DEV Community: Daniel Shotonwa

Another Vscode extension - For Ruby Developers

Daniel Shotonwa — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 15:53:28 +0000

Recently, when coding in rails and a new migration is pulled in, I won't be aware until my browser notify me to run the migration.

I decided to build a vs-code extension to watch on my migration folder and notify me when there is a new migration, the extension has the ability to run migration also.

Install here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=danielshow.rails-migrate

Check out the code https://github.com/Danielshow/rails-auto-migrate

Finally built a vscode extension

Daniel Shotonwa — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 11:24:21 +0000

I have been thinking of building a vscode tool and finally published one.

It is an extension used for automating the process of adding a line of variable to .env and sample-env file, instead of copying and pasting.

const KEY = "MysecretKey"; 

Right click on the line
Click on Add Line to env

The line will change to:
const KEY = process.env.KEY

The env and sample-env file will also be populated

Install here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=danielshow.autoenv&ssr=false

Check out the repo here:
https://github.com/Danielshow/autoenv

Kindly help install on vscode. it means a lot. Thanks

I will put up an article on how I built it.

Change Terminal Keys to VIM

Daniel Shotonwa — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 21:36:47 +0000

So I have been struggling with my terminal lately, having done a lot of tweaks to improve my productivity, like using Tmux as a multiplexer, setting an alias for reoccurring commands and the likes.

I find it hard to use my terminal because to edit a command, you have to scroll with your arrow keys or press some weird key bindings. It has been frustrating so far.

I thought of using vim keys but don't know if it exists, just a little search online and I saw the command I needed.

$ set -o vi

This will set your terminal to use Vim key bindings, the default mode is insert mode so you can type anything you want. To go to command mode, just click escape key and you are good.

Important VIM keys I use while in command mode

0 or ^ - to move to the first character
$ - to move to the last character
f and a letter - search for a letter through the current line
F and a letter - search for a letter backwards

This setting will not persist, it will only be available for the life cycle of the terminal. To persists it, you have to add set -o vi to your .bashrc or .zshrc or other profiles.

$ vim ~/.bashrc

After that, close your terminal and open it. Enjoy your super cool terminal.

Setting up Vim, Tmux, iTerm and Oh-my-Zsh. A better workflow

Daniel Shotonwa — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:53:37 +0000

A lot of people always asked how I pimped my terminal, some even call me a weirdo because I was using VIM and they were using VSCode.

VScode is cool, you use Git like a Lord but do you know how Git works, can you write commands? Some guys have even forgotten how to use Git because VScode has made everything easy. I am not a fan of easy things. I live on the Terminal. 😂

I will explain all the libraries I installed and what I used them for. I am a macOS user, so I used brew to install my packages.

Tools Used:

iTerm
Vim
Tmux
Oh-my-Zsh

iTerm

iTerm is a replacement for macOS default Terminal. With iTerm, you can split your terminal into different sizes, search for text and use copy & paste. You can also use custom font and themes with iTerm. To install iTerm on macOS:

$ brew cask install iterm2

Now kindly ditch your default terminal and start using iTerm. I’ve not used my default terminal for some years now.

VIM

Vim does not need any explanation but it's worth trying. VIM makes me productive and with vim, I can use different plugins to enable me to work faster.

Vim is preinstalled on MacOs but if you don’t have it, you can install it by running this code in your terminal. This command will install VIM and override system vim and path.

$ brew install vim --with-override-system-vi

To learn the basics of vim, I would recommend, mostly the best way is to first learn the basic commands using vimtutor and then move on to add plugins for any pain points that you discover as you go. For instance, if you discover that you will need a filetreejust like VSCode provides, then by searching for this, you’ll find out about NERDTREE.

TMUX
Tmux is a terminal multiplexer: it enables a number of terminals to be created, accessed, and controlled from a single screen.

One big win of Tmux is that you can be detached from a screen and continue running in the background, then later reattached.

With TMUX, you could share your terminal into different chunks, running server, vim, redis-server etc.

To install Tmux on iTerm, type:

$ brew install tmux

Oh-my-Zsh

Oh-my-zsh is an open source plugin, it enables you to add themes, fonts, and customize your terminal. it has a lot of plugins to make you 10x productive as a developer. Install it using the following:

$ brew install zsh
$ sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

One of the plugins I use with oh-my-zsh is autosuggestion. It enables autocompletion for your terminal.

...

To make your terminal beautiful as mine 😅, I will share my box-settings and explain how you can configure your terminal. Before you use my settings, make sure you have installed Tmux, oh-my-zsh and Vim.

Using my settings, you can split your screen, writing code on one part and your terminal on the other. Developers might even call you a hacker because you will most likely like on the terminal.

You can fork my Box settings repository here.

STEP 1:

I use Vundle as my Plugin manager. Install Vundle:

$ git clone https://github.com/VundleVim/Vundle.vim.git ~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim

STEP 2:

Clone my Box settings and copy the files to your root path.

