Articles
This very application, a CMS based on Neo4J
Publishing articles on a website can be as simple as uploading HTML files to a web server. However, writing articles in raw HTML can be time consuming. A content management system (CMS) is an application designed to solve this issue by providing a simple way to create and manage web content directly from the web browser. There are many CMSs available, namely Wordpress or Joomla but I decided to create my own as a form of practice and in order to have it highly customized to my needs.
Finances management web app
Most banks nowadays provide e-banking interfaces that allow clients to monitor the state of their accounts. However, each bank has its own system and the provided interfaces sometimes lack functionalities. Consequently, I decided to create my own finance dashboard, that combines information regarding multiple accounts. Currently I use it to keep track of my bank accounts balance over time as well as provide a breakdown of my transactions.
HTML basics
HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It is used to describe the content of a webpage to web browsers. Originally, web browsers were designed to display text documents and so HTML was used to define the various parts making up those documents.
CSS basics
HTML defines the content of a web page but not its aesthetics. Styling a document is achieved using CSS, which stands for Cascading Style Sheet and is another language that web browsers can interpret.
Force IE to use its latest version
Depending on the settings, Internet Explorer can decide to render webpages using a lower version, which can result in compatibility issues.
Fixed asset management system
Many companies rely on spreadsheets to keep track of their fixed assets. However, spreadsheets are commonly designed to be edited manually, which makes automation difficult.
Image upload microservice
An image is worth a thousand words and probably even more if comparing their size in bytes. When designing my CMS, I originally intended to store images directly in the article, encoded in Base64. However, this would considerably increase the size of each article, making the whole CMS slow.
APIs: Why and how
From a simplistic point of view, software can be seen as a combination of operations performed on data. Data comes in, gets processed through a series of functions and some result comes out.
RESTful API design
There are four main kind of operations when working with a database: Create, Read, Update and Delete (CRUD). However, databases are usually not exposed directly to the clients. Instead, those operations are performed by a server side application with a client-facing API. The most common type of APIs nowadays are based on HTTP. An HTTP API can be built with complete freedom. However, guidelines for best-practice HTTP API design have been created. An API following those guidlines is called a REST (or RESTful) API.
Camera viewer
IP cameras are cheaper than ever and with the ESP32-CAM boards it is now possible to stream video for less than USD 10. However, IP cameras are commonly either only accessible from within their network, or use servers from third party companies to allow users to see the video feed from anywhere in the world. As both scenarios are inconvenient, I decided to create a camera viewer application that can proxy the video feed to a web interface.