Episode 124 / 2021.12.27
Andrew Welch, Ryan Irelan
Ryan Irelan & Andrew record another devMode standup where we discuss topics ranging from the etymology of the word “sanguine” to the entomology of the Texas fire ants that attacked Ryan.
We go on to talk more about the Docker Compose API follies, the massive AWS outage, how redundant systems aren’t always that resilient, and Ryan coding while on prescription drugs.
We also chat about some projects Andrew has been working such as the Matrix Criteria Behavior for finding entries based on fields in Matrix blocks, and the AX that Matrix Facades can provide.
Finally, we have an in-depth discussion on the future (or lack thereof) of the Pluginfactory.io website (which goes on in the after-show, so stick around past the closing tunes).
- Sanguine etymology
- A Brief History of Bloodletting
- docker-compose container name
- The History of Docker
- Fire Ant
- Prednisone side effects
- European wasp
- Eurasian brown bear
- How the AWS outage wreaked havoc across the U.S.
- AWS Multi-Region Application Architecture
- Chaos Monkey
- How To Set Up a Private Git Server on a VPS
- Who controls the Internet?
- Searching Craft CMS Matrix Blocks
- Creating a custom field in Craft CMS
- The Hemingway Stories
- Did Edison really electrocute Topsy the Elephant?
- Pluginfactory.io
- generator-craftplugin git repo
- yeoman
- Creating Craft CMS plugins with generator-craftplugin video
- Pluginfactory.io plugin & module stats
- 21 Artisan Make Commands
- What even is PHP? (with Rector discussion)
Andrew: All right welcome to demo fm a podcast dedicated to the tools techniques and technologies used in modern web development I'm andrew welch from and ny studio 1 7
Ryan: And I'm Ryan Ireland from Kraquest io.
Andrew: and ryan and I are on here doing another standup if you're hearing this. It's gonna be a little bit after christmas but before New year so we wanted to get everyone kind of in the in the festive spirit with a little bit of christmas music and we did not want to have ryan singing it. So.
Ryan: Ah, not after all the eggnog I've been drinking over Christmas andrew.
Andrew: Yeah, well listen I want to start this off with what I did the last standup which is an etymology of kind of deal and ryan is 1 of these guys that he professes to be incredibly literate incredibly well read but yet but yet when i.
Ryan: Yes, that's right.
Ryan: I Never said that.
Andrew: You know, gave him a couple of words from my book that I was reading heart of darkness he he didn't know any of them. Okay, so let's let's just frame this but ryan the word Sanguine. Do you know what sanguine means. So if I said to you I was sanguine about coming down to visit you or etct cetera what what would that mean? don't you look it up I see your little hands type in. Okay, okay, all right all right.
Ryan: So I believe it means um maybe I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm just looking at a book which is not that um I believe it means like contemplative or or or not um. me me Melancholy ah it doesn't sound like that though.
Andrew: So it means exactly the opposite it means yeah it means confidently optimistic or cheerful is what it means and this is a word that has always interested me actually because I actually remember.
Ryan: Gosh.
Andrew: Back in the I think it was maybe like tenth grade or something english class and they were talking about the the teacher was talking about the history of the word sanguine and where it comes from and I found it really interesting because the word itself comes from. Ah.
Ryan: And.
Andrew: The latin root which means blood like literally the the Latin root of this sanguinius means of blood right? and so you might say well that's crazy like how does that end up meaning cheerful or hopeful or optimistic when it's it's.
Ryan: Oh interesting. Yeah.
Andrew: Literally about blood and the story is that back in the day when they didn't really know what was going on in terms of healthcare 1 of the things that they would do to try and make people feel better was bloodletting right? So they would have leeches and they would use those to to get the blood out of people because they thought it was 1 of the. Four humors and if you had too much of it that it could make you sick So the word sanguine which comes from blood has been associated with confidently optimistic or cheerful because the idea was if you drain people's blood. It will make them feel better because they have.
Ryan: You interesting but definitely make them whiteheaded.
Andrew: Um, kind of an issue. So. But like yeah, it probably makes them a little delusional but that's my that's my etymology. It's nothing. It's not necessarily a phrase but it's a word that I find the the root is kind of surprising because it means blood but yet it's.
Ryan: Yeah.
Ryan: Yeah, yeah.
Andrew: It's cheerful and optimistic and I just think it's kind of an interesting history that.
Ryan: Not only the root but the the um the sound of it does not sound cheerful I know this sounds weird but I'm very like that's how I identify things. It's interesting.
Andrew: Yeah.
Andrew: Well I mean there are some words that are kind of like that like I'm always kind of ambivalent about ambivalent. You know what? I mean I'm always kind of never really sure what's going on there Anyway, let's let's ah, let.
Ryan: Right? Yeah, yeah, well I'm sanguine about our us recording this podcast and how's that no that was it I was just trying to use it in a sentence.
Andrew: You are you going anywhere with it or is that so it's like a seventh grade level usage. Okay I got it in terms of.
Ryan: Yeah, well I mean it is a podcast I think most things that people talk about on podcast are seventh grade level I think.
Andrew: So Ryan I Want to talk about Docker Compose We we did a little segment on it that the Docker compose Api in real quick for anyone I'm going to recap it real quick. They basically they used 1 way of naming their containers and then they switch it to another way. And then they switched it back with a behind a feature flag and now we woke up 1 day and it was wrong again and they rolled it all the way back to underscores which is what it was in the beginning whether you choose a Docker compose to Api or not. I'm I'm bringing it up just because like this is getting ridiculous, right? It's really ridiculous.
Ryan: Like who so Docker the the Docker project. This isn't so this is Docker composed which is a component of the overall docker thing is that is that a community maintained project or is that actually like underwritten by a.
Andrew: You yeah.
Ryan: Corporate entity and.
Andrew: I I believe that a company was formed around it I don't know honestly I don't know the origins of Docker I should have looked that up and checked it out my my guess is it started as an open source project and then they formed a company around it I know that they were trying for some time to make money on it using various.
Ryan: Because I.
Ryan: Yeah, the reason I ask is because typically I guess it doesn't matter if there's a company behind it or not because it is such a large and widely used project that.
Andrew: Avenues So I'm pretty sure that it's a company that is maintaining it Um, but I don't know anything beyond that.
Ryan: Um, that I'm surprised that there's this type of like ah sort of just you know nonchalantness about like how things are released and removed and added but ah.
Andrew: Yeah, it. It is a little bit loose and free. Let's let's put it that way I don't know anyway, that's all sorted out I'm just done with it at this point ryan so there are 2 things that 1 of 2 things. So First of all I rolled it back. So it's just underscores everywhere made all those changes. There is also a way in your docker compose file that you can specify the name of a container. This is 1 of those things if they change it 1 more time right? 1 more time they mess with me like this.
Ryan: Yeah.
Andrew: I'm just going to specify the name of the container in the Docker compose file and never have to deal with it again.
Ryan: So so the problem that we ran into with your make file is that at the at least that I ran into is at the top of the make file you have a ah you have like ah a variable that you set that is the name of the container I think is that right can remember No yeah.
Andrew: Yep.
Ryan: And you were assuming um, underscores now couldn't you just change that regx just to be like handle both cases or not necessarily. It's not I don't have the code open in front of me.
