this page contains a list of the 10 most recent blog articles.

Symfony 4: setting up a new project

How to set up a Symfony 4 project from scratch using the Composer dependency manager.

  • php
  • symfony

Symfony 4: using ParcelJs with Twig templates

Following on from my recent explorations in the world of PHP and Symfony 4, I decided that I'd have a look into front-end asset bundling. Although Symfony 4 has really great support for Webpack via the Webpack Encore API, my requirements were very simple this time around and so it was time to give ParcelJs a shot.

  • php
  • symfony
  • twig
  • javascript
  • parcel

Using Redis as a cache inside Symfony 4

I've been writing a lot of PHP over the last few months, and have been getting a decent amount of experience with the Symfony framework. In my Symfony 4 project, I wanted to swap out the default memory caching for a Redis database, and thought that it might be helpful to others if I shared my solution. This is only a very simple example, but it should illustrate the basic steps that I took to get Redis caching up and running.

  • php
  • symfony
  • redis
  • cache

Setting up Postgres inside a Docker container

I've been doing a bit of work with Postgres recently, and encountered a few gotchas whilst getting things set up inside a Docker container for the first time. I thought I'd share my final process here, just in case it comes in handy for the equally uninitiated.

  • postgres
  • docker

Installing and renewing a Let's Encrypt certificate without downtime

Let's Encrypt is a "free, automated, and open certificate authority" that provides the browser-trusted certificates required to establish https connections. Whilst the success of Let's Encrypt came as wonderful news for poor developers everywhere, I still wondered whether it would be possible to create, install and renew certificates on my NGINX server without incurring downtime.

  • ssl
  • cert
  • devops
  • nginx
  • https
  • security
  • encryption

How to use the simple-line-numbers NPM package to add line numbers to your code examples

A few weeks ago, I wrote a little bit of Javascript that could be used to create left-aligned line-numbers without any dependency upon a separate language highlighting tool. I rolled the resulting code up, and published it to NPM as the "simple-line-numbers" package, and in this article I'll show you how you can use it in your own front-end projects.

  • npm
  • node
  • javascript
  • line
  • numbers

Using Kali Linux to scan web applications on your local machine

In this article I'll show you how to use Kali Linux and OWASP's Zed Attack Proxy to test for some basic vulnerabilities in a web application that's being developed on your local machine.

  • owasp
  • zap
  • kali
  • linux
  • localhost
  • development
  • virtualbox
  • vbox

Creating a bootable USB from an ISO image in OSX (High Sierra)

I have a fairly old desktop machine that I've been planning to rejuvenate with a Linux Mint installation, so in preparation I decided to create a bootable USB using one of the official ISO images. I encountered a couple of gotchas when I tried this on OSX High Sierra, so I thought I'd document my findings.

  • osx
  • usb
  • iso
  • bootable

Passing environment variables into a Dockerised NGINX configuration

I was recently working on a small project that required environment variables to be passed into an NGINX Docker container from the host system. I quickly discovered that NGINX configs don't handle this in quite the way that I expected, so I decided to document the solution that I eventually came up with.

  • nginx
  • docker
  • compose
  • environment
  • variables

How to run the Nessus (v7) security scanner in a Docker container

I wanted to test out the latest version of the Nessus security scanner this week, but I couldn't find any ready made Docker images that quite fit the bill. In this article, I take a look at how you can build your own Ubuntu based image to run the "Home" licensed version of Nessus.