Category: Programming

My Favorite VS Code Extensions

Posted on by Andrew Minion

In a given day, I tend to work primarily on Laravel apps, some using Livewire and some with Inertia.js and a Vue.js frontend, as well as a smattering of WordPress sites and/or custom plugins.

I’ve tried PhpStorm and didn’t care for it, so like what feels like 90% of the rest of the industry, I use VS Code as my primary editor.

Here’s a list of the extensions I use on a daily basis:

General

Sublime Text Keymap and Settings Importer: I used Sublime Text for a year or so and built up muscle memory for the keyboard shortcuts, so these make a lot more intuitive sense to me than the standard VS Code keyboard shortcuts.

Markdown Preview Mermaid Support: I like to document solution architecture using mermaid diagrams, and this is a great extension to preview these in VS code.

Path Intellisense provides autocompletion when typing relative file paths in a project.

EditorConfig for VS Code configures some editor settings for different projects based on the configuration stored in the project.

Prettier – Code formatter is useful for automatically formatting code files.

TODO Highlight v2 provides visual feedback for TODO/FIXME/etc. comments in code.

Encode Decode is extremely useful when dealing with encoded strings. I use it fairly frequently to decode base64-encoded strings.

Remote – SSH / Remote – SSH: Editing Configuration Files / Remote Explorer make it really easy to “cowboy code” on a server 😬 and are useful for occasional debugging in production.

Live Share is amazing for pair-programming: it allows you to open the same codebase your colleague is working on and work with it on your machine just as if it were a local project.

Partial Diff is useful when comparing two files to find minor differences (e.g., when debugging API requests or responses).

Supermaven is my current favorite AI copilot; it does a really good job of suggesting what I’m about to type, even making good suggestions based on code I recently changed in other files.

PHP

Composer Intelephense shows you the actually-installed version of each package in your composer.json file, and gives you a quick link to the packagist.org page for each.

PHP DocBlocker reduces some of the boilerplate necessary when writing docblocks.

PHP Intelephense in my opinion is significantly better than the built-in PHP language support, providing autocompletion for functions, methods, variables, etc., project-wide parameter hints, and even some static analysis features.

PHPUnit Test Workbench is a very useful wrapper for phpunit; you can run a single test, a single file, or the entire test suite, and it shows a list of all of the tests in the sidebar. I use it frequently to run my entire test suite to see a quick list of which job(s) failed. (I used to use PHPUnit Test Explorer along with Test Explorer UI and Test Adapter Converter)

phpstan runs static analysis on files as I save them, showing my errors as I write code.

PHP Debug might just be the extension I interact with the most; it lets me set xdebug breakpoints, step through, and inspect code as it runs. I can’t imagine trying to program without it.

Laravel

I’m eagerly awaiting the release of the first-party Laravel extension, as I expect it to replace several of the following plugins; but for now, I use these:

DotEnv provides syntax highlighting for .env files used for Laravel configuration.

Flux UI provides autocompletion for Livewire Flux components.

Laravel Extra Intellisense saves me a lot of time by auto-completing routes names and parameters, configuration keys, views and variables, validation rules, and more.

Laravel Blade Spacer automatically adds spaces when you add a new curly brace pair: just a minor code style convenience.

Livewire Language Support provides autocompletion and other features for Livewire projects.

Laravel goto view provides one-click access to views from controllers.

Laravel Blade Snippets provides Blade snippets and syntax highlighting.

Laravel Pint provides automatic code formatting using Pint.

Laravel Blade formatter provides formatting tools for Blade templates.

Flux UI provides autocomplete for Livewire Flux components.

Javascript

Alpine.js IntelliSense provides intellisense and snippets for alpine.js.

Inertia.js provides support for linking to vue templates and autocompletes component names.

Other Languages

GraphQL: Syntax Highlighting provides language support for GraphQL files.

SCSS IntelliSense autocompletes mixins, functions, etc. in sass files.

YAML provides YAML language support.

SQL Beautify provides formatting support for SQL files. I don’t always love the output, but it’s better than nothing.

Vue – Official (previously Volar) provides language, autocompletion, and other features for vue framework.

Markdown All in One provides keyboard shortcuts, formatting helpers, preview, and more for markdown files.

Tailwind CSS IntelliSense provides suggestions, highlights duplicates, and more for Tailwind class names.

Git

GitLens — Git supercharged provides some great features; my favorite is the code history on the active or hovered line.

GitLab Workflow is a wonderful integration with GitLab; I use the “copy active link to clipboard” feature daily to copy a permalink for specific line(s) when discussing code with my colleagues. It also provides helpful CI features including autocompletion and hints when editing .gitlab-ci.yml files, as well as showing pipeline/job status right in the VS Code status bar.

Adding Sentry to a Laravel/Inertia/Vue 3 app

Posted on by Andrew Minion

I’m in the process of adding Sentry to a Laravel app that uses Laravel Jetstream with Inertia.js and Vue 3, and the Sentry Vue 3 documentation wasn’t working for me because the app setup was wrapped inside a createInertiaApp function.

The key is to add Sentry in the setup method of that function:

MySQL Table Size

Posted on by Andrew Minion

Ever wondered which database or tables are taking up disk space on a MySQL/MariaDB server?

This query will provide the size of each table:

SELECT TABLE_SCHEMA AS `Database`,
TABLE_NAME AS `Table`,
ROUND(((DATA_LENGTH + INDEX_LENGTH) / 1024 / 1024), 2) AS `Size (MB)`,
ROUND((data_free / 1024 / 1024), 2) AS `Reclaimable Size (MB)`
FROM information_schema.TABLES
-- WHERE `TABLE_SCHEMA` = 'database_name'
ORDER BY (DATA_LENGTH + INDEX_LENGTH) DESC;

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     |
*/