Andrew: It's not a regular expert. Well you mean check against both? Yeah I mean in Theory I could check it against both. But at the rate that this is going. They're going to change it to like bullet bullet points or something like that like who knows what they're gonna what they're gonna end up doing and changing to and the reason why I left it like that is that it.
Ryan: Check the whole alphabet. Ah. Yeah, and.
Andrew: If you don't specify anything. It will use the current directory of the project as the the root name of the whatever the the docker stuff is and then it will use the name of the service that you specify in the actual docker compose file and then it will automatically append to 1
Ryan: And.
Andrew: And yeah I could manually name all all of these things but then I would be putting a lot of redundant stuff into the Docker Compose Files I Kind of like that it just picks up the name based on the location of where the thing is so I was I'm kind of reluctant to name them. But I'm just I'm done with it if they change it again.
Ryan: Yeah, and I get I get your situation too because you created a tool and offered it out to other people and it needs to be as flexible and and generic as possible for everyone. So.
Andrew: Um, done with it.
Andrew: I Yeah anyway I don't want to? yeah I don't want to spend too much time on this it just it's almost comedy because of the fact that it's going back again. But we're back to underscores and let's just assume we're staying here Ryan let's hope that we're staying here.
Ryan: It's not like it's just your own make file. Yeah no, it's but it's.
Ryan: I hope so I mean I had a complete failure of docker on my imac Yesterday. So I don't so um, it was the least of my worries Yesterday. But.
Andrew: You Yeah, but you were on drugs and you were high as a kite and probably doing some really not wonderful things. So and actually how did this happen you were trying to you were stamping out ah a fire ant colony or something and and they attacked you or.
Ryan: I was at so this this is um, we're recording on a Friday and this would have been last Saturday so so 6 days ago we I was with my daughter at the softball fields where her softball league plays and this is it's offseason right now. So we were just there for some off-season practice just to you know.
Andrew: And you wanted to teach her How to how to stomp on innocent little creatures that are not harming anybody and and how to use your your power to oppress the masses is what you what? you did.
Ryan: Well I.
Ryan: No, um I inadvertently stepped into a small pile of fire ants and I don't know if you have fire ants up there Andrew or if you okay and the people who don't know what they are I know Europe doesn't have anything any insects that hurt you. So for people that are from Europe. Um.
Andrew: Ah, we do.
Ryan: The fire ants are these little red ants that ah bite you and they will bite you multiple times they actually will latch on and then kind of spin around on you. Um, and it hurts and they can be some people can have like it as it like oh we can never pronounce it ana. Anaphylactic reaction is that the word um like an actual truly life threatenning reaction the same way you would if you were allergic to like a yellow jacket sting or a beast sting and.
Andrew: Yeah I don't know the exact definition ryan unlike most people on Facebook I am not a doctor so I'm not dispensing medical advice i.
Ryan: Ah, anyway, but they do they typically just give you a burning like feeling and it's typically like on your legs right? or your feet or somewhere um and then and they are super aggressive and then you typically get these like little. Red welts and and that's kind of it and that's in the past that's what I've had. We have them all over here in texas if these softball fields haven't been used in like almost a month because the season is over that basically anything that goes unused here. The like ants will just take over It's not maintained. So um, I've never had a problem with fire amp bits I've been bitten before and this time I had a I didn't have like a serious reaction that was life threatening I had a reaction that was delayed but caused on my right I just got it on my right ankle. But caused my right ankle lower leg and foot to like swell up. Um and I didn't notice it until the next morning I had gone on. Ah you know my so typical Sunday morning run and I didn't notice so afterwards till someone pointed it out that my ankle was all swollen and I started feeling like really bad like um. Like I had I don't know what to how to explain it. But I feel like I was like you know experiencing like something not normal in my body and um I took bannad drill which you're supposed to take as the antihitamine of course that made me feel worse because Benad drill completely knocks you out. Um.
Andrew: It does it though.
Ryan: It does for me I've starting to find out this week that I'm basically sensitive to all the things and um, yeah, let me get this runner vegan guy and we're gonna bite him. Um.
Andrew: It It sounds like the the ants were just like oh this guy's an easy target. He's a well'll Just what's his Ah we'll just take him down.
Ryan: So then then then I I.
Andrew: You had you had cankles like a overweight pregnant woman right? You had these big old cankles going on. Yeah.
Ryan: Yet? Well I had 1 and I did go I did like a virtual like urgent care visit on Monday and they gave me ah prescribed me preddenisone which is a steroid and then I went to my actual doctor on wednesday. And no 1 really knows that this just can just happen to people like your reaction to certain toxins like that from insects can like elevate like it could be that it's worse next time it could be that it's the same. It could be ah.
Andrew: You So are you a spiteful person Ryan are you now do you have a vendetta against fire ants. Are you gonna go out and pour gasoline down there in little nests. Yeah, oh my goodness you will burn them alive.
Ryan: I Mean if I have firerants on my prop on at my house in my yard I will absolutely pour bowling water on them. Um, yeah, no, they're not like what good do they do they bring to the world. But.
Andrew: Wow wow.
Ryan: So I had it so the problem that I had andrew was that I had took these steroids and I am not I was not equipped for the side effects of steroids of prednizone and there's all sorts of different types of steroids but of prednizone like it makes me you know excitability and inability to sleep. Like those are all side effects of it and my whole life i' always been very sensitive to all sorts of different things like sugar and caffeine and um, like when I was younger, it was always like artificial like ah dyes and stuff they put in food like all that stuff that can cause excitability. I've just been this week I've I feel like I've been shaking inside my skin the entire week but it's at the same time I'm also like really tired so it's this weird like you've ever had like been over caffeinated but Tired. It's kind of like that. So.
Andrew: So.
Andrew: It's it sounds like every day of my life right? ah.
Ryan: Ah, so anyway, um, it hasn't been the most productive week I was planning to actually do some coding and we were laughing earlier before we started recording that I abandoned that quickly because focus just hasn't been there. It.
Andrew: Yeah, everybody I get these texts from Ryan He's just like ah I'm flying cause I'm on these steroids and I took this and I'm all messed up and then I'm just like okay that's nice Ryan and then I'll get a text from a little while later. I think I'm going to refactor all of the code on my project into view and I'm like are you sure it's a good idea right now I mean your last your last text was basically just telling me I'm tripping Dude you know.
Ryan: Not a good idea. But. So it was Yesterday was bad. Um I did not feel well. So anyway, um, that's the deal is it was surprising. It was a little scary just to see like you're you know, ah a body part kind of just get all like. Swollen and like you just have no idea where you're going and I otherwise you know have really don't have any major medical problems. So it's kind of ah, kind of freaked me out right.
Andrew: Right? I'm an advocate for the European wasp which is very angry that you said that no insect in Europe will hurt you in any way and the European wasp is pretty upset with you making that kind of broad statement.
Ryan: Ah I don't think Europe has any any dangerous, any dangerous animals or insects. There's no threats there. No what do they have where where do they have bears.
Andrew: I Are you kidding me that they have bears. There's some bears in the some of the forests in Germany and also in Eastern and Eastern Europe There are.
