For years now, SASS has given CSS the functionalities that native CSS wish it could. These includes variables, selector nesting, mixins, extends, and much more. One simple but very powerful thing SASS gives you is the ability to outsource a similar set of style rules into a reusable “function”. This lets you centralize style logic […]

Cypress.io is great for testing the front end of your app’s UI, but at the time of this post, it lacks a few fundamental features. One important feature is handling file uploads natively, but there is a workaround for that. Another popular use case I came across is testing and interacting with iframes. Testing iframes […]

As a developer, a fair portion of your time is spent on the command line. Certain command are used religiously, so why not save a keystroke or ten? Let’s take a common unix need: updating your packages. When you update, you use something like this: sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade Wouldn’t it be […]

When learning a new programming language, a calculator is a great way to flex your ability. Going the extra mile and tacking on extra features proves to be an even more valuable experience. In this article, I will show you how to implement a neat feature: the ability to multiply without an * operator.

In the last posts, we learned about layouts and partials, but Laravel provides even more functionality. You may ask: why use a component when you can just use partials? In Laravel, components are packed with additional functionality. Components give you separation of concerns, letting you outsource PHP logic to a method outside of your blade […]

Every web developer has come across CSS at one point or another. For most, it’s a necessary evil that’s easy to learn, but difficult to master. After some time, you start to get the hang of it and maybe even pick up something like SASS and/or flexbox. One thing you may not realize: your code […]

In our last post, we learned about Laravel Blade and its capablities. That post only scratched the surface, blade can do so much more! In this post, we’ll dive into conditional statements and rendering. Every good templating engine has simple ways to conditionally show blocks of markup. Blade makes this very easy. If you’re used […]

There are 3 posts before this article, checking them out might provide additional context for this article. You can check out part 1(getting up and running), part 2(setting up a build), and part 3(variables and nesting). Now that we’ve covered all of the SASS basics, it’s time to dive into the more advanced features! There […]

Cypress is an end-to-end testing framework designed to provide coverage for front-end UIs. Learning how to automate tests has its learning curve, but the benefits grow with your application’s complexity. I was tasked to test a process that involves uploading multiple types of files. In particular, application/pdf and image/* mime-type files. Doing this with Cypress […]

Digging into the trenches of responsive design can be surprisingly daunting, especially if you’re new to this kind of thing. The amount of shiny front-end build tools seem overwhelming at first, but they are ultimately here to help you. In this post, we’re looking at a shiny build tool called SASS. It’s actually not that shiny, […]