DEV Community: Bryan Hamilton

Hover over an artist card and hear a 30-second iTunes preview. The audio plays through a Web Audio API analyser (fftSize: 64, smoothing: 0.8) that drives an 8-bar canvas equalizer in real time.

What makes it interesting: the autoplay gate. Browsers block audio until the user clicks once, so the first hover primes a one-click unlock. After that, every hover fires an iTunes Search API lookup (entity=musicTrack, limit=12), grabs the preview URL, and starts the analyser. A generation-counter race guard prevents stale responses from overwriting the current playback.

Also includes: mediaSession integration (lock screen controls), document.title swap, reduced-motion early return, and a 75% black overlay with "You are now listening to:" label.

2. instant-search-index

A client-side search system that works from a prebuilt JSON index. No Algolia, no Elasticsearch, no server endpoint — just a JSON file and ~200 lines of JavaScript.

The index is generated at build time (a PHP script crawls the artist database and writes a flat JSON file). On the client, the search function runs scored AND/OR matching across weighted fields (name scores highest, genre and location lower). Results render in an ARIA combobox with keyboard navigation, Escape-to-close, and focus trapping.

This was the feature I was proudest of on bryanhamilton.info — a search that feels instant because it is. No network request, no loading spinner, no debounce dance.

3. next-show-radar

A geolocation-aware tour map. It asks for the user's location (consent-first — no nagging), calculates haversine distances to upcoming shows, and plots the nearest ones on a Leaflet map.

The consent pattern is worth studying alone: the map loads with a "Find shows near me" button. Nothing happens until the user clicks it. If they deny geolocation, they get a text list instead. Race-safe Leaflet boot prevents the map from initializing twice, and the whole thing works without a single third-party script tag beyond Leaflet's own CSS.

4. tour-feed-pipeline

GitHub | CI Status

The backend counterpart to the radar. It ingests tour data from Bandsintown and Ticketmaster, normalizes both feeds into a single row shape, deduplicates overlapping events, caches aggressively, and prunes stale entries.

Written in PHP 8 with zero Composer dependencies. CI-tested with PHPUnit against the actual production library code — not mocked abstractions. The test suite taught me a hard lesson about testing production-verbatim code: your tests need to match the library's actual behavior, not what you imagine the contract to be.

5. eq-visualizer

An 8-bar sensory equalizer that renders in pure CSS. Zero JavaScript required to display it — the bars are just divs with staggered animation delays. An optional 1 KB injector script adds Web Audio reactivity.

This repo holds the line on an important principle: visual effects should degrade gracefully. If JavaScript fails, the EQ still animates. If the user prefers reduced motion, it freezes at full height. No broken UI states.

6. sri-lazy-loader

A race-safe lazy script loader with Subresource Integrity. If two components request the same script simultaneously, only one network request fires. Subsequent callers get the same promise. Timeout and cleanup are built in.

The pattern I extracted from a production pain point: The DJ Calendar's artist pages load different widgets depending on the artist. Without a loader, widgets would trample each other's script tags. With this, each widget calls loadScript() independently and the deduplication handles the rest.

7. event-calendar-schema

A PHP library that generates valid schema.org Event JSON-LD. It handles sameDay date detection (no more "through Feb 3" when the event is one day), geo-coordinate injection, and performer-by-type resolution.

This is the library that powers The DJ Calendar's structured data — every event page on the site runs through it. I extracted it because I was tired of rewriting the same JSON-LD boilerplate for every new project.

8. jsonld-schema-audit

A PHP tool that validates JSON-LD against schema.org shapes and audits structured data across your entire site. It crawls your pages, extracts every <script type="application/ld+json"> block, and reports errors, warnings, and missing properties.

Built because Google's Rich Results Test only checks one URL at a time. When you have hundreds of event pages, you need bulk auditing.

9. wp-schema-audit

A WordPress plugin version of the same idea. It adds a Schema Audit page to the WordPress admin, scans every post and page for JSON-LD, and flags issues. Zero-config — activate and run.

10. csrf-json-fetch

A lightweight fetch wrapper that automatically injects CSRF tokens into every request. Tokens are read from a meta tag, rotated on each session, and validated server-side. Error handling is baked in — network failures, non-JSON responses, and 403s all produce typed error objects instead of silent failures.

