I wrote about XSS attack vectors and how you can inadvertently make yourself vulnerable when using Vue.js. The post has examples and discusses different approaches that you can adopt to protect yourself. It’s published on the StackHawk blog and can be viewed here. Vue XSS Guide: Examples and Prevention Vue XSS Guide: Examples and Prevention

I wrote a post about Microservices and a few basic concepts related to this software architecture pattern. The post takes a high-level view of the concepts you should familiarize yourself with before deciding whether microservices are a good fit for your solution domain and organization. It’s published on the Plutora blog and can be read here. Microservices Architecture: An Engineer’s ...

I wrote a beginner-level post on Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF). The post is part of a series of introductions to basic vulnerabilities that are easy to avoid. It uses Laravel as the framework and covers the basics about the vulnerability and steps you can take to avoid it. It’s published on the StackHawk blog and can be viewed here. Laravel ...

There are over 300,000,000 results for the search term "how to secure WordPress site", and many of them give you decent tips on how to protect your existing WordPress installation. There could be some good tips there. But they won't really give you an answer to your actual question of "How do I run a WordPress installation while paying it ...

Gapstars (we're hiring!) recently held a recruitment drive and I screened candidates for PHP-related roles. I was doing a quick 20 - 30 minute call to get a feel for the candidate. The aim of this interview was to quickly gauge whether the candidate was a good fit for the organization and then move them up the interview pipeline. The ...

Rentman held a hackathon recently where the goal was to try out new tech and take on roles that you normally wouldn't. I mostly work with PHP in the back-end so thought I'd try out NodeJS with a framework that I was unfamiliar with, enter Feathers JS. Feathers is a lightweight web-framework for creating real-time applications and REST APIs using ...

I got my first computer when I was 13 years old. I've been programming for about 22 years and I've been paid to program for about 13 years now. I'm an AWS certified Solutions Architect (Associate). I co-founded a startup and designed and developed the technical solution for six years. I'm currently a senior tech lead. I'm also a giant ...

I recently did a presentation on scalable architectures at the Gapstars hosted Explorer Series 2.0 event. It was an introduction to a topic that I'd been learning more about in the last few years and it was pretty fun to share what I'd learned with more people. It also made me think about writing longer articles on the specific topics ...

While reading Indi’s blog post about the Colombo Hackathon, I was really surprised about the comments some people were making. They were bordering on the xenophobic and some were outright against the concept simply because there was commercial backing behind it. I don’t understand why commercial backing or presenting to an open audience is a bad thing.  I find that ...

Recently I ran into the problem of needing to switch the module part of a request depending on the hostname. I needed to do this because I plugged in a whitelabeling solution to our existing web application. When the request comes in, I needed to switch from the default module to the whitelabel module so that app routing would work. ...

A common type of question I find on Stack Overflow are beginners having trouble with figuring out why their AJAX application / functionality isn’t working. They usually go something like this… I have two input boxes which accept the username and password and sends it to the PHP login page via AJAX. But when I type in my credentials, I don’t ...

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. - Brian Kernighan

I used to have a work / technical blog. But then I got bored of it and took it down after a while. It’s been a couple of years since that happened and now I find myself constantly wanting to write down the things that are going through my mind. Mostly for my own reference (what better way to learn ...