DEV Community: Alex Martinez

Migrating a Wix blog to Markdown: the server-HTML trap and the zero-width regex that pegged my CPU

Alex Martinez — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 20:00:45 +0000

I moved a 138-post blog off Wix onto a static Astro site. The migration ran with zero errors and was still quietly missing half of every tutorial: code blocks, images, the embedded video. This post is the technical version of what I learned, aimed at people who want to see the actual code, not just the takeaways. If you want the higher-level "should I even do this" write-up, that's over on my blog. This one is the engineering.

Everything here is in an open-source, dependency-free repo (Node stdlib only): github.com/alexandramartinez/wix-to-astro. I'll link the exact files as I go.

TL;DR

A Wix post is two documents: the server HTML, and a pile of stuff Wix hydrates client-side (Gist code, the YouTube player, galleries, buttons, comments). Any migration script sees only the first. The second vanishes with no error.
So don't summarize the page, and don't run it through an "AI to Markdown" tool. Read the raw server HTML and convert the real tags. It's lossless.
The extractor is a single-pass tokenizer over the isolated article HTML. The one bug worth your attention is a zero-width regex match that pegs a CPU core forever. Details below, because it's a fun one.
What's client-rendered, no script can recover. A small QA linter greps the output for the tells so you know where the by-hand work is. Never fabricate the gaps.

Why the obvious approaches fail

"Just pipe each page through an LLM and ask for Markdown." This was my first attempt. An LLM paraphrases your prose (so your exact wording is gone) and, worse, silently drops every code block. For a tutorial blog that's the entire point of the post. I ran the whole catalog through before I noticed, then had to redo it. Determinism beats cleverness here.

"Use the Wix export / a generic HTML-to-MD converter." Closer, but it trips on Wix's specific DOM shapes (nested lists, split bold runs, image blocks) and, critically, it can't recover what isn't in the HTML at all. Which brings us to the actual insight.

The core insight: server HTML vs. client hydration

Fetch a Wix post with curl and read the raw bytes. A large chunk of what a human sees in the browser isn't there. Wix ships a shell and hydrates the rest with JavaScript after load. So:

Lives in the server HTML (recoverable by a script)	Hydrated client-side (invisible to any server-HTML reader)
Prose, headings, links, bold/italic	GitHub Gist code embeds
Nested lists, blockquotes	The companion YouTube player
`<pre>` code that was authored inline	Image galleries / carousels
Inline images (as a Wix image block)	Styled CTA buttons
JSON-LD metadata (title, author, dates)	The reader comment thread

The left column is the lossless ~20% a script nails. The right column is the ~80% that has to be recovered by hand from a live browser render or your own source files. No tool that reads server HTML can recover the right column — mine included. Pretending otherwise is how you ship plausible-but-wrong tutorials.

Reading the server HTML

No headless browser, no API key. Just fetch with a UA string, then isolate the article body between two Wix markers:

const bs = raw.indexOf('data-hook="rcv-block-first"');
let be = raw.indexOf('data-hook="post-footer"');
if (be < 0) be = raw.length;
const bodyHtml = raw.slice(raw.lastIndexOf('<', bs), be);

Wix's post pages occasionally return a JS shell with the body markers absent, so the fetch retries a few times and only accepts a response once a marker is present. (Full source: src/wix-extract.mjs.)

Metadata comes from the page's JSON-LD, which is server-rendered:

const ld = raw.match(/<script type="application\/ld\+json">([\s\S]*?)<\/script>/);
const meta = ld ? JSON.parse(ld[1]) : {};
// meta.headline, meta.description, meta.author, meta.datePublished, meta.dateModified

The tokenizer: sentinels + one combined regex

The naive approach — a chain of .replace() calls converting each tag type independently — loses ordering. You need images, code, and prose to come out in document order. So the extractor makes one ordered pass.

Two block types can't be matched by a simple tag regex without eating their contents (code blocks contain arbitrary characters; list items nest). Those get pulled out first and replaced with sentinel placeholders using a Unicode private-use-area character as a delimiter (so it can never collide with real content):

// code blocks -> ⟦CODE0⟧, ⟦CODE1⟧, ... (private-use char shown as ⟦⟧ for readability)
body = body.replace(/<pre\b[^>]*>([\s\S]*?)<\/pre>/gi, (_, inner) => {
  codes.push(decode(inner.replace(/<br\s*\/?>/gi, '\n').replace(/<[^>]+>/g, '')));
  return `⟦CODE${codes.length - 1}⟧`;
});

