I've been a little busier these days, so I was not able to blog as much over the last few weeks, but looking to get on a regular cadence again, at least a couple times a week and hopefully more, or some good sessions just posting up on a lot of things.
As I've blogged before, it is a marathon...
Here's some quick code to get a list of your Storage accounts from a cloud shell in the Azure Portal.
az storage account list --query "[].{Name:name, Redundancy:sku.name}" --output table
That's it!
It will output something similar to this:
mystorageaccount1 Standard_LRS
mystorageaccount131 Standard_RAGRS
By default this will list everything for the subscriptions you have checked to show resources for in the portal.
Sometimes when I've been writing scripts with ChatGPT I've asked it to do a little too much where it either stops sending in code, or the code gets put into code and non-code boxes. At times ChatGPT will stop giving me the code all together, and I'll get into a continuous loop where I keep asking it to finish, it starts over, I ask it again, and then I finally say stop.
So what I've been trying to do instead is ask it to do things differently, where instead of putting all the code in one HTML file, if I'm building a front-end, I'll ask it to put it into different files, like one for HTML and one for Javascript.
That way it helps it write code a little more modular, and where it doesn't break up or stop generating code. This will still depend on what you are having it write, but altogether, it does help.
At the same time instead of asking it to create whole new scripts, use it to update pieces of scripts, specific functions, or ask it more general questions like how you would do it in theory vs code.
Lately I've been thinking about how to start a pilot program for developers and engineers for tools like ChatGPT where it's not overly prescriptive, but also has guardrails if being used and paid for like any other software, and how to gather research on that use.
This post outlines some of the pieces to get up and running, and to use as a template for further development of a pilot program specific to your team/department including:
Goal Of The Initiative
To explore the use of ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot/X in the development process and create general guidelines, standards, and feedback on the effective/efficient use and acknowledgment of AI tools.
Research
has shown that ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot can help developers write
code more efficiently and accurately. For example, ChatGPT can assist
with natural language processing tasks, such as summarizing text,
answering questions, and generating text. GitHub Copilot, on the other
hand, uses machine learning models to suggest code snippets and even
whole functions based on the context of the code being written.
However,
there are also potential risks and limitations associated with using
these tools. For instance, ChatGPT can generate biased or inappropriate
text if it is trained on biased or inappropriate data. GitHub Copilot
may suggest code that is not optimized or secure, which can lead to
software bugs or vulnerabilities.
To address these concerns, it
is important for users to understand the capabilities and limitations of
the tools. This can include training on how to evaluate the quality of
the suggestions provided by the tools, how to review the code generated
by the tools, and how to incorporate these tools into the software
development process
Outcomes And Objectives
The main objectives and outcomes are the following:
Pilot Guidelines/Standards
Some specific standards/rules at the outset of the pilot to be adhered to:
Pilot Project Milestones
Use Case Template
Below is a general list of use cases and a sample table to store information in for each user. Rows could be deleted as needed, and more specific examples could be documented by each user in the pilot program (e.g. "Had bug in code and fixed it").
| Use Case | Category | Was This Used For A Specific Project/Ticket? | Did It Save Time? | Can you give a percentage (only) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ask To Create Code You Know | Testing | |||
| Ask To Create Code You Don't Know | Testing | |||
| Creating Unit Tests | Testing | |||
| Code Review | Testing | |||
| Creating CSS/HTML | Frontend Development | |||
| Creating Javascript and HTML code together | Frontend Development | |||
| Creating C# Code | Backend Development | |||
| Creating Python Code | Backend Development | |||
| Creating SQL Code | Database Development | |||
| Creating Excel Function, DAX, Macro | Data Analysis | |||
| Make Script/Code Run More Efficiently | Performance Optimization | |||
| Creating Templates For X Code | Development Workflow | |||
| Explain Code To Me | General |
Other Information For Consideration
If you wanted to dabble in Solidity and Ethereum tokens, you can create a simple token that you can send to you and your friends, or for anything else. Once a wallet has the tokens, while you can have a smart contract that trades Eth for your token, you can just give them away as well, or if you wanted to, have them go through an off-chain process (like a registration on a web site) and then send them the tokens from the main account (which you could automate as well).
Here's the contract to create a simple token (and yes, this is using an older version, but it works for this simple token and speaks backwards compatibility).
