Articles

a thought  · 

How to cause JSDelivr to purge assets

As you know, JSDelivr broadcasts all npm content from its CDNs for free. You can access any file of any package’s version ever published to npm. For example, there are “ever-green” URLs:

https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/detergent/dist/detergent.umd.js

and exact versions:

https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/detergent@3.2.0/dist/detergent.umd.js

Besides this cdn. URL, there’s also a purge URL — replace cdn. with purge.:

https://purge.jsdelivr.net/npm/detergent/dist/detergent.umd.js

Calling that URL will trigger JSDelivr to purge the CDN assets and fetch the latest from npm. That’s handy with ever-green UMDs because they power GUI’s (like these), and it can take up to a day for CDN to fetch the latest.

a thought  · 

Latest typescript-eslint rule prefer-optional-chain is buggy

The typescript-eslintopens in a new tab ESLint plugin’s rule prefer-optional-chain is buggy on 5.35.1, it’s blocking me from bumping all deps in the monorepo. It took me around 4 hours to investigate, extract and raise https://github.com/typescript-eslint/typescript-eslint/issues/5556opens in a new tab

People also raisedopens in a new tab similar issues regarding the latest prefer-optional-chain.

I hope maintainers will fix it soon.

Until it’s fixed, don’t bump it beyond 5.33.1.

a thought  · 

Manual autoprefixer

Codsen.com runs on Remix, the framework which won’t process anything CSS-related. To scale the styling task, some people use Tailwind; I use good old SASSopens in a new tab on style-dictionaryopens in a new tab design tokens. SASS CLI watches the styles folder with .scss files from outside Remix and places the processed files inside the Remix project folder. From Remix’s point of view, CSS files just magically appear and update themselves.

Enter Autoprefixeropens in a new tab. It doesn’t fit into this workflow! We either need to set up a proper JS-script pipeline (à la Gulp) or, two-level setup with an intermediary folder where Autoprefixer CLI’s watches the output of SASS directory (so two CLI’s watching), or some fancy terminal pipe contraption.

None of the options seem suitable.

The alternative is to run VSCode pluginopens in a new tab manually, on .scss files.

Fig 1. Autoprefixer in VSCode

I’m OK with that, this website needs to be simple.

a thought  · 

Consolidating

Our packages email-comb and html-crush had dedicated GUI websites and considerable amount of people have been using them. Over time, these two websites became hard to maintain; they were coded in vanilla JS without consistent components, tests and styling. Since they were created, a lot has changed; for example, Remix.js appeared and shook up everything. For example, the codsen.com theme toggle detects when a user switches the theme on the OS Preferences panel. There’s also no initial flash either. Those two old websites didn’t have this technology.

It took me a few weeks to recode them on codsen.comopens in a new tab. Five minutes ago, I set up the redirects:

Plus, I created a playground for string-strip-htmlopens in a new tab; it didn’t have a domain before.

The next one is https://detergent.ioopens in a new tab — the final remaining dedicated library GUI website. I have a few ideas on further improving both the package and its GUI, so I kept them to the last.

2022-SEPT-11 update: detergent.ioopens in a new tab has been migrated to codsen.com playground.

a thought  · 

Exporting types too

It’s a day off today and I’m adding exports to all unexported-yet TS types and interfaces defined in every program, especially Opts and Res:

Fig 1. Adding type exports

like that⤴, on every single program-package.

PS. I can’t stop thinking about deno and being able to run TS natively. How nice would it be to have the whole monorepo in deno, on rust tooling! Theoretically, we could get rid of: prettier, uvu, c8, esbuild, benchmark, turbo, and (shocker) eslint.

a thought  · 

Stripping HTML

Mr Toh posted a good articleopens in a new tab comparing various means to strip tags from HTML, including our npm package string-strip-html.

To add 2p.

It’s not just about speed.

The primary reason why you’d use an npm package, rather than regex, is whitespace management. The string-strip-html ensures the stripped results looks as if a human deleted the tags. Our program can even be used to generate email text versions, placing URLs besides the stripped link labels.

The second reason is string-strip-html can tackle broken HTML, dirty HTML and HTML mixed with other languages.

The third reason is string-strip-html saves you time: writing unit tests, writing correct type definitions (you’re using TypeScript, right?) and tackling edge cases.

