If you at any time need to programatically retrieve your Gmail account mails than the only proper way to do that is to use the Gmail api. The following post will show you how to access your Gmail account using the Gmail api and NodeJS. The code will handle all OAuth authentication and token processing.
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Creating custom stream filters in PHP
In this post we will see how to create a custom stream filter. Streams, first introduced in PHP 4.3, provide an abstration layer for file access. A number of different resources besides files – like network connections, compression protocols etc. can be regarded as “streams” of data which can be serially read and written to.
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Five APIs All Developers Need to Know
Every day, dozens of developer tools get released online. Some new developers opt for doing all their work manually, while others choose to explore new tools. If you fall into the second category, then you need to start using APIs. The acronym stands for
Application Programming Interface. In essence, it’s a programing language that lets one service – let’s say Google Maps for instance – communicate with another – for example, AccuWeather.
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Unpacking binary data in PHP
Working with binary files in PHP is rarely a requirement. However when needed the PHP ‘pack’ and ‘unpack’ functions can help you tremendously. To set the stage we will start with a programming problem, this will keep the discussion anchored to a relevant context. The problem is this : We want to write a function that takes a image file as an argument and tells us whether the file is a GIF image; irrelevant with whatever the extension the file may have. We are not to use any GD library functions.
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How to calculate the size of a MySQL database
Many times we need to calculate the size of a MySQL database through code for purpose like database backup or to check how fast the database is growing for a certain application. The database size can be easily ascertained using phpmyadmin or other desktop tools, but that requires you to manually launch the tool and check. Below we will see how to do the same through a query.
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How to profile and debug MySQL queries for speed
Most MySQL applications need profiling for speed enhancements at one time or other. I’ve developed several web applications in the past wherein MySQL queries were a major bottleneck in the application performance. In the past however there were no easy tools to analyse SQL queries in a running application and we programmers had to depend on some makeshift solutions to debug SQL queries. Now, however there are some nice free tools which can help you profile MySQL application queries easily.
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the design of the US Area Codes
Like the QWERTY keyboard design, which was originally designed so as to slow down typing and prevent key jams in the original typewriters; US Area codes also depend on the design of the then rotary telephones. On the rotary telephone dial, the digits are arranged in a circular layout so that a finger wheel may be rotated with one finger from the position of each digit to a fixed stop position.
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6 data visualization javascript libraries
A recent web visualization project forced me to explore some data visualization libraries for JavaScript. Below are a few I narrowed down during the development phase.
Leaflet
Leaflet is the leading open-source JavaScript library for mobile-friendly interactive maps. Weighing around 38 KB of JS, it has all the mapping features most developers will ever need.
Although Leaflet is lightweight, and focuses on a core set of features, an easy way to extend its functionality is to use third-party plugins. There are hundreds of nice leaflet plugins you can choose from to extend the functionality of Leaflet. This is one of my favorite mapping libraries and which I’ll surely cover in another post.
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