James McDonald

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Before you Upgrade to Windows 11

Download and install Veeam agent for Windows Community Edition https://www.veeam.com/agent-for-windows-community-edition.htmlIf the upgrade fails you can roll back and try again later (my desktop that I write this post on was unbootable after the first upgrade and I...

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List your VSCode Extensions

Ever wondered what extensions you have installed and want to keep a list? This actually is a good way to audit your currently installed extensions and then weed out the ones you no longer need or don't use code --list-extensions # output...

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array_merge vs the + operator

<?php $options = [ 'rootNode' => 'response' ]; // array_merge // the same key appearing later will overwrite echo print_r(array_merge(['rootNode' => 'root'], $options), true); /** * output * * Array * ( * [rootNode] => response * ) */ // + syntax if it already...

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Use a Value Object in your Entity Accessors

Just looking at Laracasts https://laracasts.com/series/whip-monstrous-code-into-shape/episodes/6 and God Object cleanup and found you can return a Value Object which can have multiple methods in the object with allows you to return different formatting or return a...

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ZPL SBPL

Zebra Printer Language http://labelary.com/viewer.html The above website has a page where you can enter ZPL and it will render a sample. Very handy for development Sato Barcode Printer Language QZ Tray is a really cool web service you install on Windows, Linux and...

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PHP Iterators

Just came across a Youtube talk "Iterators in PHP" by Jake Smith published in 2014 that steps through the many different Iterators and some practical examples. I have reproduced many of the examples Jake used below, running them with PHP 8.1.5 and published the code...

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PHP array_map Multiple Arrays

array_map can take multiple arrays. I like how it starts mapping through them starting at the first element of each array all together and then keeps mapping until it completes the largest array. Each argument to the callback function is the current element of the...

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