To Webpack or not to Webpack

Michal Lichwa — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 15:17:17 +0000

I'm working on a simple microsite with a set budget. Nothing fancy- bootstrap+ jQuery + css and html. My first instinct was to start a new project with npm and then install Webpack. I have a few working sites built with Webpack but I wouldn't call myself proficient using it. Each time I use it, I have to look up all the tricks Webpack is capable of. Loaders for: css, scss, fonts, html, jpg assets. Plugins for global jQuery with '$', bootstrap module import, js minifiers, sass and css minifiers and a Webpack server for continuous builds.

Setting it up would take at lest 2 hours from my budget. I would feel better having code automation but I'm not sure if the client would notice. Also, using Webpack assumes that the person who will be making code changes in the future will know how to use it too...

I wonder where is the line between using Webpack and simply coding it the traditional way.

YT Podcaster

Michal Lichwa — Tue, 11 Sep 2018 12:24:49 +0000

I’ve been looking for a tool that would convert YouTube videos to MP3 files so I could listen to the audio on my podcast player. There are a few MP3 converters, but they let you download files and none of them have the podcast feature.

Luckily, I’m a programmer. So I made one!

YT Podcaster is a YouTube to MP3 converter and a podcast feed generator written in PHP and based on the youtube-dl library. Right now, the interface is very minimal and consists of two API calls- convert and delete. YT Podcaster is a self-hosted app so its code needs to be hosted on your server and at this point it isn’t ready for a wider public.

There are lots of websites to convert YouTube videos into audio. Typically, you submit a URL, the conversion takes a few seconds and then you get another link to download the file. Well…what I was looking for is something that would take the URL of a YouTube video and serve it to my podcast player without additional clicks, downloads and uploads.

Of course, this app is not suitable for most YouTube videos. After all, people record videos (and not audio) for a reason. They want us to pay attention to the stuff they’re presenting as much as to what is being said. However, most of the YouTube channels I’m subscribed to are interviews or monologues where visuals aren’t necessary, so I don’t lose much anyway.

The tool I made is a server-side API and it requires a little bit of a back-end knowledge in order to install and configure the code. I don’t think it is a valuable solution for a non-technical users but it was a fun weekend exercise that makes me smile every time I convert a file and it shows up on my podcast player.

The code is available on Github. If you find this remotely useful, let me know! I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

DEV Community: Michal Lichwa

To Webpack or not to Webpack

YT Podcaster