Here then…
A static “headless” “app” (yes, in quote marks) that presents a mobile-app like version of my blog.
It needs some polish, some navigation/state/history and pages need to work. But it's good enough to show.
I wanted to do this to show that:
– It can be done with low effort levels
– and with little JavaScript (<3KB + Alpine.js = 20KB total)
– and be FAST and FREE!
Wanted to get this done before the Christmas break. Will write up in the coming days!
I wrote some tests for an important API today. Found about three bugs that hadn’t been spotted before.
Write tests! It’s a slog sometimes, but even just the process of writing them can reveal things about your code that aren’t right.
Well, that's that. Thanks Redact!
There's about 160 posts that I don't seem to be able to delete. Some weird thing with retweets that I can't undo.
I'll keep a couple of accounts. There are some things on there I need to follow that aren't really anywhere else. But the app is deleted (a long time ago). The pinned tab is closed. And now the content is gone too.
Good times. Will be remembered fondly. And then it went to shit.
✏️ There's a lot going on right now and I've been having a lot of thoughts about what is going on. In some cases I think I've expressed these thoughts well. In other cases, other people have expressed things that have helped me.
Here are some quotes and thoughts…
Digging into the WordPress interactivity API this week.
Hang on… did we stop using PHP to generate HTML on our sites? When did this happen?
I mean, it’s all good. Apart from the fact that we are rolling out own thing with Preact. I love me some JavaScript sprinkles.
I’m just baffled as to why it needs to be justified with “We need to do SSR in PHP” like that’s something we forgot we could do?
The following re-posts are because I, too, have noticed the proliferation of annual wrap ups…
I’m only just now realising that there is a cohort of web developers that simply don’t think about sending HTML over HTTP. The suggestion of such a thing must be alien and surprising to them because it’s not really in their vocabulary.
How can we nurture relationships between use-web-standards-first folks and use-the-JA-from-JAMstack-first folks?
It’s SO DARK. Did they change the clocks again? Did the sun forget to rise?
Today I realised that not only do Vercel make NextJS, but they are a main sponsor of Astro and, through employing Rich Harris, basically own Svelte as well.
What the heck?
Why?
And which will die first?
Oh yay! I found an actual post on Facebook?
It’s not an ad!
Oh wait.
No.
It’s some misinformation about how it takes “100KG of RAM chips” to make an EV battery.
Lol 😂
I have reason to want to look at a Facebook group today.
Oh my. What has that thing become?!
It’s just – what – ads of all the different sorts: marketplace ads, businesses posting their wares, and actual paid ads.
…
The lesson: Think about what the other person needs to know to fulfil your requirement without needing further exchange of information.
Otherwise, further communication is needed, which slows you down. OR, the person makes their own assumptions ("here's a 50g packet of flaked almonds!”) and the whole process becomes blocked and rework is needed.
It takes longer to do the initial work, but you get your cake baked on time for the birthday party!!
Came up with a great analogy yesterday for how specific requirements help everyone:
I often do the grocery shopping.
My wife often lists things like “almonds”.
I arrive at the shop.
There are ground almonds, flaked almonds, blanched almonds, whole almonds. They are on the snack aisle, the baking aisle and in the produce department.
There are various packet sizes.
The actual requirement is something like:
"Ground Almonds, 150g for baking cake”
…
OK. This is for real. This needs to be done.
I gave ChatGPT a prompt and then copied and pasted all the recent school emails, from both schools, into it. And then asked it to summarise what I needed to know about this week and it's frickin' amazing (no personal data was sent as a part of this experiment):
I need gift ideas for a 12-year old kid who loves gaming (mostly Nintendo) and coding but who we don’t want to buy more games for.
We also don’t want/need:
– any more LED lights
– bike/skateboard/scooter
– board games
– books
– watches
– headphones
Any creative ideas out there?
Oh! I forgot to say. https://caniphp.com/ has an “API” now. It’s just a static JSON version of the data. There’s no parameters of filters. But it might be useful if you want to build anything on top of the data.
Please cache this if you use it. Thanks.
Am I the first to do this? No.
Do I care? No.
Was this fun to make? Yes!
Any other questions?
So… showable progress on the little static #WordPress mobile headless web app thing.
This little tool:
– Scraped the REST API of my local copy of my blog
– Saved all the JSON responses as static files
– Indexed using Pagefind (https://pagefind.app/)
– Has a thin JS (actually Alpine.js) and HTML layer on top
– 100% static files!
Neat!
Not QUITE ready for consumption yet. And has MANY caveats. But no reason it shouldn't work with simple blog sites.
Another thing about this is: Gosh coding a clean PHP project with types and data objects and services and PHPStorm/static analysis is a JOY!!
I’ve said this before – I FLY in this environment.
Also: I’ve now added to my list of things-a-web-dev-must-build that I have built:
– Chatbot
– Todo list
– Static site generator
– Geolocation app
– Snake game
– Simple social network/chat
– CMS
– Cards Against Humanity clone
– Wordle clone
– Mobile headless app framework
I think I just need to make a drag-and-drop Kanban board and I’ve qualified! 😂