The program creates a basic ERC-20 token with some additional functions and interfaces. Here are some if the main pieces of code to understand.
1. The interface "tokenRecipient" allows external contracts to interact with the token contract, specifically through a function called "receiveApproval".
2. The beginning variables are used to help set values when you are deploying, and creating the token (in the constructor). You'll see these in Remix when you deploy your contract.
3. "balanceOf" is a key/value pair that maps addresses to their balances, which anyone can check. "allowance" as a data structure works similar but the value is another data structure of addresses and values as it checks token that one address has allowed another address to spend on their behalf.
4. The event "Transfer" is emitted to the blockchain when tokens are transferred.
The contract can go anywhere (you can save as a text file or more specifically a ".sol" file) Ultimately though you will put it into Remix.
Compile And Deploy
Got to https://remix.ethereum.org. When you first open it you will see the menu on the left and other information in the main window. You want to focus on the left menu and click on the top icon (which is the File Explorer)
Right-click afterwards on "contracts" and select "New File" from the menu.
You will get a box in contracts to create the file name. Name it "MyTokenTest.sol" and then paste in the contract.
After that - you can click on the "Compile MyTokenTest.sol" button and it should compile without any issues which is indicated by the green check mark, versus any errors which you would see under the Compilation Details section. As everything has compiled and is looking good, the only thing left to do is deploy it to a test network!
To deploy the contract click on the menu item below the compiler:
When you first go to that screen the "ENVIRONMENT" input is set to Remix.
You want to change that to be MetaMask and then connect to your wallet and select the network (a test network) and an account that has some ether in it.
Next to the orange Deploy button select the down arrow and you will see the parameters to fill in for your token:
Initial supply is the amount you want of your tokens without commas: 1000000.
Token name is the name of the token: Anh Anh Token
And the token symbol is: AANHTI.
After the transaction is complete you will see a line in your wallet like this:
The entry should look similar to the one below:
The From should be the address you were connected to when you deployed it in Remix. When you click on the To link that will take you to the Contract Address for the token you created (tokens can only be created via smart contracts). That page will show you information about the deployment/transaction as well as to drill into your token.
It's not the most advanced contract, but it's an ERC-20 token and everything works like it should. You can check out the actual token for this post here: https://goerli.etherscan.io/address/0xf3ab79837d63c4105f15b4d777c407d176c1760b
Some quick code to generate a QR code image with HTML and Javascript
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>QR Code Generator</title>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/qrious/4.0.2/qrious.min.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<form>
<label for="qr-text">Enter text to generate QR code:</label>
<input type="text" id="qr-text" name="qr-text">
<button type="button" onclick="generateQRCode()">Generate QR Code</button>
</form>
<canvas id="qr-code"></canvas>
<script>
function generateQRCode() {
var text = document.getElementById("qr-text").value;
var qr = new QRious({
element: document.getElementById("qr-code"),
value: text,
size: 300 // Change the size to 300 pixels
});
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
One of the easier ways to add data to a SharePoint List is via JSON with the key/values with a few rules to follow:
See the example below.
What can be tricky at first is seeing a SharePoint List with one value, even though it can handle more, and thinking it's not a complex type, when it really is.
Dear SharePoint,
First, I just wanted to say it’s not like I don’t like you — I like you and I like some of the easy integration you have with Azure and Azure AD Enterprise apps — nice easy way to secure it all and give us that connection (because in so many ways that’s what we’re using it for — a connection to a SharePoint List to do some CRUD’ing)
For sure.
But I do have a complaint.
It’s a small one, but I think important.
There’s just not a great way to see all the applications and what specific list and permissions they have access to, and there doesn’t seem to be a great way to see it the other way around (at least that I’m aware of).
I mean, you tell us to do it that way — and it works great — but once you start having a lot of apps connecting into SharePoint, it would be nice to see X name app with the SharePoint Lists it has access too and what permissions it has. And yes, I know — nomenclature helps — but I just feel like there should be a better way to do this.
Now I know you have a lot going on and maybe I’ve missed something for quite some time, and that’s okay, but to that point, if there is, it’s not easily accessible or made aware of from a general developer/engineer perspective.
