DEV Community: Bruce Axtens

Awesome COBOL!

Bruce Axtens — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 00:14:07 +0000

Yeah, not that other somewhat awesome language, this is an introduction to the awesomeness of COBOL!

"COBOL: you're thinking about it wrong"

Bruce Axtens — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 04:01:04 +0000

COBOL: you're thinking about it wrong

How to do I purge the LiteSpeed cache using WordPress's REST API?

Bruce Axtens — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 14:26:31 +0000

Feb 8 '23 Comments: 1 Answers: 1

I'm communicating with a WordPress site's REST API with RestSharp. I've authorised myself to the client's website and issued a GET to https://REDACTED/wp-json/litespeed/v1/ping. I've received a promising looking response: {"ver":"5.3.2","_res":"ok"}.

Now, how do I now trigger a purge_all?

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In WooCommerce, where do I get more detail about the dtwpb_single_product_page?

Bruce Axtens — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 03:42:07 +0000

Jan 27 '23 Comments: 1 Answers: 0

In WooCommerce each product has meta_data and in that collection there's a field called dtwpb_single_product_page. The field contains a number which resolves to a WooCommerce Page Builder Product Template. There are WPBakery Page Builder icons all over, and I've been to their site but can't see anything regarding a…

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Need REST access to information available in XML dump of website

Bruce Axtens — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 08:01:27 +0000

Dec 16 '22 Comments: 1 Answers: 0

We have a WordPress eXtended RSS file generated by WordPress as an export of your site. It list all kind of things that I cannot find using REST queries. Most notable is an item which says, in part,

        <item&gt
            <title><![CDATA[MKT Products [NEW]]]></title>
            <wp:post_id>14146</wp:post_id>
            <wp:post_type><![CDATA[dtwpb_product_tpl]]></wp:post_type>
            <wp:postmeta>

after which come a host…

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Advent of Code 2022 (Day 1)

Bruce Axtens — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 04:37:18 +0000

I'm a couple of days behind in the AoC. To make the challenge more demanding I opted to use a language I'm not extremely familiar with: 8th.

8th is a FORTH-dialect aimed at the cross-platform developer market. I'm in the process of adding an 8th language track on Exercism.

I expect an 8th guru (there are a few) will sigh with exasperation on examining my code, but I plead ignorance (and a "let's just solve the problem, okay?" attitude).

My progress is being logged on github at AdventOfCode.

Day 1, Part 1 resulted in this little blob of code

"input" f:slurp \ read in input file
>s s:trim \ convert buffer to string and trim
"\r\n\r\n" s:/ \ split into elves (on Windows so CRLF)
( 
    "\r\n" s:/ \ split into meals
    ' >n a:map \ convert to number
    ' n:+ 0 a:reduce \ total calories
) a:map \ apply to each elf
' n:cmp a:sort \ sort smallest to largest
a:pop nip . cr \ pop of the last item, clear the stack, display
bye \ exit

The RPN syntax is a challenge but I'm starting to get the hang of it. Having to deal with a stack forces you to refactor. For a longer discussion of that particular issue see ForthValues.

Day 1, Part 2. For all of my talk about refactoring, there's no sign of it at this point.

"input" f:slurp >s s:trim \ read in file and trim
"\r\n\r\n" s:/ \ split into elves 
( 
    "\r\n" s:/ \ split into meals
    ' >n a:map \ convert to number
    ' n:+ 0 a:reduce \ total calories
) a:map \ apply to each elf
' n:cmp a:sort \ sort smallest to greatest
0 >r \ keep a total in r-stack
( a:pop r> n:+ >r ) 3 times \ pop off three items from the high end and accrue
r> . \ retrieve total and display
drop \ clean up stack
bye \ exit

Hey, programming language creators ...

Bruce Axtens — Sat, 06 Aug 2022 12:21:00 +0000

If you want a .lang domain ending for your website, it's time to let Registrars know.

Aug 5 '22 Author: ILoveBerkeleyFont

The idea

Currently, there is a pattern of appending [-]lang to websites related to `languages`. A few examples are rust-lang.org or ponylang.io and it is probably simply because we lack a .lang domain ending.

I posted on r/ICANN about it.

I honestly didn't know how these things worked. It happens to be really slow and costly (hundred thousands of dollars)…

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So pony.lang, 8th.lang, etc.

COBOL on Exercism is live!

Bruce Axtens — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 06:25:00 +0000

See the new COBOL learning track on Exercism.org

How to enable AverageCpcMicros on GenerateHistoricalMetrics in V11's KeywordPlanService?

Bruce Axtens — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 02:37:02 +0000

This is a question I've just submitted to the google-ads-dotnet repo maintainers.

How to enable AverageCpcMicros on GenerateHistoricalMetrics in V11's KeywordPlanService? #425

axtens posted on Jul 18, 2022

What is your question? I am making a request for historical data using the GenerateHistoricalMetrics method on the Services.V11.KeywordPlanService service. In the results that are returned the HasAverageCpcMicros field is false and therefore there is nothing but zero in AverageCpcMicros. What do I have to add to my KeywordPlan to enable this value?

For reference, my sources are publicly available on github, and a full trace log and the output JSON are attached

</div>
<div class="gh-btn-container"><a class="gh-btn" href="https://github.com/googleads/google-ads-dotnet/issues/425">View on GitHub</a></div>

Does anyone else know?

Google.Protobuf.dll is right next to my .dll but it is not being found or loaded

Bruce Axtens — Wed, 13 Jul 2022 08:18:44 +0000

Jul 13 '22 Comments: 1 Answers: 0

I have a Framework 4.8 C# app that uses ClearScript to allow JavaScript to be used as an extension language. I am able to write plugins as DLLs and attach them at runtime, viz

JSE.Script.attach = (Func<string, bool>)Attach
        private static bool Attach(string dllPath, string name = "")
        {
            var

…

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Test Driven Design in COBOL

Bruce Axtens — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 05:40:59 +0000

A great introduction to COBOL and especially to TDD (Test-Driven Design) in COBOL.

Google Sheets setValues anomaly?

Bruce Axtens — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 02:39:48 +0000

Google Sheets setValues anomaly?

Apr 14 '22 Comments: 1 Answers: 0

I have function, gatherAds which is attached to a button in a variety of worksheets in a Google Sheets workbook. It calls an ADS function which runs a library routine that talks to some middleware on our server to pull down Google Ads data. The result variable contains a 2D…

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