• Tech Tips

    Correcting Date Tags using sed in an Entire Obsidian Vault

    I’ve been using Obsidian for about 8 months. It wasn’t until today that I realized I’ve been using hierarchical tags incorrectly since day one!

    The Problem

    In my templater templates I was using the following:

    The result of this is:

    Unfortunately there are two problems with this. First, there is no need for that extra tag at the end; it’s already covered by the first combo tag.

    Second, the hierarchy is backwards! This leads to:

    Houston, we have a problem! What I really was after was a tag structure like this:

    The Fix

    Thankfully, Obsidian stores all of the files on the filesystem natively, which means you can manipulate them using whatever tools you’d like.

    Enter sed, a stream editor. Using sed and find, I was able to quickly resolve both of the issues above.

    If I’d taken a little more time I would have handled both problems in one shot, but I did not. I fixed problem 2, then problem 1.

    First, I cd’d into the root directory of my vault. Then…

    Finally, I updated all of my templater templates to drop the second tag and fix the first to be in the right order.

    Obsidian picked up all of the changes immediately, which were reflected in the tag pane. Much cleaner!

    Obsidian Tags

  • Tech Tips

    Editing Web Content in VS Code

    Okay, so it’s not quite as amazing as the title suggests, but this solution is worth sharing.

    I work a lot in Bookstack. It’s a fantastic documentation system built with Laravel. I edit all pages in markdown. There is a markdown pane on the left and a preview on the right. I love the UI (shown below) but unfortunately I cannot move around in the editor like I can in PHPStorm or VS Code, where I have Vim support.Bookstack edit screen

    I have a Chrome extension called Wasavi, which is incredible for editing text areas in an inline virtual Vim window. Unfortunately, though, it doesn’t show realtime feedback in the preview pane until I save and close out of the virtual editor.

    It occurred to me it’d be useful to just pop into VS Code quickly to edit the doc, then bring those edits back into the Bookstack editor in Chrome. At first I dismissed the idea as being “too much work.” After thinking about it for a moment, though, I realized I could MacGyver this relatively quickly with my favorite Mac application, Keyboard Maestro.

    Here’s what I came up with. As with most things, I am sure I’ll tweak this over time to make it better, faster, less “error”-prone, etc. I have added a README comment and renamed most actions so it’s (hopefully) easy to understand the approach.

    Bookstack VS Code Macro

     

  • Tech Tips

    One-handed Gmail Inbox Culling with Keyboard Maestro

    Keyboard Maestro proves, once again, why it’s at the top spot on my most recommended Mac applications list.

    My normal procedure for culling (deleting unwanted) emails in Gmail is (with list on left and email preview on right):

    1. Open the first email (opens in right pane)
    2. If deleting, press “#” (⇧3)
    3. Else, if skipping, press “j” to move down to the next email (standard Gmail behavior, I think; and it’s intuitive if you’re used to Vim)
    4. Repeat steps 2 and 3.

    I realized today how much I dislike hitting “#” with my left hand while browsing with my right.

  • Development

    Testing Cookie Modification in Laravel 8

    If there’s a better way to pass a cookie from one request to another, in a phpunit feature test in Laravel, please let me know! Here’s one way to handle it:

     

  • Development

    Any Random Saturday Using Faker

    Here’s a quick one, folks. I’m using Faker in Laravel factories to generate realistic data. I have a “week end date” field in one of my models that must always be a Saturday. Here’s how I generate a unique random Saturday:

     

  • Development

    Using “php artisan serve” with xdebug and PHPStorm

    This is more of a person note for myself. This posts assumes some knowledge of php, Laravel, artisan, Homebrew, and xdebug.

    I’ve been using php artisan serve to serve Laravel applications locally. It’s quick and it works well.

    It’s probably not a great solution if you’re working with other people on a project, or if you want to implement a good CD/CI workflow. Having said that, it’s what I’m using today, so I figured I’d document how I got xdebug working with it (on my Mac).

  • Development

    Using Carbon to Generate Random Dates and Times

    There are a number of ways to generate random dates/times in PHP. Here are some examples using the Carbon library:

  • Development

    Adding a Global Function to Cypress for a Date {num} Months Ago

    I’m working on a COVID-19 booster shot registration form. On this form I ask the user when they received their last COVID-19 vaccine shot. This is three simple fields (the month values are 01, 02, 03, etc.):

    Date of last covid shot

    Each vaccine brand (Pfizer, Moderna, J&J) has different eligibility criteria as it relates to the time since the individual received their original vaccine series. Pfizer, for example, is 6 months. My form needs to reject a user who says they received Pfizer less than 6 months ago.

    Using Cypress I wanted some test coverage of this functionality. Original I had hard-coded a date value of 5 months ago:

    As you can imagine this would work well for a while. Fast-forward a few months from now… the time ago will eventually be more than 6 months ago. I don’t want to have to keep updating this code with a recent date. The obvious solution is to dynamically choose the dates based on the current date. A global helper function would be ideal as I need to use this in many tests. Here’s a simple solution:

    Step 1: Define the Function in index.js

    The support/index.js file is loaded before each Cypress run. Creating a global function here is a quick way to introduce a reusable piece of code.

    There are many solutions to handle getting a date from {num} months ago. If you start looking around for “What is a month, really?” you will find many different opinions. The code I’m using above responds like most humans do: give the same day of the month from {num} months ago. With a {num} of 5 (five months ago), on October 25, 2021 the result would be May 25, 2021.

    WARNING: Please note the following:

    Step 2: Use the Function