Category: Programming

Shimming MySQL Functions into SQLite for Laravel CI/CD Testing

Posted on by Andrew Minion

Colin DeCarlo presented a talk at Laracon Online where among other useful tips, he demonstrated how to shim MySQL functions in an SQLite database (e.g., add functions that MySQL has but SQLite does not).

Here are two examples that I just needed in a project (FLOOR and DATEDIFF):

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;

DB::getPdo()->sqliteCreateFunction('floor', fn ($value) => floor($value));
DB::getPdo()->sqliteCreateFunction('datediff', fn ($date1, $date2) => Carbon::parse($date1)->diff(Carbon::parse($date2))->days);

Redirect to Original URL with Laravel Socialite

Posted on by Andrew Minion

We’re using Laravel Socialite with a self-hosted GitLab instance to authenticate users for an internal tool.

Every time the session times out, the OAuth flow redirects the user back to the default dashboard, regardless of what URL the user originally requested.

However, Laravel provides a url.intended session key with the original URL; here’s how I used it, with a fallback to the dashboard URL:

return redirect()->to(
    session()->get('url.intended', route('dashboard')
);

Database Platform Comparisons for Laravel Feature Tests

Posted on by Andrew Minion

TL;DR: MySQL significantly outperforms MariaDB in my automated test suite.

The Problem

This Twitter thread prompted me to do a bit of research on database platforms for Laravel automated tests.

I’ve recently been building an ecommerce app based on Laravel. Partway through development, we added geometry fields to a couple of tables in order to determine distances. I’ve been using this spatial package, so SQLite was not an option for my test suite.

As soon as I switched the testing database driver from SQLite to MariaDB, my tests immediately took an extra 12–13 seconds to run, regardless of whether I ran the entire test suite, a single file, or just one test.

This significantly lengthened the feedback loop when making changes to code and re-running tests.

So when I saw Jack Ellis mention that he uses MySQL for his test suite, it made me curious if he had the same issue.

He said that one of his test files runs 39 tests in < 2 seconds, so apparently it’s not been a problem for him.

Context

  • I’m using the LazilyRefreshDatabase trait added in Laravel 8.62.0 on my entire test suite
  • I’m using squashed migrations
  • Many of my tables have constrained foreign keys referencing other tables

Comparisons

I decided to do some digging; here are comparisons using four different platforms for the same test in my application.

MariaDB

I’ve been using MariaDB as the main database platform on my development machine for years. Currently I’m on version 10.6.4.

  • A single test took 14s to run
  • An entire file with 16 tests took 19s to run

In-Memory SQLite Database

I temporarily disabled the geometry features and tried the in-memory SQLite database (DB_CONNECTION=:memory:); it performed much better for the same tests:

  • A single test too <1s to run
  • An entire file with 16 tests took ~7s to run

SQLite File Database

I then tried with an SQLite file (DB_CONNECTION=sqlite), and it performed about the same:

  • A single test took ~1s to run
  • An entire file with 16 tests took ~7s to run

MySQL 8

I have an installation of MySQL 8 set up for one app that uses some specific MySQL 8 and I figured why not give that a try too.

Here are the results:

  • A single test took ~1.5s to run
  • An entire file with 16 tests took ~6.5s to run

Summary

For some reason, MariaDB takes approximately 12–13 seconds to tear down and recreate the database before starting to run tests, but MySQL is much faster.

While testing MariaDB, I opened the raw data directory for the database, and noticed chunks of files being removed and recreated at a time, so perhaps the foreign key constraints are (part of) the culprit here.

I do have 77 databases with ~3800 tables in my MariaDB installation built up from various projects over the years. It seems unlikely, but theoretically possible, that the server size could be part of the problem too.

I think I’ll experiment with switching back to MySQL as my development platform of choice.

Have you run into this same issue? Have any tips or tricks? Let me know in the comments.

Retrieving Route and Parameters from an Arbitrary URL in Laravel

Posted on by Andrew Minion

I build an oEmbed provider in a Laravel application the other day and needed to parse an arbitrary URL to determine the route and parameters passed in order to determine the response.