Ryan: Okay, oh maybe I don't think there's bears in the alps North yeah, but not like I mean normal stuff like a bee but not like I don't know maybe I have like this.
Andrew: And and they and there definitely are stinging insects like you're you've lost your mind.
Andrew: Which would you rather be stung by fire ant or a European wasp it. It's a wasp you know what a wasp is this is just a wasp that lives in Europe It would hurt way more to get stung by a European or or bit by.
Ryan: I Don't know what a European wasp is did you send me a link. Yeah I don't like wasp.
Ryan: Yeah I don't want to be I think wasps are equally as um, they have like zero value I don't like they they steal honey they they're basically like little thieves and I don't see.
Andrew: Ah, European wasp than a fire ant man.
Andrew: Wow.
Ryan: Like they're like the script kitties of ah of the the flying insect world. They basically.
Andrew: All right? We got Thanos so Thanos over here deciding what animals have value and what don't all right I got it.
Ryan: Ah, anyway, but enough about insects. Um, Andrew do you run anything on aws.
Andrew: I do I have some clients that run services on aws and I use amazon s 3 and you know aws is this huge collection of services. So for some projects I'm all aws for others just using pieces and for some others not at all, you know.
Ryan: So um, in the first week of December I think it was on December ah, let's see Sixth. There was a major outage of aws and it was 1 of their regions. So. As has broken up into regions. There's us east 1 us east 2 us west blah blah blah. So so forth and then across the world and a region can be multiple data centers as well. Um, but anyway us east 1 was down and it brought down. A lot of sites I know the email tool that I use drip was down for almost basically the entire day. Um a lot of places were down didn't have any access and it wasn't all the services I think was e c 2 I don't think s 3 was affected. Um, ah, there were some other. Services as well. Um, but I know api gateway was down some of the sso. The sso service aws connect um, but it was like a once in 5 year type of outage. You don't really see this very much.
Andrew: Yeah I.
Ryan: But the funny thing is is that a friend of mine who is a aws devops engineer not not working there. But that's what he does he he's you know, certified in that he does it for another company but um, he kind of had a smile because I think there's kind of an unwritten rule of of. Or least, maybe it's just him of not putting anything in us East 1 because it is the um oldest I believe of the regions and it's the 1 that seems to always have the most problems. It's where even I've had problems like when I started setting things up, he's like don't put your production stuff in us East 1 like put it like west or somewhere else because.
Andrew: Really like the kind of I mean I realize it's an older but whatever why? Why does that matter. It's just a don't these just correspond to data centers. Yeah.
Ryan: Us east 1 is's just a complete nightmare. Yeah I Ah, and I don't know if it's just like a like a kind of a tale you know that isn't that isn't true. Um, or if there are like if the some of the underlying Tech. You know it's not obviously the servers themselves because those things are swapped out like crackers I mean they just kind of just you know push those things in and out over and Over. Um I Don't think we can use that anymore. Yeah, nerd Tales That's probably better.
Andrew: I I think the the old verbiage used to be wives Tale I Think let's let's update it and call these call these nerd nerd Tales right? So I think I think this is a nerd tale in terms of you know it's a superstition like ah, it's just cause it's old I mean.
Ryan: Yeah, it yeah maybe but I thought it was funny but also what was even more interesting to me is that something like drip had like zero multi-region or Multi -availability zone redundancy which is.
Andrew: I yeah.
Andrew: And I'm actually going to throw shade on your insult. Yeah I agree with you that they should have some kind of redundancy if they are a large service like that. But the reality is most of them don't and the reality is even the larger ones that do once something fails they figure out Oh that didn't exactly.
Ryan: Yeah, right.
Ryan: Yeah, right.
Andrew: Didn't exactly work the way it was supposed to in terms of redundancy. But I'm going to throw shade on your ah what you're attacking the Us East zone for because I have a screenshot of when stuff was down yesterday Amazon connect was down Amazon dynamodb.
Ryan: And.
Andrew: Amazon elastic compute cloud all 3 of those were not in us East they were in North virginia in north virginia's us east 1
Ryan: Yeah, well, there's that is us east 1 I I believe so yeah, well so that's the that's the ah now I have to remember the terminology I used to know all this.
Andrew: I Don't know it's specifying right here I'm looking at the the screenshot and.
Ryan: So an availability zone in Aws there's regions and zones so a region is and then ah yeah, North virginia is us east 1 and then.
Andrew: I yep.
Andrew: And right no, but it's got to be more than that because I know that they have data centers in you know, well ohio wouldn't count but up in in new york and some other places like that is us east 1 a collection of a number of different data centers 1 of which is North virginia or.
Ryan: Now they.
Andrew: What is the hierarchy.
Ryan: Let's see I don't remember I used to have to know this so I just see listed here as us east 1 is us east north virginia us east 2 is us east ohio and I know you know we ah see.
Andrew: Ah, all right? all right? I guess I can't throw shade at you then.
Ryan: Um, anyway, but typically what you do on a ah service where you need to have um some sort of like you know uptime agreement or or sla is the is that you would have things out on in multiple.
Andrew: So yep.
Ryan: Availability zones in multiple regions throughout if you're on aws throughout aws and that's built into their architecture right? You can architect things to do that both in if you're using something like rds for the database. Um, you can just there's like 1 checkbox that says make this r ds instance Multi a z and then basically it gets replicated across. Ah, multiple servers and different availability zones for.
Andrew: The fun thing is though Ryan I Almost always see it that people will set up redundant systems and then something will fail and it will be a piece of the system and it just they didn't expect that it would fail in this way like a root dns outage or something like that and.
Ryan: Right.
Ryan: You? Yeah no, no totally.
Andrew: And it really makes it difficult to to do dry runs to test for actual failure to use like a chaos Monkey kind of tool I Guess you have to just assume everything is going to kill or be killed and see what survives you know.
Ryan: Right? Yeah, so anyway, um, I thought it was interesting. It doesn't happen that often a lot of people were impacted and I know that in terms of drip who they're in like the Mark email marketing business. They had all of their customers for almost an entire workday couldn't. Send any emails which and this time a year is a pretty big deal. Um, you don't have to call my email spam andrew you you opted in at some point I'm sure. So if anybody got affected by that.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah, this is when everyone spams me with all the emails I don't want to get.
Andrew: I I did not opt in.
Ryan: Um, like my site craftquest I run on served served is built on top of the digital ocean architecture. So I wasn't impacted on this but I used to be and I used to have tons of ah client sites on Aws before I migrated them actually all over to served.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah.
Ryan: It would have been a bad day for for me. But if if that had happened but a lot of people had a bad day and so it's just you know like Aws if a of us has an outage. There's not a lot that the engineers can do right? The devops engineer. They're just like well we can't fix this. This is an aws thing.
Andrew: It? Yeah right? Yeah it it.
Ryan: And so it's It's a little frustrating. It's almost better if you can dig in and try to root out the problem and and fix it.
Andrew: It's kind of funny if you flash back 30 years you would get either a day off of school or a day off of work and if you're if you're under 30 I don't even want to hear from you because you're just annoying me, you're just annoying me at this moment. But if it was a really bad weather. You know like a snow day.
Ryan: Right.
