Test Architecture: A Holistic Look at Application Testing

Test architecture can be thought of at two levels. At the broader, more strategic level, test architecture is thinking holistically about the best way to test an application. It can help answer questions, such as, how do we want to use unit, integration, and end-to-end tests to gain coverage? What tests should be automated versus manual? What tooling or frameworks are we going to use? Test architecture can also be thought of at a more technical, detailed design level. Here it can help address questions such as, what are the priority areas of the application we need to verify? How do we construct our tests to gain maximum coverage with minimal duplication? What data are we going to use? Dive into the details on Testim’s blog. 

Add an Image Picker to a React Native App: An Easy Guide

Almost every social networking app allows its users to upload and post an image. Most apps even let you set a profile picture for your account. All these apps access your device’s camera and gallery through an image picker. In this post, I’ll walk you through the essentials of using an image picker in your React Native app. Eventually, you’ll learn to build a component to upload profile pictures that you can use in your apps right away. Get started with Siddhant Varma on Waldo blog. 

A Native SwiftUI Collection View: LazyVGrid and LazyHGrid

In 2019, Apple introduced a change to the way developers could design apps for the Apple ecosystem. The launch of SwiftUI began a long process of change that arguably was well overdue. It has dramatically benefited developers’ productivity and engagement with the platform. And now it’s much simpler to create beautiful UI for our users. However, during that first launch with Xcode 11, something crucial was missing in the development toolset. Find out what it was from Juan Reyes on Waldo blog. 

SwiftUI vs.UIkit: A Mobile Developer’s Perspective

With the introduction of SwiftUI in 2019, Apple made clear what direction it wanted developers to take on the framework. Many saw it as a move needed to bring the Apple ecosystem to new heights—especially in terms of innovation and competitiveness. Others, however, saw many unnecessary obfuscations. They worried that Apple was willing to sacrifice the power of UIkit for approachability and ease of use. So, which is it? Is Apple pushing for innovation and ease of use? Or is Apple prioritizing approachability over the power of UIkit? Look into the disparities between SwiftUI and UIkit in this post from Juan Reyes on Waldo blog. 

Cloud computing provides us with the ability to deploy infrastructure as code. Not so long ago, to deploy a new database server you had to buy physical hardware: a hard disk, CPU, RAM, power supply, etc. Afterward, you had to install the database server, make it run once the machine starts, provision replicas, set up a backup policy and allocate space for it, handle errors, and routinely update it with security patches and new versions. Wow, it took a while even to write what’s required if you manage databases yourself. Just think about how much work is required to actually do it. This is where RDS comes into play…find out more from Alexander Fridman on Scalyr’s blog.

What Is a Linter? Here’s a Definition and Quick-Start Guide

We also updated a few posts this week, like this one. What is a linter? In short, a linter is a tool to help you improve your code. The concept of linter isn’t exclusive to JavaScript. Still, I’d say that the majority of people trying to learn about linters are interested in the ones that target JavaScript (or, more generally, dynamically-typed languages.) Find out all of the answers about linters on Testim’s blog.

When talking about what to monitor to understand a server’s performance, there are many metrics that might come up. We’ll focus on just one in this post: server CPU usage. We’ll start by explaining what server CPU usage is, and then we’ll discuss why and how to monitor it. Check it out on Scalyr’s blog.

Finally, we updated a post on Apache. What is the Apache access log?  Why do you need it? Well, a perfect use case for Apache access log can be like this: Apache access log can be used to examine a detailed log of who has been to your website, track errors that are happening when users take some actions on your website, such as clicking on links. The information about visitors can include their IP address, their browser, the actual HTTP request itself, the response, and plenty more. In this post, you’ll get what’s promised in the title: a detailed introduction to this type of logging. Find out more on Scalyr’s blog.