Automation with shell scripts

What is a shell? Shell is a term to describe computer interfaces that we use to interact with our operating system. Shells can be graphical or text based using a command line. We are typically using a graphical user interface, in other words a graphical shell to control the computer. When we open a command […]

Debugging Python programs

There are different ways to debug Python programs, from printing information to the console using basic print() function to using a full-fledged debugger. In this article we will have a look at some basic tools that we can use, including less known tools like PySnooper or stackprinter. I have created an accompanying repository python-debugging with […]

Measuring Python code complexity with wily

It is good to have some idea about our code complexity. This is especially true for large codebases and large teams where complexity can seriously slow down development and introduce bugs. Every developer probably has some opinion whether a particular code or project is complex, but what if we want to express it with some […]

One year with Vue.js

Okay, okay, it’s been more than a year, but I couldn’t resist the title. Sorry! This is a write-up about how I started with Vue.js and how I use it to develop my side project.

Digital nomading in October in Thessaloniki, Greece

Travel & what to see Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece, it is a student city full of bars and tavernas. The most known site is the White Tower which houses a little museum about the city’s history and a roof with 360° view. You can take a little boat ride around the […]

Writing test cases with given, when and then

At my previous workplace we worked with Groovy and Grails and I had the opportunity to use testing framework for Groovy called Spock. Spock uses labels to divide test cases into different blocks. That way, data definition and final asserts are separated from the code under test, which is typically a function or a method […]

Convert Markdown text to HTML and to plaintext in JavaScript

Let’s create a small JavaScript module that will be able to convert formatted text in Markdown to HTML and to plaintext. I chose Marked.js as my library of choice because with this library it is very easy to modify the output. Here is our basic module to convert Markdown to HTML:

import marked from "marked"

const mdOptions = {
  // whether to conform to original MD implementation
  pedantic: false,
  // Github Flavoured Markdown
  gfm: true,
  // tables extension
  tables: true,
  // smarter list behavior
  smartLists: true,
  // "smart" typographic punctuation for things like quotes and dashes
  smartypants: true,
  // sanitize HTML tags
  sanitize: true,
  // ... other options
}

export function convertToHTML(markdownText) {
  marked.setOptions(mdOptions)
  return marked(markdownText)
}

import marked from "marked"

const mdOptions = {

// whether to conform to original MD implementation

pedantic: false,

// Github Flavoured Markdown

gfm: true,

// tables extension

tables: true,

// smarter list behavior

smartLists: true,

// "smart" typographic punctuation for things like quotes and dashes

smartypants: true,

// sanitize HTML tags

sanitize: true,

// ... other options

}

export function convertToHTML(markdownText) {

marked.setOptions(mdOptions)

return marked(markdownText)

}

As we can […]

Why I chose MailerLite instead of MailChimp

I was recently building a product launch page for Contact Cache and I wanted to allow people to sign up for product announcements and news. I’ve never collected email addresses or mass-emailed people before. And because I am not heavily involved in marketing, I didn’t know much about the state of email marketing platforms today. […]

Introducing Contact Cache

It has been more than a year since I wanted to have some sort of “personal relationship manager”. In other words I needed a tool to write down notes about people since I am always forgetful. And since at that time I didn’t find anything satisfactory, I decided to build an app for myself that […]

Flask API Quickstart Application with JSON Web Tokens, SQLAlchemy and Pytest

I created a sample Flask application that shows how to create HTTP API with authentication provided by JSON Web Tokens. It can be used to learn a bit about Flask, SQLAlchemy, JSON Web Tokens, Pytest and how it all works together. In particular, it shows how to: hash passwords using bcrypt issue and verify JWT […]