Andrew: Right? You'd be like oh it's a snow day. We don't have to work these days if you're a knowledge worker or a programmer of any kind when github is down. You're just like okay I guess we have the day off you know because I mean literally so many things depend on Github functioning that.
Ryan: Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Andrew: When it's down. You're just like well you know I guess I guess I'll take the day off I mean there there is some work you can kind of do on your own but inevitably, you're you're tied into that system in ways that you didn't even think you were you know.
Ryan: So right? which is kind of funny because the original idea behind Git was as a decentralized version control system and and it's all been built back with the workflows of being more actually more centralized where.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah.
Ryan: Um, you can still work and get and commit things. But um, you're not able to collaborate with anybody you know unless you unless you export get patches and email them to someone say here's my here's my work I've been doing and they can import their patch. Yeah.
Andrew: Well so I've actually done it so I run my own git server and I have private repos that are up there and I can pull down from github and then I can push up to 1 of the private repos so in in theory that could be used in the interim but you're right I mean.
Ryan: So.
Andrew: Vast majority of people don't do something like that and that's just the way the whole internet has gone though I mean the whole internet was originally decentralized in nature and it's really not anymore and the reason is because of convenience and cost cost effectiveness I mean those are the 2 reasons and it's the same thing with git.
Ryan: And right.
Ryan: Yeah, and with everybody working not everybody. But so many people working remotely um like these types of tools and workflows that has been like core to what we do.
Andrew: You know.
Andrew: I and I thought about it like what happens if Microsoft is like ah you know this lost leader. We're gonna have to charge five dollars a month for the accounts that we're free I mean pretty much everyone is just gonna be like ah this sucks. But we'll pay five bucks a month you know what I mean because what are you gonna do.
Ryan: And.
Ryan: Yeah, Github is a great tool I remember when it was very basic. Um, it's it's a pretty amazing tool. They've done a really nice job.
Andrew: What are you gonna do you know.
Andrew: I yeah I well I'm glad to hear that you are recovering from your fire ant stuff I still don't think that you should do a whole lot of coding ryan um, just you know, but 1 of the things that I wanted to mention to you is that I have. Rejoined the ranks of people that are doing client work. So I've always done a little bit but I signed on to do ten hours a week of client work for a particular company and it's been interesting so far I've been enjoying it some of the challenges that have come along I've i've.
Ryan: Here. Nice.
Andrew: Are ones that on my own I probably never would have seen and tried to implement and I'm working with some really good people so they're allowing me to do things right? You know they're not on my back going. You know do this as quickly as possible so we can close the tickets to move it on the sprint so that we can have you know that's not happening.
Ryan: So yeah.
Andrew: Um, and I'm actually being given the time to do stuff right? which I'm I'm enjoying doing I mean I think it's ah it's kind of fun I don't know that I would want to do a whole lot more than the the 10 hour a week commitment I guess it depends um depends on the project and.
Ryan: So yeah, that's I think that's the best approach is if you don't if it's not like the main part of your income or where your interest is is to do it like on a project by project Base. It's what's interesting to you. That's how I work as I've also. I spent the first like nine months of the year and not really doing any client work I had 1 small retainer client and now I've actually picked back up in the fall. The fall always gets busier. People have more things that they want to do once the Summer's over here. Um, the northern hemisphere and um so I actually have picked up a little bit but it's been interesting for me because it gives me the opportunity to like create things that aren't of my own ideas and and I think that's fun.
Andrew: Well in the 1 of the deals in signing on with these people I said all right? you know, pending your approval but I would like the ability to potentially write articles about some of the stuff that we're working on. They're like yeah we're totally cool with that. We're totally down with that and I said you know I'll show them to you first and they're not going to have any of your information or anything like that in there and the 1 of the first articles that has resulted from this was I wrote an article on searching kraft cms matrix blocks which which basically.
Ryan: I Oh that's where that came from Okay, cool.
Andrew: A problem that needed to be solved was they were putting a bunch of information in matrix blocks then they needed to have find be able to find entries that had fields that match certain values in a matrix block in the entry and so I came up with a behavior. That makes it kind of easy for you to do that. It's ah called a a matrix criteria behavior and you can just add that to your the criteria when you do a search you know so you can let's say that you're trying to find something. Let's say that you're trying to find. In in the section Sundays you've got a Sunday builder matrix block. You can just do kraft dot entries dot section Sundays and then you can add matrix criteria and you pass in the name of the field which is Sunday builder the name of the matrix field. And then in an object syntax. You can pass in the field and then the matching value that you want to find in there. So for instance I want to find all of the matrix blocks of the type scoop and of the flavor chocolate and those would be blocks that are in the Sunday builder matrix block in the sundays.
Ryan: Yeah.
Andrew: Entry in the Sundays section and so essentially the more data that we put in the matrix block the more we need something like this that is going to let us search for data that is in inside of that more easily and then find the resulting entries that contain that stuff right? because these are really. Even though they're in a sub thing logically they're attached to the entry and we want to be able to search and filter by stuff that's in there. Yeah.
Ryan: Right? That's cool. Um I have to I haven't looked at that closely I just saw that you posted it. Um, oh gosh, but no I'm now thinking that I do have an issue because of how I structured videos in courses on Craft quest.
Andrew: Well, you were in your your purple haze at the time so you didn't know what's going. Ah, ah.
Ryan: Is that they are like a course is an entry and then there's a matrix a matrix field for the actual videos for each and it in in retrospect, it wasn't a good idea I should have just had a whole another section like a channel with just the single videos. Um, but.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and yeah.
Ryan: But that might actually give me a little bit more insight like for search and other things I'll check that out That's cool.
Andrew: So yeah, this will help you in that regard and the reason why it's implemented as a behavior is so that you can automatically use it in ph p and in craft or sorry you can automatically use it in ph p and in twig templates because all it is is just adding yet another um yet another chained function to the query right? So it's just yet more parameters to add to the query and I think this way is a a nice way to do it so you can just drop it in and start using it. And this is what I mean in terms of they allowed me to do it right? like this is the right way to do it a very abstracted Behavior. So that now we can search any matrix block for any values that are in there and return all the entries that they appear in so I thought that was probably kind of cool. And were you gonna say something.
Ryan: So yeah I was going to ask you so that's implemented as a module whereas how's it. How do you get the functionality into craft.
Andrew: So yeah, you would just implement it either. So if someone wanted to write a plugin using what I did here like more power to you I Just don't feel like writing a plugin and publishing it for this.
Ryan: You You could right? right? Oh you put it in your I know so your boiloate project has that a site module that you have in every project That's where you dropped it and got it. Okay, so.
Andrew: Yes, every project that I create and and this project as well has a module in it. So All you have to do is add 1 event listener I think it listens for undefined behaviors or something like that. And that will add the behavior in and then everything will just work everywhere. So yeah, you just need ah a little chunk of code in your Modules init method to attach the behavior in a way you go yeah and related to that.
Ryan: So awesome. Very cool.
Andrew: I'm gonna put some pressure on myself because we're recording this a little bit earlier. This is coming out just after Christmas There will be another article that will be published by the time this episode goes live on matrix facades and this is another.
Ryan: So.
Ryan: Oh.