Then a single combined regex walks everything in order — real block tags, figures, and the placeholders — and emits a typed token stream:

const re = new RegExp(
  '<(h[1-6]|blockquote|p)\\b[^>]*>([\\s\\S]*?)<\\/\\1>' +   // 1,2: block + inner
    '|<figure\\b[^>]*data-hook="figure-(IMAGE|VIDEO)"[\\s\\S]*?<\\/figure>' + // 3
    '|⟦LIST(\\d+)⟧' +   // 4
    '|⟦CODE(\\d+)⟧',    // 5
  'gi'
);

for (const m of body.matchAll(re)) {
  if (m[5] !== undefined) tokens.push({ code: +m[5] });
  else if (m[4] !== undefined) tokens.push({ list: +m[4] });
  else if (m[1] !== undefined) tokens.push({ block: m[1].toLowerCase(), html: m[2] });
  // ... figure IMAGE -> {img}, figure VIDEO -> {vid} (client-side, dropped)
}

A second pass renders each token to Markdown. Clean, ordered, lossless.

The war story: a zero-width match that never terminates

Here's the one I want you to remember. An earlier version of that combined regex ended like this:

// DON'T do this:
'|⟦CODE(\\d+)⟧' + '|'   // <- trailing empty alternative

That trailing | is an empty alternative: it matches the empty string. A regex that can match zero-width will happily match at every gap between characters. matchAll handles that safely (it force-advances past a zero-width hit), but a hand-rolled loop that advances its own index based on the match — and treats a zero-width match as "nothing to skip" — never moves forward:

let m, pos = 0;
while ((m = re.exec(body))) {
  // ... handle token ...
  // BUG: a zero-width match means m.index === re.lastIndex, so `pos` doesn't
  // advance and the next iteration matches the SAME empty string. Forever.
  pos = re.lastIndex; // stays put on a zero-width hit
}

On a short post you might not notice. On an image-heavy post (lots of gaps between <figure> blocks where the empty alternative can fire), it locks onto a zero-width match, the index stays put, and the loop spins on one position pegging a CPU core until you kill it. No error, no output, just a hot laptop.

Two lessons, both cheap:

Never leave an empty alternative in a combined regex. Audit for a | with nothing between it and a ) or the end of the pattern.
If you must hand-roll an exec loop over a global regex, guard zero-width matches by bumping lastIndex yourself: if (m.index === re.lastIndex) re.lastIndex++;. Or just use matchAll, which does it for you.

The fix in the repo was to drop the empty alternative entirely, and there's a comment in the source warning the next person (me, in six months) not to "simplify" it back in.

The Wix-specific paper cuts

A generic converter gets these wrong. Each is a few lines once you know the shape.

Nested lists. Wix nests the child <ul> inside the parent <li>, before its </li>. A non-greedy <li>...</li> match stops at the child's </li>, merging parent and first child and destroying indentation. Fix: preprocess each <li> into a placeholder that carries its aria-level, then reconstruct indentation from the level.

html.replace(/<li\b([^>]*)>\s*<p\b[^>]*>([\s\S]*?)<\/p>/gi, (_, attrs, inner) => {
  const level = +((attrs.match(/aria-level="(\d+)"/) || [])[1] || 1);
  lists.push({ level, html: inner });
  return `⟦LIST${lists.length - 1}⟧`;
});
// later: '  '.repeat(level - 1) + '- ' + inline(item.html)

Bold with the space inside the marker. Wix emits <strong>Pick this </strong>option. Trim the inner text and you get **Pick this**option, gluing the bold to the next word. And a <strong> wrapping only whitespace becomes an empty ****. So emphasis conversion keeps leading/trailing spaces outside the markers:

const lead = /^\s/.test(inner) ? ' ' : '';
const trail = /\s$/.test(inner) ? ' ' : '';
return `${lead}${marker}${core}${marker}${trail}`;

Split bold runs. Wix loves to split **Remember:** into <strong>Remember</strong><strong>:</strong>, which converts to **Remember****:**. The **** in the middle (a bold-close butting a bold-open) renders as a stray run. Collapsing every **** to nothing rejoins them.

Full-resolution images. A Wix image URL in the page is a resized transform: static.wixstatic.com/media/<id>/v1/fill/w_740,h_... . Strip the /v1/fill/... and request the bare static.wixstatic.com/media/<id> to get the original upload, not a downscaled copy.