Since I already had the routes built for the possible URLs, I didn’t want to duplicate code and re-parse them.

Here’s how I ended up retrieving the route and parameters:

Migrating Sermons from Sermon Manager for WordPress to SermonAudio

Posted on by Andrew Minion

I build a Laravel-based command-line utility to import sermons from the Sermon Manager for WordPress plugin and migrate them into SermonAudio.

If it’s useful to you, see this repository for setup and usage details: https://gitlab.com/andrewminion/sermon-manager-to-sermon-audio

Trello to Excel

Posted on by Andrew Minion

I was trying to export a Trello board to a spreadsheet and include all the cards and checklists but couldn’t find a good way to do that, so I wrote one!

Originally this project was based on Laravel Zero, a command-line Laravel framework. It accepted a JSON file exported from Trello and exports an Excel spreadsheet:

  • A board becomes an Excel file
  • Each list becomes a worksheet
  • Each card becomes a row in the worksheet
  • Checklist items become individual rows with their name, completion status, and due date

It still does that, but it’s also available now as a webapp for anybody to use simply by logging in with Trello!

Try it out here: https://trello-to-excel.andrewrminion.com/

You can find the source code here: https://gitlab.com/andrewminion/trello-to-excel

Example

Counting Distinct Values in a Single Field

Posted on by Andrew Minion

A quick MySQL snippet to count how many times a value appears in a single field—much easier to grok than multiple JOINs.

SELECT
COUNT(CASE WHEN meta_value = 'value1' THEN 1 END) AS value1,
COUNT(CASE WHEN meta_value = 'value2' THEN 1 END) AS value2
FROM wp_post_meta;

/** Results

| value1 | value2 |
|--------|--------|
| 75     | 56     |
*/

Local Development and WordPress Uploads

Posted on by Andrew Minion

One common issue with local development is how to handle uploaded files.

You could copy the entire wp-content/uploads/ directory but that can use up a lot of disk space for little benefit.

Another option is to rewrite all HTTP requests for missing local images to the appropriate URLs on the live site.

Here’s how to do it:

Nginx

Find your nginx config file1 and add this line above the location / { block:

location /wp-content/uploads/ {
    try_files $uri $uri/;

    rewrite ^/wp-content/uploads/(.*)$ https://{live site domain}/wp-content/uploads/$1;
}

Or if for some reason you need to rewrite all files to the live site instead of just those that are missing, add this in the location / { block, ideally as the first line:

rewrite ^/wp-content/uploads/(.*)$ https://{live site domain}/wp-content/uploads/$1;

Apache

Add this line to the .htaccess file:

RewriteRule ^wp-content/uploads/(.*)$ http://{live site domain}/wp-content/uploads/$1 [NC,L]

Notes

  1. If you’re using Laravel Valet: look in ~/.config/valet/Nginx/ for a file with the same name as your site’s domain.
    If you’re using Laravel Herd: look in ~/Library/Application Support/Herd/config/valet/Nginx/ for a file with the same name as your site’s domain.

Using psysh in Shared Hosting or Limited User Environments

Posted on by Andrew Minion

When using psysh or Laravel’s php artisan tinker in a limited user’s environment, you may run into this error:

Unable to create PsySH runtime directory. Make sure PHP is able to write to {some directory path} in order to continue.

This is caused by psysh trying to use a path that’s not accessible to the user.

To fix, add a file at ~/.config/psysh/config.php with this content:

<?php
return [
    'runtimeDir' => '~/tmp'
];

Using Laravel artisan tinker and psysh with Xdebug

Posted on by Andrew Minion

I often use Xdebug for troubleshooting and interactively debugging local code as I write it.

Laravel’s artisan command is extremely useful for running code interactively during development. (It’s based on another utility named psysh.)

It can be very useful to set some debug breakpoints and then run code interactively using artisan, but occasionally when I run php artisan tinker, the PHP shell just sits there and doesn’t accept any input until I kill my xdebug listener.

Thanks to this issue, I finally have a solution.

Add this to the psysh config file (~/.config/psysh/config.php on macOS):

<?php
return [
  'usePcntl' => false,
];