I recently worked on an ETL project in Python. Among other things, the script had to process JSON files that users dropped into a specific folder.

As this was a sensitive application, it was important to validate the script by submitting fake JSON files, but also to ensure the quality of the files received.

For the fake files, I used a tool like the Faker library for Python.

In my RSS feed recently, I came across another great application that lets you create a database model from scratch, i.e. create tables one by one and create the links between them.

However, there's another option that I find really nice: you can get a visual of the tables and relationships of any existing application in a few seconds from an .sql file that you import into drawdb-app.

Let's take a quick look at how it works.

Exactly like my SQL - Formatting tool, it's always useful to have a tool in your favourites that lets you copy/paste a JSON character string and display it as a tree-view with or without code folding feature.

I use it quite regularly when I'm writing a JSON string and I want to check that there are no syntax errors (lint) or, on the other hand, and for example, when I call an API that returns JSON and I want to analyse the code received. In these cases, the collapse functionality comes in very handy.

After my article SSH - Launch a terminal on your session without having to authenticate yourself, it was obvious that, next to the ssh and scp commands, I forgot the sftp one.

In this article, we'll explore how to start a SFTP connection to a remote server; from the command line.

In the second section, we'll also learn how to configure the sftp connection to use a proxy server.

As you know, VSCode is a superb editor that lets you program in probably any programming language. An editor, not an IDE, because VSCode is basically a Notepad in its ultimate version.

If you want to program in Python, you'll need to install a few extensions in VSCode to be really comfortable, i.e. syntax highlighting, code navigation, code refactoring (like renaming a variable or a class), etc.

There are ‘ready-to-use’ editors like PyCharm but 1. they cost money and 2. they are specific (you won't be able to program in PHP with PyCharm; or even work easily with HTML/CSS files).

In this new article, we'll look at how to get a VSCode environment ready to use straight away for coding in Python, and as it's VSCode it's 1. free, 2. multi-purpose and 3. insanely powerful.

During my summer holidays, I've watched this video: Full Ubuntu GUI in a Container Displayed on Windows (XServer) and, of course, I wanted to play with it.

The idea is to start a Lubuntu Desktop distribution as a Docker container. Lubuntu is a lightweight Ubuntu distribution designed to be more resource-efficient than the standard Ubuntu.

Using Docker and Windows X Server, we'll be able to play with Lubuntu just like any other containers i.e. play and drop without any impact on our ghost. Ideal for learning purposes then.

At the end of 2023, I wrote a very long post about using Joomla with Docker: Create your Joomla website using Docker - Part 1.

It was a step-by-step introduction to Docker and the creation of a local Joomla-based website.

I explained, at length, the various steps involved in creating a website, choosing a database engine (MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL), choosing a specific version of Joomla / database engine, the type of volumes (should the site and database be kept in RAM or on the hard disk (i.e. the notion of volumes)) and many other things such as choosing the port for the website, creating an alias (something like http://my_project.local instead of http://127.0.0.1). I strongly urge you to read or re-read this article before starting this one.

As Docker and Joomla are evolving rapidly, I propose here to start from where we were and see what has changed since then.

We're also going to take automation a step further, making much greater use of the concept of makefile and a configuration file called .env.

In previous articles (Part 1 and Part 2), we've seen how to create a Joomla site from scratch by using Docker: pull Joomla, PHP, Apache and MySQL from Docker Hub and do magic stuff so we have a fresh http://127.0.0.1:8080 local site.

In this article, we'll see how to restore on our machine, a backup created thanks to great Akeeba Backup component.

We'll reuse some files from Part 2 and make some changes to them.

At the end, we'll have a make import command that will start Akeeba Kickstart.

But what is Docker anyway? In the simplest possible terms, how can we explain what Docker is used for?

Let's take the case of a cooking recipe as a starting point.

Imagine that you regularly need to connect to your Linux server: you need to launch a tool such as Putty, you need to enter your login, password, etc. and carry out various operations before you can access the terminal.

If your password isn't saved in Putty's configuration, you'll have to launch another tool like a password vault; in short, it's annoying.

In this article, we'll look at how to authenticate once and for all on the server using an SSH key.