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Tips

Handy tips always at your fingertips

A collection of 123 tips that come in real handy when you need them. Originally posted as tweets on my Twitter account, and now gathered here so you can browse them easily.

Mapping of HTTP Status Messages in Node.js

💡 Want to send a message along with an HTTP status code response?

👉🏼 @nodejs has a built-in mapping of HTTP status codes and their respective messages.

The STATUS_CODES (uppercase) object of the http module has a mapping of status code to status message (e.g. STATUS_CODES[404]). Node.js mapping of status codes and their corresponding message. Read tip

Large Node.js Project Example to Learn From

💡 What's a good example of a mid/large Node.js open-source project to learn from?

👉🏼 I recently found out that Send from the folks at @mozilla is written in Node.js and it's open-source!

https://github.com/mozilla/send

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Disable NPM Update Notifications

💡Want to get rid of NPM update notifications?

➡️ npm config set update-notifier false

A wild NPM update notification in the terminal has appeared. Read tip

Test Your Regex in a Playground

💡 Many folks trip over the Regex syntax. Writing a working regular expression involves many trials & errors.

👉🏼 I always prefer writing #regex in playgrounds so I can immediately test them, of which @regex101 is my favourite.

https://regex101.com/

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Tiny JSON DB for Quick Prototyping

💡 A JSON file is the simplest form of storage and a quick way to start your next project.

👉🏼 lowdb by @typicode is built on top of lodash offering a familiar API. Ideal for quick prototypes and CLIs.

https://github.com/typicode/lowdb

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Generate Secure and Clean Unique IDs

💡 Need to generate unique IDs that will be shown to users? Don't like the awkwardly long MongoDB IDs?

👉🏼 nanoid by @sitnikcode does just that. This super tiny lib (0.008kb!) is secure and has a low collision %.

https://github.com/ai/nanoid

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Organise Large Nginx Configs

💡 Nginx configuration files can quickly become long and difficult to maintain.

👉🏼 Break up configuration into standalone units and place them in /etc/nginx/snippets. Use the "include" directive to import them.

Typical Nginx configuration using two includes to import configurations from snippets/security.conf and snippets/general.conf. Read tip

Difference Between Apt and Apt-Get

💡 You might have read some articles using apt and others apt-get. What's the difference?

👉🏼 apt is a newer and higher level API that combines commonly used commands from apt-get and apt-cache. It's more user-friendly and the recommended tool to use.

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Quickly Test Glob Patterns

💡 Always fiddling and guessing glob patterns like I do? Never truly grasping the syntax.

👉🏼 Glob tool by @digitalocean lets you quickly test globs against sets of strings. It even has examples for commonly used glob patterns.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tools/glob

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