DEV Community: Lucky Adogun (ZenCoder)

How to Quickly Setup a Hashnode Blog on an Existing Netlify app

Lucky Adogun (ZenCoder) — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 07:11:46 +0000

Originally posted on https://blog.zencoder.xyz

How do you connect your exisiting app on Netlify with Hashnode?

Click on Domain Settings

Under Custom Domains section, select the DNS Panel from your primary domain options.

Click on "Add a New Record" and enter the following DNS Settings

Record Type: CNAME

Name: blog or any subdomain of your choice

Value: hashnode.network

Silly me. There's a typo in the value field in the image, use hashnode.network

That wasn't hard. Now, let's head back to Hashnode and update your settings.

Go to your Hashnode dashboard Domain section

Update your domain name to fit with the settings from Netlify :

That's all. Easy breezy!

Note that DNS propagation may take within 24 hours, or less. Hit refresh on your new subdomain to check

If you found this post helpful. Please share and discuss with me in the comment session.

Advanced Way to Search an Array in Python (for Self taught Devs)

Lucky Adogun (ZenCoder) — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 19:19:53 +0000

Imagine your new manager clamoring about the slow speed of your company's application.

Based on your observation, a little optimization of the codebase which was "written in a hurry" would increase efficiency.

You decided to do exactly that.

A few hours later, you found a function that searches an array with hundreds of items from the database.

The problem with this function is that it runs linearly. And searching for a single item isn't different from looking for a needle in a haystack.

Cutting the time the function runs by half will make you the hero of the day.

But how would you do that?

Well, here comes...

Binary Search

What's Binary Search?

Binary Search is a search algorithm that belongs to a group of algorithmic design patterns called Divide and Conquer

Binary Search is an efficient algorithm for finding an item in a sorted list of items. The magic behind it lies in its ability to cut the list or array by half (logarithmic time) every time it does a search.

For example, an array with a length of:

10 will take approximately 3 steps to find 1 item.
100 will take approximately  7 steps to find 1 item.
1000 will take approximately  10 steps to find 1 item.
10,000 will take approximately  13 steps to find 1 item.
1,000,000 will take approximately  20 steps to find 1 item.

Wow!

That is really fast! And would truly help you save the day.

But how do you implement it?

Well, first, you have to understand how it is designed.

The concept is simple:

* Make sure your array is sorted.
* Find the start index of the array ~ (usually 0)
* Find the end index of the array ~ (usually length of array - 1)
* Find the middle of the array
* If your item is in the middle, return it.
* If your item is greater than the middle item, update the middle as the new start
* If your item is lower than the middle item, update the middle as the new end.

Let's see how it looks in code.

def binary_search(array, target):
     array = sorted(array) #sort the array
     start = 0
     end = len(array) - 1
     while start <= end:
        middle = start + (end - start) // 2 #find the middle
        item = array[middle]
        if target == item:
            return middle
        if target < item:
            end = middle - 1
        else:
            start = middle + 1
     return None

You did it!

At the end of the workday, you successfully optimized your code saving your organization extra run time. Your manager enters the standup call smiling ear to ear...and thanked you for it!

Your users are happier now. That function was really slowing things down for them.

You were named the hero of the week during the next day's standup!

And it ended happily ever after!

How to loop through an array with a range in VueJS

Lucky Adogun (ZenCoder) — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 06:48:29 +0000

Imagine you have an array with 10 items and wanted to divide it up into a set of five's to fit with your design objective.

Several common solutions to this problem I've seen in the wild include:

Hard-coding the solution
Creating two separate arrays

So, here's a simpler and better solution to do it with one array in VueJS:

<p 
    v-for="(item, index) in yourArray.slice(start, end)" 
    :key="index">

    {{ item.topic }}
</p>

The best thing about this solution is, you can dynamically set the start and end values, for example, using inputs from the user.

Hope that helps, cheers!