The media prefix isn't hardcodable. Every asset on a given Wix site shares one account prefix (<prefix>_<hash>~mv2.<ext>), and it differs per account. Discover it from the hero (og:image) so the tool works for anyone:

const prefix =
  (raw.match(/og:image[^>]*content="[^"]*\/([a-z0-9]+)_[a-f0-9]+~mv2\.[a-z]+/i) || [])[1] ||
  '[a-z0-9]+';

Hero de-duplication. The hero image also appears as the first in-body image. Track the og:image id and skip the in-body copy so it isn't rendered twice.

Heading levels. Your post title is the page's only <h1>, so body headings should start at <h2>. The extractor finds the shallowest heading level in the body and shifts everything so the shallowest becomes ##, preserving the relative hierarchy.

What migrates but comes out wrong

Beyond what's dropped, some things survive but mangled, because the HTML-to-MD step had no rule for the shape:

Tables flatten into a stack of one-line paragraphs (no <pre>/list structure to key on). I deliberately don't auto-rebuild these — inventing table structure risks fabricating a header row that wasn't there. Rebuild them by hand as GFM pipe tables, verbatim.
Doubled blockquote quotes: many SSG typography themes add curly quotes via CSS ::before/::after, and your migrated text already has the author's quotes, so they print twice. Fix in the theme CSS, not the Markdown.

The gaps don't announce themselves, so lint for them

Because none of the dropped content throws an error, I wrote a QA linter (src/qa-check.mjs) that greps the output .md files for the known tells and prints where to look. It changes nothing and recovers nothing — it just points:

node src/qa-check.mjs ./out          # add --mdx to also catch MDX build traps

./out/array-string-key-dataweave.md
      9  leftover-toc?      hand-authored TOC that duplicates your SSG on-page nav
     20  mdx-raw-<          raw "<" in prose breaks an MDX build
     28  empty-alt          image has no alt text: images/array-string-key-dataweave-1.png
     ...

It flags: empty image alt (![](…)), a "paste this in:" code lead-in with no code after it (dropped Gist), an orphaned "prefer video" line (dropped embed), a gallery lead-in with no image, a leftover "In this post:" TOC, a run of short one-line paragraphs (a flattened table), and — with --mdx — a raw < in prose or {/} in alt text. It exits non-zero on any finding, so you can gate a build on it in CI.

Every finding is a tell, not a certainty. Confirm each against the live page, then recover it from a real source.

If your target is Astro/MDX specifically

Two build traps bit me repeatedly:

A raw < in prose is read as a JSX tag and fails the build. Extremely common in technical writing: Array<String>, n <= 1, </Component>. Wrap in a code span or write <.
{ or } in image alt text starts a JSX expression and fails the build. Paraphrase code-ish alt text.

The --mdx flag on the linter catches both before you hit a build error.

Migrating with an AI pair

I did this migration with an AI assistant, and the failure mode there is obvious: an AI is very willing to "recover" a dropped code block by writing one that looks right. That's the worst possible outcome for a tutorial. So the repo ships an AGENTS.md (works as CLAUDE.md or a Cursor rules file) that encodes the discipline: run the scripts, run the linter, recover only from live sources or the author's files, and when you can't, leave a visible TODO and ask — never a plausible guess. The scripts do the lossless part; the guide keeps the human-in-the-loop part honest.

Run it yourself

git clone https://github.com/alexandramartinez/wix-to-astro
cd wix-to-astro

# one post -> ./out/<slug>.md + ./out/images/<slug>-N.<ext>
node src/migrate-post.mjs --url https://YOURNAME.wixsite.com/website/post/my-post

# a whole blog: set WIX_SITE in .env (it auto-discovers posts from the sitemap)
cp .env.example .env
node --env-file=.env examples/migrate-all.mjs

# then audit what came across
node src/qa-check.mjs ./out --mdx

No dependencies, Node 18+ (the batch --env-file path wants 20.6+).

The one rule

Whatever tooling you use, mine included: never invent the missing content. Every recovered snippet, caption, table row, or comment comes verbatim from a real source, or it stays an honest gap. A tutorial with a plausible-but-wrong code block is worse than one with a visible hole, because the reader can't tell it's wrong.

Repo: github.com/alexandramartinez/wix-to-astro. If you hit a Wix shape I didn't cover, open an issue — I'd like to know about it.

Install ACB on Cursor

Alex Martinez — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 15:48:12 +0000

You might be having issues to install the Anypoint Extension Pack on Cursor because it might not be showing up in the Extensions tab. Here's how to fix that.

