I'm Josh Branchaud, a Senior Software Developer and Consultant focused primarily on web development, specializing in React, Ruby on Rails, and PostgreSQL.
I'm always looking for ways to keep data consistent. Or rather, for the database to ensure that its data is consistent. PostgreSQL has a number of tools for this. Great places to start are consistent…
Chicago has had a strong and growing React community for many years now. Today was React Loop, Chicago's first React conference. It was a single track event with a great lineup of speakers. I did my…
I've written a lot of React components over the past couple years that fetch or update data with a call to a server. Not knowing how long these server calls are going to take, I like to indicate to…
Formik comes with a connect() HOC that uses the context API as a way of connecting to disparate form elements. This means that form data, change handlers, touched and error data, etc. can be easily…
It all started with wanting to move a column from one table to another. The schema changes were straightforward enough. We wanted to keep the data as well, so that too needed to be migrated. We wrote…
The dig command is a utility for doing DNS lookups. You can run it with a URL argument to lookup the public IP for that domain. The output is a bit noisy, but if you parse down to the ANSWER SECTION…
You can define your own custom RSpec matchers. This is a great way to keep your spec tight and readable. A custom, domain-specific matcher can convey more intent in a single line than several lines of…
Constraints are a great way to ensure that an app's data conforms to certain business rules. For instance, many apps have user accounts that are identified by an email address. If a person's email…
In a recent post for the Hashrocket blog, I covered some communication tips I've picked up in my over-4 years of consulting. These tips span from cutting the back and forth of asynchronous…