Andrew: Concept that has come out of the work that I'm doing for them so they wanted a bunch of information that is going to be displayed in a table inside of craft and you might say Okay, Great. We'll use a table field. Well we can't use a table field. And eye contact. What are you doing here? What are you? What are you reading? What are you looking at here we Leave. He sure you got this whole teleprompter set up so we can oh no wonder No wonder all right.
Ryan: Sorry I'm not reading anything I'm just looking down I'm very tired. Yeah, yeah, note I'm actually using my imac today. Yeah sorry in other news, let's start there or related.
Andrew: So I don't I don't know where I was um, yeah so related to this I ended up creating ah a concept called Matrix facades and what they needed is they wanted to display a bunch of information in a table in an entry and you might say all right? Well use. Ah, table field right? but they wanted to be able to query based on what is in that table right? So now you can't really do that with table fields because it's stored as a Json Blob There's no I guess you could I Guess there's a way that you can use.
Ryan: Okay.
Andrew: Um, Json columns in certain versions of mysql and then maybe you can do it? Um, so then you might say well's just use supertable right? because that is sort of ah a way to do it and they didn't want to use supertable for 2 reasons. So 1 they didn't want to install a plugin. Just to have this functionality and 2 part of what they wanted to do is in every row of this table. They wanted a related user to be listed there and they wanted data from that user to be displayed in the table. Right? And there's no way to do that in a super table field. Yes, you can put the entry there. But then how do you display fields from that user in that column in the table so that was kind of not an option either. So I was thinking about all right? Well how do I do this? What's a good way to do this um. And I said all right? Well can we just implement this with matrix blocks. Can we just do it that way you know and each 1 of these things is a block and it came down from the project owner that no, we don't want blocks. We want a table I'm like well if you think about it.
Ryan: Oh gosh.
Andrew: Ah, table is just like our blocks are just a little bit spaced out tables. You know they're just a little bit more and they're like yeah yeah and they're like no, that's not what we want. We want it to be a table and so I'm thinking about it I'm like well I guess I could write.
Ryan: Yeah, so like table in terms of like the the authoring interface is that what they mean? okay.
Andrew: Custom field type and then I could store you know everything that needs to be stored in records and I could build the queries that need to be built in order to be able to search these things and then I had a little light bulb moment Ryan and I said to myself. Why don't we just use a matrix block. But similar to how in I've published articles on how you can change how a dropdown field looks or works. Why don't we use the matrix as the backing of it but just write our own kind of front end in terms of how it displays the interface to it right.
Ryan: And.
Ryan: So of course you would yeah.
Andrew: And this sounds crazy but it actually ends up being really easy right? because every field has a method that returns the input Html. So All I have to do is write a class that extends a matrix block and returns different html. In terms of how I want the input to be displayed and but a bing but a boom like we're done. You know that's that's all I have to do.
Ryan: How much how much down a rabbit hole. Do you have to go with like styling and interaction or do you get that all inherited then.
Andrew: So well, we're not rendering any of the input html from the matrix blocks at all nothing zero. So we're doing it all ourselves. So it's whatever we decide to output and I guess a way to think of it would be if you view something like notion where you can have different views of your data.
Ryan: Okay.
Ryan: But it got it.
Andrew: Can view it. You know as a card as a table as ah, all sorts of different things. This is the similar concept right? So when you're we're using a matrix block as our backing store. So we're compatible so everything just works. But we're controlling what is displayed for the input and the fun thing is.
Ryan: So Kanban. Yeah.
Andrew: We can also have a kill switch So. There's an environment variable that if it's set it will switch back to regular rendering them as regular old matrix fields and in the particular clients case we added a setting in their ah the user preferences where they can turn on or off whether they. See these as a table and the reason is like you know in case, something goes wrong or you know there's some kind of an issue all it is is a matrix field in the end of the day right? and all we're doing is changing the look of it So an article on that is going to be coming out and it will be out.
Ryan: But before the end of the year all right
Andrew: Well an article will be coming out by the time you are hearing this and if it's not feel free to to email ryan at Majingo and complain. No, but anyway I thought this matrix facade thing was really curious. Yeah.
Ryan: Ah, no I'm not your ah editor I think that's super cool because you are solving the problem of keeping everything first party which has always been my hesitation with things like supertable I mean matrix already makes me nervous. So but.
Andrew: Yeah, so.
Ryan: Ah, keeping it first party but just giving them the the interface they desire. That's that's obviously the right way to go.
Andrew: And the really cool thing is we are empowering people that are front-end developers here because you in in the matrix I'm also extending the field so that it adds an additional um template picker field. That you pick the template that it's going to render for the input html right? So All you need to know to use this Ma matrix facade is you need to know twig and a little bit about the way stuff is stored and you can make your own kind of like front end entry form for.
Ryan: Ah.
Andrew: Matrix blocks and so you can make them look like anything you want to so front end all the php land work is done all you have to do is create a new instance of the matrix facade design your template. However, you want it to be for what renders when they see this matrix thing and then point. The matrix facade feel that it and and you're done. So.
Ryan: That's cool, nice. Well I look forward to reading the article I haven't read it yet because I've been busy.
Andrew: You You haven't read it yet because it's oh I see in the future. You're predicting that you haven't read it all right? this this is right? This is just like premeditated laziness I think is what this is this is this is worse than like.
Ryan: We have to pretend that we're future Ryan and Future andrew.
Ryan: Ah.
Andrew: You know if they manslaughters when you kind of kill someone by accident. This is premeditated. You're going to be lazy and you're determining ahead of time that you're not going to do it all right? you oba.
Ryan: Ah.
Ryan: Yeah, well speaking of reading andrew um I ah you in over the summer or it was in September I came remember when it was you went on vacation. You had this whole idea of having a book to read. Did we talk about that on dev mode too. Okay.
Andrew: Oh yeah, yeah.
Ryan: And you didn't finish the book I think you maybe read read like 12 pages and 8 eighteen. Okay, but anyway I was thinking and it it dawned on me actually last night I was reading this book. Um, it's called the Hemingway stories.
Andrew: So 18
Ryan: Did you watch the Hemingway documentary that came out earlier this year on pbs by ken burns and win Novik it's actually really good. It's um, multipart talks all about Hemingway his and like his whole life and.
Andrew: I did not I.
Ryan: There's an ah like a companion book that they put out of Hemingway's short stories and they're really really good and I think they would appeal to your sensibilities I think actually would you would really like them. But what I thought was would be good for you is kind of you know my this like. Struggle I have to get you back into reading is that some of the page some of the stories are 3 four pages long summer or 10 pages but you could sit down like say you're taking a break from looking at Screens. You could sit on your um, love sack little things you have in your office there. And read 1 short story. Um, and and still be reading but not be like committed to like an 800 page tome or something like that right? like so I wouldn not gonna recommend the Hemingway stories but ernest hemingway in fact um, I'm going to send it to you. I and I would like you to read it. Don't order it I I'm gonna send it. Don't read it while don't be like Hemingway and read it while you're drinking. The other thing I sent you.
Andrew: So all right I'm not gonna order it.