Make sure you have Git installed
Open Cursor
Open the VS Code settings (not Cursor settings)

Search for marketplace and paste the following Service URL:

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/_apis/public/gallery

Restart Cursor
Go to Extensions and look for the Anypoint Extension Pack
Install

Troubleshooting ACB Installation Issues

Alex Martinez — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 22:00:56 +0000

If you’re running into strange errors when installing Anypoint Code Builder (ACB)—like the dreaded Mule Platform process finished. Please, restart.—follow the steps below to start fresh and resolve common problems.

In this post, you'll find:

How to start from scratch (remove the extension and any cache for a fresh install)
Some best practices when opening an existing project
How to download and/or set up a new Mule Runtime and Java versions
How to fix the 503 error when using Autodiscovery
How to fix the 400 INVALID_ASSET_METADATA error when deploying your scaffolded Mule app to CloudHub 2.0

🧹 Start from Scratch

These steps can clear out random issues and give you a clean slate to work from.

Uninstall the Anypoint Extension Pack from VS Code:

Confirm you have Git installed. If not, download it here.
Make sure your VS Code is up to date:
- Help > Check for Updates (Windows/Linux)
- Code > Check for Updates (Mac)

Completely close VS Code (e.g. Cmd + Q on Mac).
In your user folder, search for the AnypointCodeBuilder directory and delete it:

Still in your user folder, open the .vscode folder. You have two cleanup options:
1. Clean slate: Delete the entire extensions folder to reset all extensions (note: this removes all VS Code extensions).
2. Selective cleanup: Inside .vscode/extensions, remove only the folders starting with salesforce.mule.

Reopen VS Code and reinstall the Anypoint Extension Pack:

✅ Once installed, wait for the extensions to finish loading completely. Most issues should now be resolved!

📁 Opening an Existing Project?

If you're working on an existing ACB project:

Always open the project from its root folder—not from a workspace or subfolder.

Example:

To double-check that your setup is working:
1. Try designing a new API spec or
2. Create a simple integration first.

Once those basic operations run smoothly, you're ready to explore the rest of your project. 🚀

👟 Runtime download / version

Once you open the project, it might ask you to download a Mule Runtime. You can either click the 'Set Versions' button or right click on a Mule Configuration File (XML file) and select Open Mule Project Properties

Select your Mule Runtime and Java Version and click on Apply

It will then ask you to sign in to Anypoint Platform in order to download the Mule Runtime. Follow the prompts to sign in. Once you log in, you will see your username at the bottom-right.

After it finishes downloading both (Mule/Java), you will find the standalone folders in your AnypointCodeBuilder folder.

🛠️ Fixing the `503` Error

If you're getting a 503 error when calling your running app:

Open the ACB Settings:

Search for Mule > Runtime: Default Arguments
At the end of the existing text, append this flag:

-M-Danypoint.platform.gatekeeper=disabled

Restart your app.

This will disable the connection to Anypoint Platform when using Autodiscovery in your Mule app to be able to test locally. If you want to be able to connecto to Anypoint Platform to apply security policies or other settings, follow the same steps but add your Anypoint Platform credentials instead, like this:

-M-Danypoint.platform.client_id=your_client_id -M-Danypoint.platform.client_secret=your_client_secret

For detailed information in both Studio and ACB, see Quick guide to applying MuleSoft's API Autodiscovery

🛠️ Fixing the `400 INVALID_ASSET_METADATA` Error

When trying to deploy your Mule app to CloudHub 2.0 from ACB, you might get an error saying

Failed to deploy to CloudHub 2.0: 
PUBLISH 400: INVALID_ASSET_METADATA. 
The asset is invalid. 
Error while trying to set type: app. 
Expected type is: rest-api.

The reason is that the artifactId is the same in both:

API Spec published in Exchange
Mule project implementation in ACB

So, it's expecting you to publish a rest-api (the api spec that is already in Exchange) but you're trying to publish an app.

To fix it, change the artifactId you have on the Mule project in the pom.xml file and retry deploying to CH2.

List of AsyncAPI servers in MuleSoft

Alex Martinez — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 15:54:17 +0000

After the October '24 release of Anypoint Code Builder, the AsyncAPI specification/implementation process in MuleSoft now supports the following message brokers:

AnypointMQ
Kafka
Solace
Salesforce Platform Events

As I was reading through the documentation, I wasn't able to find a list of the servers that you need to set up in your AsyncAPI specification in order for the APIKit to pick up the correct configuration.

I did find, however, an example specification with the four available brokers. Thanks to this, I was able to get the list of protocols you need to use in your specifications.