Okay. Hope this finds you well (or at least not horribly under the weather,
Adam
Here's a quick YAML file to build and publish a class library package to a custom feed. Just replace out the "MyProject" and "MyFeed" with the appropriate names. After the build and publish you can then consume that feed to get that package and the associated libraries. To get your feed information just click on the "Connect To Feed" button on the main Feed page (after you select it from the drop down from the Artifacts page) and then select the system you are using to get the connection information.
Saw this interesting slide on the Solidity Blog.
https://blog.soliditylang.org/2023/03/10/solidity-developer-survey-2022-results/
At the end of the day I just want to make CI/CD easy. It's just something that I believe should come out of the box in some ways.
To me, Deployment Center is the closest thing to that.
Hook it up to a repository.
Select a branch.
Done.
It doesn't give you the most flexibility and I do have some questions on different projects, the choice of which it chooses by default, but when it works--it just works. If you don't have so many apps that it's hard to manage that way (individually), and you're in there anyway with configuration keys, etc. this is enticing.
And if you have varying degrees of developer levels on your team this is a great way to get everyone involved in the process but that's not too involved either. No build scripts. No releases, stages, environments, etc. Those may be needed/wanted, but if you just want to deploy after check-in, Deployment Center takes care of that for you.
While I understand it defeats the purpose to give it a lot of options, it does leave a lot up to this unseen entity doing our bidding, and I hope in the future maybe it gives a few more options to customize though.
Otherwise--sometimes it's okay to set it and forget it.
I've had this happen a couple times with some contracts I was creating early on where I did not have any way to retrieve funds. So if I was doing a simple contract to exchange tokens for Eth, all of that portion was working fine, but after doing some test transactions I realized I couldn't get the Eth out.
Yup.
Nothing worse than seeing Eth build up and not being able to touch it, even if in test.
Yup.
Just make sure you don't forget this function
function withdraw() public onlyOwner {
address payable receiver = payable(ownerDraw);
receiver.transfer(address(this).balance);
}
And then import in the zepplin library in your sol file.
import "@openzeppelin/contracts/access/Ownable.sol";
Creating a Javascript slot machine is both a fun project and a nice way to separate out the pieces of what can sometimes seem like a complicated program (and it can be when talking about much larger systems, progressive jackpots, etc.) but at the base is actually not too difficult.
Here's the code in it its entirety:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
.slot-container {
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
align-items: center;
}
.slot-row {
display: flex;
margin-bottom: 40px;
}
.slot {
width: 150px;
height: 150px;
border: 1px solid black;
margin-right: 20px;
margin-bottom: 20px;
position: relative;
}
.winning-slot {
border: 12px solid red;
}
button {
font-size: 24px;
padding: 10px 20px;
background-color: blue;
color: white;
border: none;
border-radius: 5px;
margin: 0 auto;
display: block;
margin-top: 20px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body onload="updateSlots()">
<div class="slot-container">
<div class="slot-row">
<div id="slot1" class="slot"></div>
<div id="slot2" class="slot"></div>
<div id="slot3" class="slot"></div>
</div>
<div class="slot-row">
<div id="slot4" class="slot"></div>
<div id="slot5" class="slot"></div>
<div id="slot6" class="slot"></div>
</div>
<div class="slot-row">
<div id="slot7" class="slot"></div>
<div id="slot8" class="slot"></div>
<div id="slot9" class="slot"></div>
</div>
</div>
<button onclick="updateSlots()">Spin</button>
<script>
// Define an array of images
var images = [
'https://via.placeholder.com/150x150/000000/FFFFFF/?text=1',
'https://via.placeholder.com/150x150/000000/FFFFFF/?text=2',
'https://via.placeholder.com/150x150/000000/FFFFFF/?text=3',
'https://via.placeholder.com/150x150/000000/FFFFFF/?text=4',
'https://via.placeholder.com/150x150/000000/FFFFFF/?text=5'
];
// Function to generate a random image
function getRandomImage() {
return images[Math.floor(Math.random() * images.length)];
}
// Function to update the images in the slots
function updateSlots() {