Andrew: Oh no, that's exactly when well so here's the thing I'm not really that intimidated by the length necessarily of a book. It's more just you know I just don't really for whatever reason I it just it seems like very. Plotting to me, you know, like very slow and I I don't know I'm so overst stimulated with the internet and computers and phones I don't know if I can if I can do that I would probably have to be on a boat somewhere. But I've read I've read ulysses like I'm not intimidated by.
Ryan: You? Yeah well I Well I know and and I'm not saying you're um I don't actually don't throw baseless accusations at you like you do at me but I'm not saying you're illiterate.
Andrew: You know, crazy now is it a picture book Ryan is it a picture book. Is it a picture book does it have big does It have big text.
Ryan: Was that and. No, but you can read it on a kindle and increase it if your visions going at your age. But um, but I'm gonna send it to you. It's It's really good. They's short stories and they're almost like vignettes where you're just getting to get a glimpse into um, you know you know that Hemingway changed like how you.
Andrew: The oh Wow All right.
Ryan: Um, like modern writing was done right? Modern fiction writing and ah and it's it's classic like Hemingway style you're you're kind of getting dropped into the middle of something in in these stories really really good
Andrew: Wasn't he mostly just getting drunk and womanizing and I always wondered how he found time to write you know what? I mean like seriously it's pretty incredible.
Ryan: Well I mean he did a ton of that. Absolutely but um, these are.
Ryan: So you know though there is there is like research behind like the the idea of taking breaks from things like screens and all of these um, all these like stimuli we have and then.
Andrew: I yeah.
Ryan: I don't remember that Thomas edison. There's like this I'm not sure if it's true. This story where he would try to like sleep with like 2 it was like 2 glass balls in his hand or something like that and then when he got to that point rate where he felt he was about to fall asleep he would he would basically drop 1 or drop if he was only holding 1 drop it. And that would be the moment where he would wake up and you would have those lucid thoughts those pre-sleep thoughts that would help him solve the most difficult problems he was working on so there's a lot of like.
Andrew: I Don't know the the only the only thing I really believe about edison is that he electrocuted an elephant true story. Look it up if you don't know it.
Ryan: I Should there might be a Hemingway story about it. So ah, there's a lot of research behind the idea of these breaks from I mean you go on a lot of hikes right? How much of your actual creative and and problem solving thinking. Do you do in on the trail in the woods.
Andrew: Right? And that's what I'm trying to say like the the time that I have that someone might use for reading a book when I'm tuning out the stuff that's going on I do stuff where I'm not looking at anything like I'm I'm reading or I'm exercising or I'm doing something like that. You know.
Ryan: Probably a lot. Yeah.
Ryan: I'm gonna send it to you anyway and you should die. You should read it or like um, but when your kids read it I don't think it's anything naughty in here I don't know actually let me finish it first before you do that.
Andrew: All right.
Andrew: It. It's fine. Don't worry about it I'm sure there's nothing in there. That's worse than a Marvel movie or whatever Hanna yeah, the the electrocution of topsy topsy was the name of the elephant. Um, sending it to you and we will link to it in the show notes but it is a real thing about thomas edison though a lot of people don't know.
Ryan: Yeah, of course.
Ryan: Did edison really electrocute topsy The elephant is it true.
Andrew: You it is true. You find it in Wikipedia but more importantly, there's a Bob's burgers episode that is dedicated to it. That's what I find more important. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but Bob's burgers is more dependable. So.
Ryan: Ah I'm actually looking at the rutgers university school of arts and sciences article about the Thomas edison papers. We'll link that right? of course of course.
Andrew: All right? So another thing that I wanted to talk to you about is I have this site called plugin factory so I came out with plugin factory a long time ago back in the days of craft 2 when I was first learning how to set things up.
Ryan: Great site.
Andrew: And I remember being super annoyed by the fact that I had to get the capitalization just right? and if things if the capitalization was just wrong on something like it would just fail and you wouldn't receive an error message or anything that I could remember discerning so I'm like this is stupid. This is dumb. And and we actually had people that were selling flash back in time we had people that were selling boilerplate plugin like you could actually buy this plugin thing and they were selling it on a website right? They were selling this boiler because that's how. Little documentation and little knowledge existed around how to do it. People were willing to buy this thing and that's when I decided that I should make this plugin factory thing because I wanted to make something that I didn't have to deal with any of the nonsense like let computers do what they're good at and let me fill in the rest. So. It's a scaffolding generator for generating krafcms plugins right? and when craft 3 came around I retrofitted on it. The ability to have more than 1 api that it could pull from so you can switch whether you want a K craft 2 point five plugin. Or a craft 3 plugin and the way it does that under the hood is essentially each of the quote unquote apis is in a different directory of files and it handles doing the generation for either 1 and then I added modules to it and under the hood. It uses a tool called yeoman which is kind of old school.
Ryan: It is.
Andrew: For generating all these templates and it was actually first written as a yeoman generator. So. It's a very it was a cli tool that would generate this stuff and what a lot of people don't know is that it actually generates a dot. Craft plugin file that is in the root directory of your your plugin and in that file it has the context for everything it needs to know so you can use the yeoman cli when you're in that project to do something like add a new controller and it will add it already namespaced properly or you know creates a. Console command for this plugin and it will create it automatically for you. So there already is like this nice cli api in there for doing this stuff but it's actually not nice like the syntax is kind of ugly you have to have node and yeoman installed for it to work. And it's based on a really outdated version of yeomeman anyway and I'm at the point where graph four is about to come out at some point soon and I'm thinking about what I'm going to do with plugin factory and I'll tell you my thoughts after you tell me what you think I should do with it.
Ryan: So. Well I think you should give it to me and let me redo it. No Actually no, what was your idea I don't know I think I but ah.
Andrew: Okay, that was better than my idea I'm serious if you want it I'm telling you right on air I will give it to you. You can have it. There have been hundreds of thousands of people that have used it for generating plugins and modules.
Ryan: Okay.
Ryan: This could be ah a Ryan Andrew collaboration. But maybe what you're going to do is you are going to make it into a plugin that someone can generate a plugin from within the craft control panel. Okay.
Andrew: Pretty cool. Yeah.
Andrew: That sounds horrible. Um, what I was thinking about doing was actually making it a cli command even though technically it is now it relies on Yeoman and it's just kind of weird I don't know so I was thinking making it a cli command.
Ryan: It is not yeah.
Andrew: And then you could make it globally available as a cli command and then the cool thing is depending on so this is very similar to what larevell does you can in Lareville You can tell it to just create these various things based on the context based on where you are in terminal at the time.
Ryan: 5
Andrew: So for instance, if you were in a plugin Directory you you could type something like create new Controller and this mythical Plugin Factory thing would know what name space it's in and would create a controller for your plugin Similarly if you're in the root of your project you could type.
Ryan: Right.
Andrew: You know, create new module create new plugin and it would scaffold it it out. Maybe asking some questions first and it would scaffold and and do all the stuff I think this is the kind of thing that is probably better off as a cli command The nice thing is that if it is a cli command it could still work with the plugin factory website. Ui. Because that's what it. That's the way it works right now you go on the plugin factory io website you fill in some stuff and it actually sends that data down to the yeoman cli command that then runs it generates it. It zips it up and it sends it back to you. So you would still be able to do that. But if you're using it as a cli development tool. You would get that context sensitive thing here's the thing ryan I don't know that I want to update plugin factory for craft four I don't know that I want to do it mostly because.
