Implementing the Matrix JS SDK in React Native
Meet Kinksters’ chat feature is backed by Matrix, an awesome open-source communication protocol and its Synapse homeserver reference implementation.
Posts by Year
2022
Accessing iOS console/syslog entries on Linux
I’m preparing Meet Kinksters for a beta release, and a big (and time consuming, and frustrating…) part of this is building and debugging binaries for both iO...
A trait for always validating entities on save
Drupal features a powerful entity (more broadly, typed data) entity validation API, powered by the Symfony Validation component. Problem is, Drupal hardly ev...
Handling cacheability for computed Drupal entity references
The data model for Meet Kinksters’ backend requires us to keep track of many entity relationships, e.g. users who have shown interest in each other. Many rel...
Using mitmproxy for better native-app traffic debugging
As I work more on the native app for Meet Kinksters, it’s been important to debug network traffic between it and various backend services.
A quick-and-easy CloudFront mock for locally testing signed URLs
Security is a major concern in building a dating app. Part of that is ensuring sensitive customer data, including photos, are only shared with users with pro...
Networking for real-device React Native testing on-the-go
As I build Meet Kinksters, one personal goal is to share the knowledge I develop along the way with others. So much of the details of building a complex app,...
Programmatically manage bundle fields with ConfigurableFieldManager
Drupal’s ORM and Field API is rather powerful, but it can be a bear to understand after entities and their fields are initially installed. If you’re writing ...
Invalidating Drupal 8+ cache items by owner
One of the key enhancements in Drupal 8+ over prior versions is the Cache API. The concept of cache tags and contexts is one of Drupal’s great contributions ...
json:api, json-rpc and API-first patterns for Drupal
Meet Kinksters is built on top of a wide range of open source technologies, Drupal being chief among them.
Using yarn link with React Native/metro bundler
A quick note from the trenches of React Native & Expo. While working on Meet Kinksters’ native app, I needed to develop a small JavaScript library to shi...
Client-side json:api resource validation with ajv
Part of signing up for Meet Kinksters involves ensuring users provide sufficient (and valid) information about themselves and their dating preferences. This ...
Hiding field internals from clients with Drupal’s json:api
At Meet Kinksters, I take data security very seriously. Dating sites are tricky to architect, in that they must collect significant personal information (bir...
2021
Using Android emulator with Expo in Docker
Meet Kinksters’ mobile app is built with Expo, an opinionated set of defaults for React Native, paired with a simplified build pipeline for iOS and Android b...
(More) affordable static-site hosting with Google Cloud Storage + CloudFront
When it comes to architecture, I try to follow a broadly-applicable adage: “strong opinions, held weakly.” In other words, choose the best option available a...