var slot1 = document.getElementById('slot1');
var slot2 = document.getElementById('slot2');
var slot3 = document.getElementById('slot3');
var slot4 = document.getElementById('slot4');
var slot5 = document.getElementById('slot5');
var slot6 = document.getElementById('slot6');
var slot7 = document.getElementById('slot7');
var slot8 = document.getElementById('slot8');
var slot9 = document.getElementById('slot9');
slot1.innerHTML = '<img src="' + getRandomImage() + '"/>';
slot2.innerHTML = '<img src="' + getRandomImage() + '"/>';
slot3.innerHTML = '<img src="' + getRandomImage() + '"/>';
slot4.innerHTML = '<img src="' + getRandomImage() + '"/>';
slot5.innerHTML = '<img src="' + getRandomImage() + '"/>';
slot6.innerHTML = '<img src="' + getRandomImage() + '"/>';
slot7.innerHTML = '<img src="' + getRandomImage() + '"/>';
slot8.innerHTML = '<img src="' + getRandomImage() + '"/>';
slot9.innerHTML = '<img src="' + getRandomImage() + '"/>';
// Remove the "winning-slot" class from all slots
slot1.classList.remove("winning-slot");
slot2.classList.remove("winning-slot");
slot3.classList.remove("winning-slot");
slot4.classList.remove("winning-slot");
slot5.classList.remove("winning-slot");
slot6.classList.remove("winning-slot");
slot7.classList.remove("winning-slot");
slot8.classList.remove("winning-slot");
slot9.classList.remove("winning-slot");
// Check if the player has won
if (slot1.innerHTML === slot2.innerHTML && slot2.innerHTML === slot3.innerHTML) {
slot1.classList.add("winning-slot");
slot2.classList.add("winning-slot");
slot3.classList.add("winning-slot");
}
if (slot4.innerHTML === slot5.innerHTML && slot5.innerHTML === slot6.innerHTML) {
slot4.classList.add("winning-slot");
slot5.classList.add("winning-slot");
slot6.classList.add("winning-slot");
}
if (slot7.innerHTML === slot8.innerHTML && slot8.innerHTML === slot9.innerHTML) {
slot7.classList.add("winning-slot");
slot8.classList.add("winning-slot");
slot9.classList.add("winning-slot");
}
if (slot1.innerHTML === slot4.innerHTML && slot4.innerHTML === slot7.innerHTML) {
slot1.classList.add("winning-slot");
slot4.classList.add("winning-slot");
slot7.classList.add("winning-slot");
}
if (slot2.innerHTML === slot5.innerHTML && slot5.innerHTML === slot8.innerHTML) {
slot2.classList.add("winning-slot");
slot5.classList.add("winning-slot");
slot8.classList.add("winning-slot");
}
if (slot3.innerHTML === slot6.innerHTML && slot6.innerHTML === slot9.innerHTML) {
slot3.classList.add("winning-slot");
slot6.classList.add("winning-slot");
slot9.classList.add("winning-slot");
}
if (slot1.innerHTML === slot5.innerHTML && slot5.innerHTML === slot9.innerHTML) {
slot1.classList.add("winning-slot");
slot5.classList.add("winning-slot");
slot9.classList.add("winning-slot");
}
if (slot3.innerHTML === slot5.innerHTML && slot5.innerHTML === slot7.innerHTML) {
slot3.classList.add("winning-slot");
slot5.classList.add("winning-slot");
slot7.classList.add("winning-slot");
}
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
The main "box" of the slot machine--the playable area--is just standard HTML--where the innerHTML is created automatically from a set of images, with each square randomly assigned an image, and then checked to see if the innerHTML is the same when the Spin button is pressed.
In order to win across, down, and diagonal, each square needs to check for the winning combination for each set of squares. So in the example above in order to win diagonally with slot1 (or square 1) you have to check squares number 5 and 9.
While the code certainly could be updated to be more modular, using this example it's pretty easy to see how everything works and displays back to the user from a UI perspective (adding and removing styles) and can be built onto for a more customized slot machine experience.
I was recently working on a UI and wanted to hash a password while it was being typed. Here’s the quick code:
You need this in your HTML file to load the library
<script src=”https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/crypto-js/4.0.0/crypto-js.min.js"></script>
This javascript code
function hashPassword() {
const password = document.getElementById(‘password’).value;
const hashedPassword = CryptoJS.SHA256(password).toString();
console.log(‘Hashed password:’, hashedPassword);
document.getElementById(‘hashedPassword’).value = hashedPassword;
}
And then here’s the form code
<label for=”password”>Password Phrase:</label>
<input type=”text” id=”password” oninput=”hashPassword()”>
<input type=”text” id=”hashedPassword” name=”hashedPassword”>
Happy Coding!