Ryan: Oh okay.
Andrew: Don't really have the time. Um I'm doing a whole bunch of other stuff and I also I added a whole bunch of people from pixel and tonic and other plug-in developers onto the repo you know had had these grand dreams of collaboration and all that kind of stuff but nothing has happened with it. You know. So it's all really resting on me to do it and I don't know I don't know that I want or have the time to invest the effort to do that for craft four and it's also the kind of thing where well this was really important back in the day but now pixel and tonic has Matt doing the docs. Maybe maybe this is not as necessary now as it was back then when there was zero documentation. What do you think.
Ryan: Well,, there's the big difference between the Docs and a generator that creates a scaffolding for a plugin and 1 of the things that you didn't mention that you do is that you pull from the. Where do you pull from to get the comments is it from some sort. Um the comments that you drop in is is from the craft source code right? or did you write all the comments right? right? So I think that if.
Andrew: And they're either from the craft source code or they're from documentation from craft or you know from all over. Yeah.
Ryan: If for some reason it didn't make it past craft 3 and didn't make it to craft four. It would be a huge like hole in the ecosystem because you're right? The the the that helped a lot of people sort of jump into building something simple, especially a module right? like just give me the.
Andrew: I Think there's.
Ryan: Basics or even a plugin with like they needed like an um ah like an action controller and they couldn't figure out how the freaking Kebob case worked to get it. You know to get it or what the path was right I mean simple stuff like that. So what? what would be the so what's your is your plan then just to decommission it.
Andrew: I Yeah yeah well I sort of feel that that yeah I think that's probably what I would end up doing is I would put a deprecation notice up on it and I would keep it up and running. People that did need ah a craft 3 plugin or module for a decent amount of time I sort of feel like this is something that probably pixel and Tonic should be doing if they want to do it or not doing if they don't want to do it or covering via documentation or you know, whatever. And it's really mostly just that. It's a decent amount of time and work to to update this because it's not just I did write this in an in an extensible Way. So I could add just a craft four api. The problem is the baseline stuff that it runs on the yeoman version that it runs on is severely outdated and I did.
Ryan: Yeah, so.
Andrew: A while ago I did try updating stuff to like the latest version of everything and it was not a simple upgrade process and um, you know I guess I just have other things that I'm working on that I'm a little bit busy doing and they pay me and this doesn't.
Ryan: Yeah, yeah, um, well maybe we have a while to K craft force is out. Um, it's not going to be in Beta until the first quarter of 2022
Andrew: Hate to reduce it to that. But that's kind of what it is. You know.
Andrew: Yep yep.
Ryan: I don't think it would be final until probably mid 2022 I would think right? So I have some time to come up with some plans and to get this conversation out there because maybe someone else has interest or an idea. Yeah.
Andrew: Yeah.
Andrew: I yeah I did speak with Ben croker on this idea a little bit and I was interested in doing it as a cli command. Maybe if we did it in rust mostly just because I want to make it fun for me if it's something that if it's something that I'm doing for for no pay.
Ryan: So learn something? Yeah, right.
Andrew: And it's just a you know quote unquote passion project or whatever I want to make it something that is interesting to me and getting better at rust as a part of doing that would would probably motivate me to do that so Ben and I are going to have a chat on it. We've collaborated on some other projects in the past and maybe.
Ryan: Yeah, yeah, okay well that kind of makes me sad.
Andrew: We'll end up doing something on it I don't know.
Andrew: You Well like I said if you're if you're serious, Maybe it makes sense for for you to take it over for it to be a to for it to become a craft quest property or or something like that. You know.
Ryan: Yeah, well maybe you and I can talk about what the as as the kids say in the corporate world. What the lift is to get ah I just I just use that I now need to put on like a Patagonia sweater vest um, what? ah like what it would take to.
Andrew: Unbelievable.
Andrew: Ah, yeah.
Ryan: Work on that. Um, so yeah, that's the that's part of the developer life though is sometimes you have to make hard choices about the projects. So.
Andrew: And yeah and I think it makes sense to not sort of half as things like this I would rather either be let people know and deprecated and be done with it or actually commit to a plan of modernizing it and you know.
Ryan: Yeah, absolutely.
Andrew: Making plugin factory great again I can't believe I just said that anyway. Um, or you know what? I mean like I think waffling in between is the worst thing that could happen. You know? yeah.
Ryan: You? Yeah yep, you have to make a decision. It's like me and this office I've been meeting to build in my backyard. Well I have the building but renovate and I've been meaning to do it for 2 years every time I get close to the end of my office lease I have ah an office like a mile and a half from my house. Um I realize that I've now waited too long because I've been indecisive the entire year about starting the project and then I have to I basically just it's just basically done another year so yeah you have to make a decision and go 1 way or the other it just maybe it's just craft 3 until. Everyone has time to work on it to make it craft four compatible. So.
Andrew: So yeah, and 1 of the things that Brandon mentioned in we there's a ah informal craft chat that is done on Twitter spaces hosted by andrea and Ben croker and he was on there yesterday and 1 of the things he was saying was that they had been in touch with the. Ah, guy who made rector so Rector is a ah project that we we actually talked about on the devmo fm podcast a while ago. Maybe that's where they heard about it or maybe I'm giving myself too much credit I don't know but it essentially is kind of like babel for ph p it'll take 1 it'll compile to any version of php so you could write something in in old ph p five point five and then it will modernize it to ph h p 8 with full typing or it will go back the other way. So brandon and ah he said this publicly so I can repeat it. He said that they're planning on coming out with a tool.
Ryan: Oh interesting.
Andrew: From the guy who did rector that allows you to run it on your plugin and it will update it to craft four with all of the type hintings and stuff Now it's probably not going to update if there are api changes but it's going to update in terms of the syntax changing like typing and all that kind of stuff.
Ryan: You right.
Andrew: So if they're doing that already. You know what I mean that that makes me even want to do continue on with this less but that doesn't solve the problem of someone starting out with a new something right? that only solves if you already have something let's help you get it there but I also feel that.
Ryan: Yeah, so.
Ryan: Right? And ideally there's gonna be a lot of people doing like if you're in a healthy growing ecosystem. There's gonna be a lot of new people. You know they did just come out with the event um tool in the documentation and I mean that's that's.
Andrew: Yeah.
Andrew: Yeah, that's a doc thing. Yep.
Ryan: Pretty small compared to what what you've done. But at least that's you know I'm with you That's quite interesting.
Andrew: So right? But I also sort of feel that this is something that should be probably the domain of pixel and tonic and probably not the domain of a third party person I think it was okay. Back when the company and the ecosystem was smaller because it's just like well you know there, there's only so much that they can do and you know it's fine. But I think now they they've grown. They've got people dedicated to docs I think that this is something that it makes sense for them to either take it over. Or to just say we don't care about it. We're going to do our own thing I don't think it makes sense for me to continue to try to you know with yearly releases and all that kind of stuff I don't see how it it makes any sense for any third party person to necessarily be. Maintaining this, you know what? I mean I feel like it really should be first party.