Here's the example from the docs (note that this applies to version 2.6 of AsyncAPI):

servers: 
  AMQ-prod:
    url: https:://your_MQ_server_URL_here
    protocol: anypointmq
    protocolVersion: v1
    description: Anypoint MQ broker
  kafka-prod:
    url: your_kafka_URL_here
    protocol: kafka
    description: kafka broker
  sfpubsub-prod:
      protocol: salesforcepubsub
      protocolVersion: v1
      url: api.pubsub.salesforce.com
      description: Salesforce pub sub for Platform events production
  solace-server:
    protocol: solace
    variables:
      port:
        enum:
        - '1000'
    bindings:
      solace:
        msgVpn: your_solace_vpn_here
        bindingVersion: 0.4.0
    protocolVersion: 1.0.0
    url: mySolaceURL

As we can see from the previous code, not all of them are set up the same way. For example, Solace needs way more configurations than Kafka or AnypointMQ. It also looks like the Salesforce configuration is static since it's using a specific URL.

Anyway, hope this list helps someone else out there who is not sure how to set up a specific server for your AsyncAPI specification in MuleSoft.

Quick fix: 'Error: Process completed with exit code 1' in GitHub Actions with regex

Alex Martinez — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 21:11:13 +0000

In summary, I was running GitHub Actions and I had a regex expression using grep:

grep -Eo "\d+[.]\d+[.]\d+"

This was to retrieve a version number from a line. For example, 1.1.0. The solution worked locally, but it failed in my CI/CD.

Then, I found out this issue: Grep failing in GitHub Action, working locally and you can see from there the fix:

So that's what I did, and BOOM it worked!

grep -Eo "[0-9]+[.][0-9]+[.][0-9]+"

Just writing it out here so I remember how I fixed it in case I see the error again :D

Also here are some screenshots from my actual pipeline:

Error

Success

Quick fix: com.github.everit-org.json-schema:org.everit.json.schema:jar:1.12.2 was not found

Alex Martinez — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 18:13:22 +0000

I've been having this issue in several Mule applications, but all of them happen while I'm trying to use CI/CD pipelines.

The full thing I got was this:

org.mule.maven.client.api.exception.BundleDependencyNotFoundException: org.eclipse.aether.resolution.ArtifactResolutionException: com.github.everit-org.json-schema:org.everit.json.schema:jar:1.12.2 was not found in https://maven.anypoint.mulesoft.com/api/v3/maven during a previous attempt. This failure was cached in the local repository and resolution is not reattempted until the update interval of anypoint-exchange-v3 has elapsed or updates are forced

In summary, this happens because the repositories you are using in your pom.xml don't include this dependency that is needed from MuleSoft for something.

This last time I encountered it, I fixed it using the Nexus public repo (because my specific use case doesn't use the Nexus credentials).

Add this to your pom.xml under the <repositories> tag to fix it:

<repository>
    <id>Nexus</id>
    <name>Nexus Public Repository</name>
    <url>https://repository-master.mulesoft.org/nexus/content/groups/public/</url>
    <layout>default</layout>
</repository>

Here's the repo where I did this fix: squirrel-app.

You don't need to set up Nexus credentials or anything on settings.xml. This should be good enough.

If this doesn't fix your issue, please get in touch cause I want to make sure I got this fix right.

4 ways to retrieve your OrgID/groupID from Anypoint Platform

Alex Martinez — Wed, 01 May 2024 16:43:58 +0000

Note: the ids and credentials in this article are no longer available.

From Access Management

In Anypoint Platform, head to Access Management > Business Groups and select the Business Group you want to retrieve the ID from. You will see the Business Group ID in the Settings tab.

In this screen, you will also find more information like

organization's client id/secret - which are normally used from Anypoint Studio to test API Autodiscovery
organization domain - useful to access your Exchange public portal

Plus, if you go to the Environments tab, you will be able to retrieve each environment's client id/secret, which are useful for API Autodiscovery and other features.

From API Manager's URL

In Anypoint Platform, head to API Manager. Take a look at the URL in your browser. Your organization ID is the one after the organizations/ part.

Here's my URL as example:



https://anypoint.mulesoft.com/apimanager/sf-7743/#/organizations/4500658a-7637-4fcf-bc7d-51d1feb28edb/environments/f2346118-f56d-4a11-8009-491e6f9ed6d9/apis

In this URL, you will also find more information like

organization domain - in this example it would be sf-7743
environment ID - in this example it would be f2346118-f56d-4a11-8009-491e6f9ed6d9

From API Manager's UI

In Anypoint Platform, head to API Manager and click on the Environment information (ℹ️) button, next to the Add API button. You will see the Business Group ID in this prompt.

