Adrian Hall

Product Architect by day; Open-source developer by night

Because Developers are Awesome - page 3

Recent posts

Building TypeScript projects with the swc compiler

July 11, 2024  5 minute read  

In my last article, I set up a small project that I’m going to use for TypeScript development using ES modules that are “root-relative” - i.e. I don’t have to provide a relative path. I can use a path like #root/relative/path.js instead so that the code doesn’t change if I decide to move the source file I’m working on. I want to switch from importing “.js” files to importing “.ts” files. To do that, I need to set allowImportingTsExtensions. The tsc tool says I can’t do that unless I also ...

TypeScript, ES Modules, and root-relative imports

July 10, 2024  5 minute read  

As you might have gathered from my last article, I’m currently working in the TypeScript world. My experience with converting from CommonJS to ES Modules got me thinking - what is state of the art right now? So I delved in. I want to build a CLI tool using TypeScript and ES Modules but I want to use non-relative roots. What are non-relative roots? Well, if you want to import a module within your project with ES Modules, you might write something like this: import { something } from '../...

Converting a TypeScript project from CommonJS to ESM

July 06, 2024  6 minute read  

I haven’t made much progress on my own projects recently because of a project at work. Specifically, I am currently maintaining a CLI tool written in TypeScript about five years ago. It hasn’t really been looked after on a consistent basis, but some of the libraries that it uses (specifically, update-notifier and wait-on) have some security issues. Now, this is a development CLI tool, so the actual vulnerabilities don’t affect production code. Still, many people don’t like to use tools th...

The State of React UI libraries in 2024

June 27, 2024  7 minute read  

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been away from React development for a while, and I’m intending on writing a web application. I’m comparing the various libraries that I can use for my application. In this post, I’m going to be comparing UI component libraries. Thus far, my tech stack is: Base web framework: React Frontend tooling: Vite Hosting: Azure Static Web Apps State management: Redux Toolkit React UI component libraries are collections of ready-to-use UI elements that...

The State of React state management in 2024

June 25, 2024  13 minute read  

I’ve been away from React development for a while. I stupidly asked what the best way to create a React app was in 2024 on the React subreddit, and found that reddit is not a friendly or welcoming community. For those wondering, there are three ways of creating a React app - Vite, Remix, and NextJS - but the community suggests Vite. Given the somewhat frosty reception I got on the React subreddit, I decided to do my own research across a number of topics for a new project - a social media c...

Build a Blog: Going to production with Azure Static Web Apps

June 08, 2024  4 minute read  

I’m almost ready to take my Static Web App to production and make it public. However, there are a few things that I want to make sure I do before going to production. This is true of any application hosted in the cloud, so it;s a good reminder of things to think about. This post is part of a sequence showing how to deploy a blog on Azure Static Web Apps: Deploying Azure Static Web Apps Configuring Azure DNS Configuring Static Web Apps Custom Domains Taking Static Web Apps to Pr...

Build a Blog: Custom domains for Azure Static Web Apps

June 07, 2024  8 minute read  

In my last post, I registered a DNS domain name and set up Azure DNS for it. I want my blog to use that domain name, so I need to set up a custom domain in Static Web Apps using Azure DNS. Of course, nothing is that simple. My blog uses repeatable deployments via Azure Developer CLI, so there is a little bit of extra work to do. This post is part of a sequence showing how to deploy a blog on Azure Static Web Apps: Deploying Azure Static Web Apps Configuring Azure DNS Configuring ...

Build a Blog: Set up DNS in Azure

June 06, 2024  4 minute read  

Today, I’m continuing on the job of setting up a new blog. I’ve now got three blog posts, so that’s enough for me to consider what I need to do for production. I don’t have a domain yet, so this post is all about setting up the domain. This post is part of a sequence showing how to deploy a blog on Azure Static Web Apps: Deploying Azure Static Web Apps Configuring Azure DNS Configuring Static Web Apps Custom Domains Taking Static Web Apps to Production Step 1: Pick a name Wh...

Build a Blog: Deploy Azure Infrastructure three ways

June 05, 2024  16 minute read  

For most developers, dealing with the infrastructure part of the job is hard. I like to say “give me a database and a web site” and prefer not to get into the other requirements like DNS, security, and multi-region reliability. My web sites and other cloud projects (including this one) are pretty open. So, what’s the minimum I need to know to deploy stuff on Azure? How can I get my project deployed on Azure for development with the minimum of hassle? This post is part of a sequence show...

Dev containers are a developers best friend

June 04, 2024  6 minute read  

If you’ve ever had to rebuild or significantly upgrade your machine in the middle of a project, then you will recognize the pain. You find that some versions of your favorite tools have changed, or you don’t remember the specific build command or tool download location for that one thing you rely on. Dev containers was designed with this in mind. It’s the technology behind Codespaces and supported in Visual Studio Code. In this tutorial, I’ll walk through the steps to create your own dev ...