Ryan: Yeah, yeah, unless you had some some business model around it where it it made sense. But yeah.
Andrew: So well I think it's going to make sense because they know the changes that they're making they have to do all this ah they have to do everything for the documentation anyway, in terms of what is being changed I really think that this is something that should be theirs in 1 way or another whether it ends up being that they have something. On a website that generates it whether they make it a tool that is you know part of the K craft cli. Ah or they make it their own separate independent tool I would rather have this than a local dev system to be honest with you I would rather have a context sensitive. Seeli tool that generates the scaffolding I would much rather have that than yet another local dev system. You know.
Ryan: Yeah I mean the if I I still think and you're talking about nitro I think that I still think that I think something like the what I think is the idea behind something like nitro. The idea behind them taking over something like Plugin Factory The idea of.
Andrew: Yeah.
Ryan: Um, you know obviously having good Docs is that like you want to give your customers and your users all the tools they need to become like rabid fans and users of your tool that they pay for and that's kind of it makes it as easy as possible and that all kind of falls into that.
Andrew: So making things is easy right? right? I agree and and I'm saying that in terms of my prioritiz prioritizing I would rather have something like this.
Ryan: But um, it's interesting and because you know pixel and Tiny doesn't have unlimited people in time either. So I know they probably have to pick and choose what they want to work on as well.
Andrew: And leverage something like ddev or any number of other local dev environments now. It's a little bit fallacious because the same people that are working on 1 might not be working on the other. But.
Ryan: I. Right? But what about if you got if if you were compensated somehow to to bring that up to speed like if it was sponsored or okay.
Andrew: So I don't know I don't know I don't know I mean maybe potentially that I really do feel that it should be a first party thing and I'm actually a little surprised that they didn't try to get more involved at at any point.
Ryan: It sounds like you're not really into it so much either.
Andrew: In the process of this thing but I do understand that they have sort of a not invented here thing that they don't really want to accumulate more tech debt from somebody else which I understand like it. It actually can be a pretty terrible thing. To acquire tech debtt from other people and and the person who wrote it is no longer. There. Yeah, um so I really do feel that it should be a first party thing. The other thing is I really do think that it should be redone quote unquote right? um.
Ryan: And yeah I mean creating your own can be pretty monstrous too. But.
Ryan: Yeah.
Andrew: Would love to have the context sensitiveitive stuff in there I would love to have it be a little more flexible as a Cli tool I would love to not be using Ejs for the templating language. It's just really difficult to read and parse.
Ryan: Yeah.
Andrew: Don't think it would be too bad to take it from where it is now and update it to use the latest Yeomans So At least it's modern and at least we could keep all of the existing templates that were there and it would be a decent amount of work. Um, if I was paid to do it I probably would do it. Um, but and I don't know I mean it depends on what's involved and all that kind of stuff but I think it's gonna make sense for me assuming that that does not happen or I am not interested in doing that. Maybe someone else wants to take it over. Maybe I can just deprecate it and say whip you know, Thanks for all the fish you were great.
Ryan: Yeah.
Andrew: Well, you lasted you know 1 of those things will happen.
Ryan: So yep and if you do deprecate it then maybe there's a way of just generating like static boiler plates for people just say this is a right? yeah.
Andrew: Well the the code for the generator is open source and it's sitting up there on Github like you know, anybody that wants to do anything with it can do something with it at any point in time that they want to you know? Yeah, all right? ryan.
Ryan: Oh gosh andrew it's quite the way the end of the year
Andrew: So yeah, well you know like Marie kondo says if it's not sparking joy throw it out and and the idea of I really do think that pixel and tonic is doing a better and better job with their documentation I'm not saying um.
Ryan: I absolutely.
Ryan: Math's killing it with a documentation. So.
Andrew: I'm not saying it makes what I'm doing obsolete with Plugin Factory but it makes it less important anyway and I also feel that this is an area that probably they should be stepping up and doing something with anyway. Um, so I don't know we'll see what happens Maybe I'll have a change of Heart. Maybe much like the grinch my heart will grow 3 sizes too big and I will decide. You know I should update this thing because it's been so useful to so many people but who knows but that about wraps it up and.
Ryan: So yeah, well this is the this is the time of year andrew where we reflect on what we want to do in the next year and make decisions and set our priorities. So it sounds like it's just part of that.
Andrew: Yeah, and and that could be what I decide to do is my priority is working on other stuff so I will say if anyone wants it take it and if nobody wants it I'll leave it running for a while and then we'll shut it down. But that about wraps it up for another episode of the demo fm podcast if you enjoy the show make sure to subscribe tell a friend drop us a review. The fivetar reviews on itunes especially are fantastically helpful. So if you have a couple minutes do it we really appreciate it for the devmo fm podcast I'm andrew welch you.
Ryan: And I'm Ryan ire.
Andrew: Ah, right? Ryan It looks like you were really rocking out to that So tonight did I shock you and surprise you with that plug-in factory thing I didn't ah really how come.
Ryan: Yeah, Gosh I'm kind of really bummed out I just see it as like ah like critical to like the the growth of like plugin development in craft. Like so many people rely on that and.
Andrew: And I think it definitely was like I actually agree that it really was critical and I think especially around the craft 2 time when there was pretty much zero documentation and then also when craft 3 came out and people were looking.
Ryan: I.
Andrew: At transitioning from craft 2 to craft 3 in both of those cases I think it actually really was quite important and I'm not just patting myself on the back I still use it when I'm generating a new module or a new plugin. You know? Um, but.
Ryan: I I do too and I don't know Matt I think I think that the documentation is really good and Matt has done an amazing job I it sometimes he makes me a little bit nervous, but um, ah.
Andrew: Yeah.
Ryan: But I still think for a lot of people. There's ah, there's There's a bridge between static documentation and something that gives you something that you can click install on that works and right.
Andrew: Yeah, no I get it I'm not saying that The value proposition is gone I Still think that the value proposition is there. But.
Ryan: Yeah, yeah.
Andrew: Don't think it's as important as it has been in the past just because some of these other resources are getting better including you know krafquest is getting some nice plugin tutorials on there plug plug plug but I do think that it is still has value. The thing is.
Ryan: Yeah, yep.
Andrew: The amount of work that it's going to take for me to then update it I don't know if I want I don't know we'll see.
Ryan: It almost it almost sounds like you're thinking about it it as a complete rewrite right? because you would just want to get it off that yeoman thing.
Andrew: So well,, that's the thing So there are 2 ways I could do it 1 is I could leave everything at the super old ancient version and do 1 of those don't touch the server you know what things?? um and that would be fine like I could get that to work I actually wrote it. In a way that it can handle multiple Apis So All that you would have to redo were the templates and that wouldn't be so bad having to rewrite it to work with the latest Yeoman probably would be kind of annoying but that would the route that I would want to go to at least get it up and running you know what? I mean.
Ryan: Right? so.
Andrew: And then ultimately I would love to make it just a a nicer cli tool. But yeah I mean I mean maybe maybe I'm being frozen into inaction due to ambition. You know what? I mean like I don't know we'll see Yeah, but let me stop this recording.
Ryan: Ah God Welcome to like every day of my life. Um, yeah, yeah.
Andrew: All right.