In this prompt, you will also find more information like

environment id
environment's client id/secret
organization's client id/secret

Using the Anypoint Platform Chrome Extension

You can download this chrome extension here. It was created by Edgar Moran, MuleSoft Ambassador. I cannot recommend this extension enough!

Besides helping you retrieve the organization id, you can also find the environment id and the token to connect Anypoint Platform :) ...and more!!

An interesting Mule app to create complex MUnits

Alex Martinez — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 17:03:54 +0000

This is a Mule application making use of Anypoint MQ and demonstrating how to use MUnit to create significant tests for different scenarios. Using spy, verify call, assertions, mock, and more.

You can find the repo with the full code here.

The flows

In summary, the main flow has a Subscriber to queue1. Once the message is processed, it's attempted to be sent in an HTTP Request to an HR API. The issue with this external API, is that it's not reliable and is often down. So, the code challenge was to be able to create a flow that could retry to send the RQ n amount of times before sending the message back to the queue. This was solved with an Until Successful.

The second issue is that not all errors should be interpreted or processed the same way. If the API returned a Connectivity error, the flow is supposed to keep trying. But what if it's not a connectivity error and it's a bad request or an internal server error? Then we don't want to keep trying with the same request over and over again. We want to discard it and send an error to the queue2.

For this, an Error Continue needed to be put in place.

Now if the error is indeed a connectivity issue, then the error is returned with the On Error Propagate to the Until Successful so it can be tried again. But if the error is anything else, like a bad request, then the message is processed as an Error Response and is sent to the queue2.

This way, the Until Successful won't be tried again because the message is interpreted as a successful response, but the payload contains the error message.

The tests

Happy Path

The first test makes sure the happy path is working properly.

There is a bunch of Verify call components that help us make sure certain components are executed exactly the number of times they're supposed to be executed. We also have Mocks for the calls to external systems, including Anypoint MQ.

As you can see, none of the On Error Propagate/Continue were executed.

Bad Request

As we learned from the description of the flows, we only want to keep trying to call the API if the error is a connectivity error. If not, we want to acknowledge the message from the queue and send the error response to the queue2.

This test is a lot like the previous one. But take a look at the Verify Calls. Their numbers change.

Now instead of creating the successful response, the flow went to the On Error Continue to create the error response and send it to queue2.

Connectivity Issues 1

In this test, we are mocking the connectivity error from the API call so we can make sure that the Until Successful is exhausted and the queue message is being put back into the queue with the NACK.

As you can see, there are no assertions in this test. That is because we are expecting an error back from the main flow. Once the error reaches the test, the assertions are not executed. So how do we know this is the expected error? By configuring the error as expected from the test's configuration:

This way, we are expecting to receive the RETRY_EXHAUSTED error from the Until Successful.

Connectivity Issues 2

Another way to test the same error scenario, but with actual assertions, is with the Try/Catch scope.

This way, we are still making sure the RETRY_EXHAUSTED error is correctly being returned (and nothing else), and we are able to actually run some validations. Like making sure the API request and the On Error Propagate are being executed exactly 3 times (because of the Until Successful settings).

Quick guide to applying MuleSoft's API Autodiscovery

Alex Martinez — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 18:32:03 +0000

Once you have created a Mule project and an API in API Manager, copy the API Instance ID from API Manager (8-digit number).

1. Add the API Autodiscovery Global Element

Note: You can add the API ID directly in the Global Element or as a property

Studio

In Studio, go to the Global Elements tab and click on New. Search for the Autodiscovery configuration. Add the API Instance ID from API Manager to the API ID field. Select the main flow from the dropdown.

ACB

In ACB, go to the XML view and start writing autodiscovery. Select the api-gateway:autodiscovery snippet. Add the API Instance ID from API Manager to the apiId field. Write the main flow on flowRef.

2. Find your environment's client ID/Secret

In Anypoint Platform, go to Access Management > Business Groups > select your business group > Environments > Sandbox

Note: See more ways to retrieve this info here.

Copy the Client ID and the Client Secret (click on Show)

3. Add your Anypoint Platform credentials locally

Studio

In Studio, open the Preferences and navigate to Anypoint Studio > API Manager. Under Environment Credentials, add your Client ID and Client Secret. Click on Validate > Apply and Close.

ACB

In VS Code, open the ACB tab and click the ⚙️ icon to open ACB's settings. Go to Mule > Runtime: Default Arguments and append the following arguments at the end of the string.