Article  · 
New requirements for npm packages in TypeScript 4.7+

New requirements for npm packages in TypeScript 4.7+

The latest TS doesn’t support the types key at the package.json root level. Paul Zaczkiewicz raised an issueopens in a new tab on our GH tracker about it, and together we were able to come up with a repoductionopens in a new tab (later I also discovered a related ticketopens in a new tab on TS issues board). From there on, it was easy to solve; here’s how.

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Article  · 
Importing SVG in Remix MDX

Importing SVG in Remix MDX

A decade ago, Chris Coyier from CSS-Tricks describedopens in a new tab ways to consume SVG, which can be distilled into two groups: to link and to embed.

Fast forward to 2022, the market has shifted from WordPress+PHP to React+TypeScript, but the same dilemma “to link or to embed?” still applies because, at the bottom of it, we’re still dealing with the same HTML and CSS as we did a decade ago.

So what’s the best way to import SVG in MDX?

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a thought  · 

Arguments against Eleventy

Codsen.com was previously on Eleventy, pure static HTML+CSS, served from the Edge via Cloudflare workers.

The problems with that setup were:

  1. Flashing when navigating between pages
  2. Components written in Nunjucks — not as universal as JSX
  3. Absence of MDX
  4. A poorer DX in general, stemming from Nunjucks itself — for example, compare the Nunjucks and TS linting
  5. Cloudflare Workers can be fragile, the wrangler program which serves the sites is buggy
  6. Being on edge, without a server, doesn’t mean you spend any less than using a server + CDN
  7. Unable to share Nunjucks components in tester web apps driven by Vue

I’m sure most of that could be solved one way or another. But I just outgrew the 11ty baby shirt.

Article  · 
Syntax highlighting in Remix

Syntax highlighting in Remix

Syntax highlighting is done using either highlight.jsopens in a new tab or prism.jsopens in a new tab. Once you’ve picked one, you’ll have to set it up for code blocks: 1. within MDX and 2. outside MDX. That’s how it works on all kinds of frameworks, not just Remix, although I’ll post examples for Remix.

This setup is mostly a trivial task; however, there are a few niggles worth mentioning.

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Article  · 
Better npm packages

Better npm packages

Maintaining npm packages is hard, and writing Open Source is already an achievement. But let’s not get complacent. Here I tried to compile a list of a few ideas to improve further. I haven’t implemented some of them yet. Few entries at the bottom are so novel that I think nobody in the world has either.

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a thought  · 

Mastering the tooling

Don’t know if you noticed but many extraordinary developers mastered their code editors to such level, that they started teaching productivity, editor plugins and, heck, in some cases, writing code editors.

The first two quick examples that pop to my mind:

  • Wes Bos (online educator) has once published a Sublime Text Power User bookopens in a new tab
  • Steve Francia (creator of Hugo the static site generator and many famous Golang libraries) has his Vimopens in a new tab

It does not matter what code editor you use but it’s imperative to master all keyboard shortcuts and tricks of the one you picked.

a thought  · 

“Renowned obsession”

“Our obsession with quality is renowned as every Jaeger‑LeCoultre watch undergoes strict “1,000 Hour Control” testing.”

—official websiteopens in a new tab

I wonder, what would be the Software Engineering field equivalent of that?

Article  · 
html-crush bug fixed

html-crush bug fixed

One line in Babel config, env preset’s loose set to true was causing a spread operator to disappear on only CommonJS builds (not ES Modules or UMD), which led to broken logic (program could not calculate opts.breakToTheLeftOf correctly any more), program inserted extra blank lines. A crazy bug, isn’t it?

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Article  · 
Automated Vercel redirect maintenance on Eleventy

Automated Vercel redirect maintenance on Eleventy

Vercel, our static website hosting service, makes it easy to set up page redirects, you can have up to 1024 redirects. It’s all controlled from a single JSON file. Many things can go wrong in that file, stakes are quite high (starting with SEO) and any redirect mistakes can be hard to spot.

Here’s our automated checking setup.

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Article  · 
string-strip-html v.5 and lessons learned

string-strip-html v.5 and lessons learned

For an exported function, string-in, string-out API is awesome because it’s simple. The problem happens later when you want to add more to the output, for example, a log with time spent. Or an alternative output, like locations of string indexes. Or the version from package.json.

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a thought  · 

In favour of BYOD

Few arguments in favour to BYOD company policies:

  1. Passwords
  2. Notes
  3. Snippets
  4. ZSH aliases
  5. Time wasting syncing all above
  6. Money wasting on two sets of licences