Agent request header is a characteristic string that lets servers and network peers identify the application, operating system, vendor, and/or version of the requesting user agent.

Example user agent string:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/45.0.2454.85 Safari/537.36

How Does a User Agent Work?

When your browser (or similar device) loads a website, it identifies itself as an agent when it retrieves the content you’ve requested.

Along with that user-agent identification, the browser sends a host of information about the device and network that it’s on.

This is a set of really important data for web developers since it allows them to customise the experience depending on the user agent that’s loaded the page.

Let's get the user agent!

For this task, we'll use python's flask framework.
you can find the code here: https://github.com/Awinja-j/user_agent

from flask import Flask, request

app = Flask(__name__)


@app.route('/', methods=['GET'])
def hello():
    data = request.headers.get('User-Agent')
    return data
if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(debug=True)

This displays:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_6) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/85.0.4183.83 Safari/537.36

Let's breakdown the returned string

User-Agent: <product> / <product-version> <comment>

format for web browsers:

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (<system-information>) <platform> (<platform-details>) <extensions>

Remember: Your results will be unique to your computer and network.

Mozilla/5.0: The user agent application is Mozilla version 5.0. You will notice that most user agents start with a Mozilla Version. This is to says the browser is Mozilla-compatible. For historical reasons, almost every browser today sends it

(Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_6): Details of the system in which the browser is running. The operating system is OS X version 10.15.6 (and is running on a Mac).

AppleWebKit/537.36: WebKit is the web browser engine. It is an open source rendering engine developed by Apple.

(KHTML, like Gecko): originally developed for Konquerer on Linux's KDE desktop – added the words “like Gecko” so they'd get the modern pages designed for Gecko, too.
Gecko is a browser engine developed by Mozilla. Gecko is designed to support open Internet standards, and is used by different applications to display web pages.

Chrome/85.0.4183.83 Safari/537.36:The client is Chrome Version 85.0.4183.83 and is based on Safari version 537.36.

Now, lets parse this data

Parsing means taking a stream of text and breaking it into meaningful chunks.

From the user agent string we can get browser, device and os information. Python's regex is the best tool to retrieve this data for us. To achieve this we would have to:

Come up with a list of all browsers, devices and os.
create a ua_list_types.py file and add lists as so:

browser = [], os = [], device= []

In app.py, add the regex functionality to derive the user agent details.

Lucky for us, there are several open source tools that have been built to help us with this task.

We'll use the appropriately names library user_agent_parser
found here -> https://pypi.org/project/user-agents/

Install it as so: pip install ua-parser user-agents

modify the code to look like this;

from flask import Flask, request
from user_agents import parse

app = Flask(__name__)


@app.route('/', methods=['GET'])
def hello():
    ua_string = request.headers.get('User-Agent')
    user_agent = parse(ua_string)

    data = {
        # Accessing user agent's browser attributes
        "browser": user_agent.browser,
        "browser_family": user_agent.browser.family,
        "browser_version": user_agent.browser.version,
        "browser_version_string": user_agent.browser.version_string,

        # Accessing user agent's operating system properties
        "os": user_agent.os, 
        "os_family": user_agent.os.family,
        "os_version": user_agent.os.version,
        "os_version_string": user_agent.os.version_string,

        # Accessing user agent's device properties
        "device": user_agent.device,
        "device_brand": user_agent.device.brand,  
        "device_family": user_agent.device.family ,
        "device_model": user_agent.device.model

    }
    return data


if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(debug=True)

So what can you do with this user agent data?

The most immediate advantage is it allows developers to customise the experience depending on the user agent that’s loaded the page.

For countries such that are strict when it comes to the use of google analytics and facebook pixels, the user agent can be used to create algorithms that can identify if the same user has visited the site more than once.

It can also tell you the type of devices that are being used to access your website.

In conclusion, user agent technology may be old technology that will soon be phased out, until then we can use it to determine which web version of the website is being served to the user and coming up with tracking algorithms and knowing the types of devices that are being used to access your site. This will hopefully help you make better business decisions that will be profitable to your organisation.

References:

https://towardsdatascience.com/the-user-agent-that-crazy-string-underpinning-a-bunch-of-analytics-86507ef632f0

https://www.whoishostingthis.com/tools/user-agent/

https://pypi.org/project/user-agents/