-M-Danypoint.platform.client_id=your_client_id -M-Danypoint.platform.client_secret=your_client_secret

4. Add your Anypoint Platform credentials in Runtime Manager

Add your credentials to the properties tab in your Mule app deployed to Runtime Manager.

anypoint.platform.client_id=your_client_id
anypoint.platform.client_secret=your_client_secret

Set up Gatekeeper as needed

If you keep having a 503 error code being returned, it may mean the API ID you provided is not connected to an API Manager instance. If you want to get rid of it, set up anypoint.platform.gatekeeper=disabled in your runtime variables - this will disable the connection to API Manager

a) Studio: Set it up as an environment variable in your Run Configurations
b) ACB: Set it up as an argument following the -M-D... syntax from the previous point
c) CloudHub: Set it up as a property
d) Maven: Send it as a command argument

This setting may be a security concern, make sure you discuss this with your team before setting it up or read more about it in the following resources

Other resources

Quick guide to secure/encrypt your properties in MuleSoft

Alex Martinez — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 17:34:48 +0000

NOTE
This post is to generate your encrypted values by manually using the JAR file. You can also use the (unofficial) UI or refer to this article.

Download the Secure Properties Tool Jar file from the Mule docs

You can see in the docs how to encrypt your properties with different scenarios, but the following scripts are the ones I use the most.

Encrypt one value at a time

I normally use the Blowfish algorithm and the CBC mode:

java -cp secure-properties-tool.jar com.mulesoft.tools.SecurePropertiesTool \
string \
encrypt \
Blowfish \
CBC \
your_secure_key \
"value_to_encrypt"

Then, just make sure to add ![] in your properties file.

Encrypt the whole file (per value)

If you don't want to do the previous script for all of the values, you can also run this instead:

java -cp secure-properties-tool.jar com.mulesoft.tools.SecurePropertiesTool \
file \
encrypt \
Blowfish \
CBC \
your_secure_key \
input_file.yaml \
output_file.yaml

This will automatically add the ![] syntax to each value.

Quick reference: CI/CD for a Mule app using a Connected App

Alex Martinez — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 16:07:24 +0000

This is intended as a short guide. For detailed instructions + video, please see this series. You can also see this repo.

Connected App

In Anypoint Platform, go to Access Management > Connected Apps > Create app. Select App acts on it's own behalf. Add the scopes:

Design Center Developer
View Environment
View Organization
Profile
Cloudhub Organization Admin
Create Applications
Delete Applications
Download Applications
Read Applications
Read Servers

Copy ID and Secret.

GitHub Actions secrets

In your GitHub repo, go to Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions > New repository secret and add the following secrets corresponding to your previous ID and Secret.

CONNECTED_APP_CLIENT_ID
CONNECTED_APP_CLIENT_SECRET

build.yml

In your Mule app's code or repo, create a .github folder with a workflows folder. Inside this, create a build.yml and paste the following:

name: Build and Deploy

on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]

jobs:
    build:
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest
        steps:
        - name: Checkout this repo
          uses: actions/checkout@v3
        - name: Cache dependencies
          uses: actions/cache@v3
          with:
            path: ~/.m2/repository
            key: ${{ runner.os }}-maven-${{ hashFiles('**/pom.xml') }}
            restore-keys: |
              ${{ runner.os }}-maven-
        - name: Set up JDK 1.8
          uses: actions/setup-java@v3
          with:
            distribution: 'zulu'
            java-version: 8
        - name: Build with Maven
          run: mvn -B package --file pom.xml -DskipMunitTests
        - name: Stamp artifact file name with commit hash
          run: |
            artifactName1=$(ls target/*.jar | head -1)
            commitHash=$(git rev-parse --short "$GITHUB_SHA")
            artifactName2=$(ls target/*.jar | head -1 | sed "s/.jar/-$commitHash.jar/g")
            mv $artifactName1 $artifactName2
        - name: Upload artifact 
          uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3
          with:
              name: artifacts
              path: target/*.jar

    deploy:
        needs: build
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest
        steps:    
        - name: Checkout this repo
          uses: actions/checkout@v3
        - name: Cache dependencies
          uses: actions/cache@v3
          with:
            path: ~/.m2/repository
            key: ${{ runner.os }}-maven-${{ hashFiles('**/pom.xml') }}
            restore-keys: |
              ${{ runner.os }}-maven-
        - uses: actions/download-artifact@v3
          with:
            name: artifacts
        - name: Deploy
          run: |
            artifactName=$(ls *.jar | head -1)
            mvn deploy -DskipMunitTests -DmuleDeploy \
             -Dmule.artifact=$artifactName \
             -Dclient.id="${{ secrets.CONNECTED_APP_CLIENT_ID }}" \
             -Dclient.secret="${{ secrets.CONNECTED_APP_CLIENT_SECRET }}"

pom.xml

Make sure the config matches your application. For example, muleVersion, applicationName, environment, region, and so on.