What I Learned Extracting Production Code

Your production code has hidden dependencies. The first extraction always fails because you forgot the utility function living in a sibling file. That's fine — it forces you to write standalone utilities.
Tests reveal the truth. The tour-feed-pipeline taught me that my mental model of the code was wrong in three places. Only the test suite caught it.
Zero dependencies is a constraint that improves code. Without npm, you can't reach for a library. You have to write the 20-line function yourself. Nine times out of ten, that's the right call.
Live demos matter more than READMEs. Every repo has a GitHub Pages demo. People trust what they can interact with.

What's Next

I'm still extracting. The DJ Calendar has patterns I haven't touched yet — the city map system, the email newsletter pipeline, the caching layer. Every extraction makes the parent site better because the extracted code gets hardened, documented, and tested.

All 10 repos live under github.com/bryanhamiltondev. The full portfolio is at bryanhamilton.info.

If any of these patterns save you a weekend of work, that's exactly why I extracted them.

10 Repos, Zero Dependencies: A Production PHP/JS Portfolio

Bryan Hamilton — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 02:23:35 +0000

I run The DJ Calendar — a real-time EDM tour date platform that's been in production since 2015. It's a single PHP + vanilla JS codebase with zero frameworks, zero build tools, and zero package managers.

Over the past few weeks, I went through the codebase and extracted every reusable pattern into its own open-source repo. Not tutorials. Not simplified examples. The actual production code, cleaned, documented, and pushed.

Here's the full portfolio.

The philosophy

Every repo shares the same rules:

Zero dependencies. No npm install. No Composer. No build step. Clone it and open index.html, or include the file.
Extracted from production. Every pattern was already running on a live site before it became a repo.
Live demo or CI test. If it runs in the browser, there's a GitHub Pages demo. If it's backend, there's a CI pipeline proving it works.
MIT licensed. Use it, fork it, ship it.

Audio & Visual

dj-card-preview

The hover preview system from the homepage cards. Hover any artist card and hear a 30-second iTunes preview with a real Web Audio API equalizer driving 8 canvas bars.

Key patterns: iTunes Search API integration, Web Audio analyser with fftSize=64, generation-counter race condition guard, consent-first design (touch toggle, reduced-motion skip, autoplay gate).

eq-visualizer

The decorative 8-bar equalizer strip that runs on every homepage card. Pure CSS animation with a 1KB optional JS injector. Respects prefers-reduced-motion. Zero JS required to render — the CSS alone is the full widget.

next-show-radar

A geolocation-aware tour map. Asks for location consent once, calculates haversine distance to upcoming shows, and renders them on a Leaflet map. If the user declines location, it shows a friendly fallback — it doesn't nag.

Data & Search

instant-search-index

Client-side search across ~1,000 pages using a prebuilt JSON index. Scored AND matching across weighted fields (title, artist, venue, city), keyboard-first combobox with full ARIA wiring. Zero server round-trips after page load.

This is the feature I'm proudest of on the site. A user types "martin garrix london" and gets results before their finger leaves the keyboard.

tour-feed-pipeline

PHP 8 pipeline that ingests tour dates from Bandsintown and Ticketmaster, normalizes them into one row shape, dedupes across sources, caches with versioned JSON files, and prunes past dates. CI-tested, zero Composer dependencies.

event-calendar-schema

The MySQL schema and PDO repository behind the calendar. Idempotent event upserts, double opt-in subscriber management, query-shaped indexes. Every design decision documented inline.

Security & Quality

csrf-json-fetch

A hardened wrapper around fetch() that handles CSRF token caching, dual injection (header + request body), single-retry on token expiry, and typed error responses. Every endpoint on the site uses this.

sri-lazy-loader

Race-safe lazy script loader with Subresource Integrity. Handles concurrent callers (only one script tag injected), detects pre-existing tags so it never duplicates, times out and cleans up on failure.

jsonld-schema-audit

A zero-dependency PHP CLI that audits JSON-LD structured data. Detects missing required properties per schema.org type, resolves internal @id references, and fails CI on regressions. Runs on any PHP 8+ system with no installation.

wp-schema-audit

The WordPress version of the same auditor. Ships as a WP-CLI command and an admin Tools page. Point it at any post type and it validates every schema block on your site.

Tooling

resume-builder

A self-hosted PHP resume builder. Pick a template (tech or retail), fill in the hiring manager's name, company, and role, and get a finished PDF. Zero dependencies — pure PHP with a clean HTML template system.