After the Python course, the same group of developers met again with Toby for a Django framework training. The Django course was a day shorter than the Python one and felt more focused and intensive. We were given a great opportunity to build upon our Python knowledge and learn how one does web development using the Django framework.
Positive side effects of automated testing
We’ve recently been doing more automated testing in the SSP, and with that has come a lot of the benefits you might expect: an ability to spot faults as we make changes, and a guarantee of functionality working as prescribed among them. But I’ve come across a whole bunch of bonus benefits we get, some related to managing stories and projects, and some as personal gains for me.
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Documenting Spring Boot Web Services with Swagger v2
A while ago I wrote about how to document Spring Boot Microservices with Swagger. This new post details how to use Swagger v2 documentation in order to document your web services. Using V2 will let you do neat things like use ReDoc, or import your Web Service into Postman (both of which are also awesome!).
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Puppet Training
An increasingly important aspect of our strategy is to use automation as much as possible when appropriate. Using automation ensures that our application delivery infrastructure is consistent across our Development, Test and Production environments, and allows a service to be rolled out quickly onto a new server if required. It also enables us to stop doing the same manual task over and over again..
We started using Puppet over a year ago and have since used it to automate many aspects of web server (Apache HTTP Server) and application server (such as Tomcat) configuration. Several of our priority services such as Student records system, MyEd portal and Central Wiki are now built with the help of Puppet.
In order to get the most out of Puppet several Development services staff have attended training provided by Puppet. Last week was the turn of myself and Development Technology colleague Riky to attend Puppet Practitioner. I was a little apprehensive as I hadn’t been to Puppet Fundamentals, the course that Practitioner builds upon. The apprehension was unfounded as the experience that I had gained using puppet “in anger” building services was more than enough to see my through.
Our trainer gave a honest view of the different ways (good and bad) of solving real world problems they had come across whilst using Puppet.
The training covered things to be added to our todo list including, investigating testing of Puppet DSL using rspec. Also something to ponder is syntax validation of Hiera YAML files after I confused Puppet and myself yesterday by missing out a colon between the key and value. Riky found this Testing Hiera Data article that might be handy…
Python Training
We’re in that exciting period where we’re introducing a new language and new framework within IS Apps: we’re adopting Python with Django as our development platform of choice for web apps. Making such a significant change isn’t just about the technology or the underlying infrastructure but the people too, and means making a significant investment in developing our knowledge and skills.
To that end a group of intrepid developers and I have just undertaken the first of two training courses covering Python and Django.
Code sprint five by five
Last week Development Services, in collaboration with colleagues in the University Website Programme team, helped run a code sprint with developers from around the University to work on fixes and enhancements for EdWeb, the Drupal-based content management system that underpins the University’s website. This post gathers some technology-agnostic thoughts on what we did to prepare, and how we ran our sprint, that might be of interest to anyone thinking about running a similar event.
Python4U – A new web development platform for IS Apps
It’s been under wraps for a while now but the team have been working really hard and at long last, our new Python development platform is nearing its July launch. In this post, I provide a preview of some of the features we will be delivering for Developers in the first release of our new Python web development platform.
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ScotlandJS 2016
Scotland JS was held on the 2nd and 3rd of June at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh. There were numerous talks, a few interesting and/or useful of which I have detailed here.
There were a few others, such as VR, JavaScript desktop applications and LiveJS (A demo of using MIDI input to create visuals) that I have not covered. If anyone wants to know more about these, I can also write up the notes I have about them. The rest I have written my notes on and what we can take away from them.
ScotlandCSS conference
On June 1st I attended the ScotlandCSS conference. This was a first ever edition of this event with 11 speakers and very interesting talks. The event was divided into four blocks which included three talks per block and were followed by the Discussion Track. I have found this structure very functional as there was a good chance to talk to the speakers or ask some questions.