<plugin>
  <groupId>org.mule.tools.maven</groupId>
  <artifactId>mule-maven-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>${mule.maven.plugin.version}</version>
  <extensions>true</extensions>
  <!-- Deployment config start -->
  <configuration>
    <cloudHubDeployment>
      <uri>https://anypoint.mulesoft.com</uri>
      <muleVersion>4.4.0</muleVersion>
      <applicationName>mulesoft-mfa-cicd</applicationName>
      <environment>Sandbox</environment>
      <workerType>MICRO</workerType>
      <region>us-east-2</region>
      <workers>1</workers>
      <objectStoreV2>true</objectStoreV2>
      <connectedAppClientId>${client.id}</connectedAppClientId>
      <connectedAppClientSecret>${client.secret}</connectedAppClientSecret>
      <connectedAppGrantType>client_credentials</connectedAppGrantType>
      <properties>
        <env>${env}</env>
      </properties>
    </cloudHubDeployment>
  </configuration>
  <!-- Deployment config end -->
</plugin>

That's it! Commit, push, and watch it run :)

Using time() and duration() in DataWeave for performance check

Alex Martinez — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 16:02:44 +0000

You can use duration() to get the total number of milliseconds it took to execute a function.

Script:

%dw 2.0
output application/json
import duration from dw::util::Timer
fun myFunc() = [1, 2, 3] reduce $+$$
---
duration(() -> myFunc())

Output:

{
  "time": 0,
  "result": 6
}

You can use time() to get an even more detailed result of when the function started and ended. This will give you more insight into the total time it took to execute.

Script:

%dw 2.0
output application/json
import time from dw::util::Timer
fun myFunc() = [1, 2, 3] reduce $+$$
---
time(() -> myFunc())

Output:

{
  "start": "2023-03-21T16:00:21.487377Z",
  "result": 6,
  "end": "2023-03-21T16:00:21.487408Z"
}

This way you can use - to get the total number of time.

Script:

%dw 2.0
output application/json
import time from dw::util::Timer
fun myFunc() = [1, 2, 3] reduce $+$$
var funcResult = time(() -> myFunc())
---
funcResult.end - funcResult.start

Output:

"PT0.000024S"

DEV Community: Alex Martinez

Migrating a Wix blog to Markdown: the server-HTML trap and the zero-width regex that pegged my CPU

TL;DR

Why the obvious approaches fail

The core insight: server HTML vs. client hydration

Reading the server HTML

The tokenizer: sentinels + one combined regex

The war story: a zero-width match that never terminates

The Wix-specific paper cuts

What migrates but comes out wrong

The gaps don't announce themselves, so lint for them

If your target is Astro/MDX specifically

Migrating with an AI pair

Run it yourself

The one rule

Install ACB on Cursor

Troubleshooting ACB Installation Issues

🧹 Start from Scratch

📁 Opening an Existing Project?

👟 Runtime download / version

🛠️ Fixing the 503 Error

🛠️ Fixing the 400 INVALID_ASSET_METADATA Error

List of AsyncAPI servers in MuleSoft

Quick fix: 'Error: Process completed with exit code 1' in GitHub Actions with regex

Quick fix: com.github.everit-org.json-schema:org.everit.json.schema:jar:1.12.2 was not found

4 ways to retrieve your OrgID/groupID from Anypoint Platform

From Access Management

From API Manager's URL

From API Manager's UI

Using the Anypoint Platform Chrome Extension

An interesting Mule app to create complex MUnits

The flows

The tests

Happy Path

Bad Request

Connectivity Issues 1

Connectivity Issues 2

Quick guide to applying MuleSoft's API Autodiscovery

1. Add the API Autodiscovery Global Element

2. Find your environment's client ID/Secret

3. Add your Anypoint Platform credentials locally

4. Add your Anypoint Platform credentials in Runtime Manager

Set up Gatekeeper as needed

Other resources

Quick guide to secure/encrypt your properties in MuleSoft

Encrypt one value at a time

Encrypt the whole file (per value)

Quick reference: CI/CD for a Mule app using a Connected App

Connected App

GitHub Actions secrets

build.yml

pom.xml

Using time() and duration() in DataWeave for performance check

🛠️ Fixing the `503` Error

🛠️ Fixing the `400 INVALID_ASSET_METADATA` Error