$ git clone https://github.com/Danielshow/BoxSetting
$ cd BoxSetting

STEP 3:

Copy all the files to your root path

To copy the files:

$ cp tmux.conf ~/.tmux.conf
$ cp vimrc ~/.vimrc
$ cp zshrc ~/.zshrc

After copying all the files, open vim and type in : to enter a command. Type in PluginInstall to install all the plugins.

Enjoy your super terminal 🎉.

I am Danielshow.

Heroku for Continous Deployment 👻👻

Daniel Shotonwa — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 13:40:20 +0000

Hey there, there have been a lot of talks about continuous integration, deployment and testing. We have neglected one tool that is powerful enough to make our continuous deployment seamless for small scale applications.

Over the years, I deploy my application to Heroku by just login in through my terminal using:

$ heroku login

After which I create an application on Heroku from my terminal using:

$ heroku create application-name

That's all I needed and I add any needed environment variables and configure my add-ons then push my code to Heroku using:

$ git push heroku master

Boom 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉, our application is live on Heroku, but is that only what Heroku can do 🤔? I will be showing you ways to use Heroku for continuous deployment, have staging and production apps, have review apps for your pull request and deploy automatically after running your test.

Let's Get Started

To begin, the first thing you are to do is to create an account and login to Heroku from your browser. The dashboard shows all the applications you have created. For continuous deployment, we will create a pipeline instead of an application. Click on new and you will see a dropdown to choose what to create, select create new pipeline.

You will see something like the image above 👆, type in a pipeline name (any name you like), type in a repository name and it will auto-complete if you have connected your Heroku account to Github. Click on Create pipeline to create the needed Pipeline.

After creating the pipeline, you have this cool dashboard showing everything you can do with a pipeline.

Enable Review Apps
Create a staging application
Create a production application

Click on Add app to create an application for both staging and production environment. Click on the staging application you created and navigate to Deploy tab. Go to automatic deploys and choose a branch you want to deploy to staging development, preferably the branch for staging will be develop. Check the box Wait for CI to pass before deploy to make sure your test passes before deploying the application.

Do the same step for the production environment and auto-deploy master branch.

The last step is to create review apps to enable our pull request automatically be deployed to Heroku and have their own application to ensure we can review to see if it works perfectly before deploying to staging.

Going back to the pipeline dashboard, the last tab we have not touched is enable review apps. clicking on the button to enable review app and you will see a pop-up, choose your staging application and click on Create an app.json file.

This will take you to a page containing some information about your application, scroll down and click a button to commit to Repo. This will commit an app.json file to Github. It will also pop-up a modal to choose settings for your review apps. check the box to create review apps automatically and destroy stale review apps. Click on enable to finalise the process.

Hurray, raise a pull request and you should see the pull request has been deployed to Heroku, after you merge the pull request, the review app will be deleted automatically.

Thanks for reading. That's all for Now.

Danielshow

An easy approach to contribute to Open Source Projects

Daniel Shotonwa — Sat, 01 Jun 2019 21:22:22 +0000

Some years ago, when I heard people contributing to an open source project, I was always afraid 😥. I thought one had to know a whole stack perfectly before contributing. Little did I know that was a fallacy.

A common misconception about contributing to open source is that you need to contribute code. 👻

There are lots of projects you can contribute to on Github without knowing anything about code. Let's be aware that it is not only Software Developers that contribute to open source projects. My first contribution to a project was fixing a typological error in the README file of a project. I was so happy when it was merged.

Open source improves your existing skills, help you meet lots of people, teach people, review codes and mentor beginners.

Steps to start contributing to Open Source

These steps have worked for me severely and I know it will help you make your first contribution if you don't have any. To contribute, you have to look through issues of different projects on Github, there are lots of open source projects you can contribute to, Javascript libraries, Gatsby, Npm Packages, Ruby Gems and some others.

Click on the issues, then click on the labels and filter by beginner friendly or good first issue, you will see lots of bugs that are easy to get you started and raise a Pull request in a few minutes.
You can also search for typos in the README file and raise a PR to correct it, doing this will make you contribute to the project and you might even be added as a contributor to the project and grow your profile. Since I made my first contributions, I'm no longer afraid to contribute to a different project or solve issues on Github.
After seeing an issue or problem to tackle, fork the project on Github and create a new branch to solve the issue, after that raise a pull request. Hurray🎉🎉, You have made your first contribution.

I will be a bit bias here as I am a Ruby on Rails Developer. If you are a Rails developer and want to contribute to open source, check out this website to see the trending Rails Open source project. There is one network I'll like you to consider joining, that is Agile Ventures. In Agile Ventures, you contribute to lots of projects ranging from Rails to popular Javascript framework like Vue and React.

Agile Ventures make you feel at home, you see lots of newbies, have lots of pairing session to unblock you and collaborate with developers from all over the world.
Don't be afraid to contribute to open source projects, fixing a typo or adding one line of code. Everything counts 💪🏻.

Thanks for reading. 👻
I am Danielshow.