Wafy's Tools

By Jeff , 28 May, 2026

Laravel - Working with the database

This lesson was all about the database functions in Laravel. This is one thing that I have to give Laravel some credit. I do like their migration feature. They have abstracted away the database to a file that will create and remove tables as you need to though the artisan script.

By Jeff , 28 May, 2026

Laravel - What is MVC?

Kind of knew already what MVC is. Laminas uses a MVC structure for their framework as well. It is pretty simple and a similar to what Laminas does, just in a slightly different way. With Laminas you have a route configuration in the module's config.php file. In there you do your dependency injection and setup of the Controller. With Laravel, they have (at least currently) a separate file for routes that is so far kind of hard coded. Where as the Laminas can be more dynamic. Again this is just a boot camp. 

By Jeff , 22 May, 2026

Laravel - Your First Route

Had to do a few things to my setup a bit to make things work a little better. Some things I might not need or need to change if I put this in production. Ran into a bit of CORS issue once I had to rebuild the project directory. Due to the Docker container I had a bit of an issue with the Vite configuration. It needed a couple things to get things working for the server that runs when you run dev with Composer. After some googling and a small chat with AI. I ended up adding the following to the vite.config.js file:

By Jeff , 21 May, 2026

Laravel - Getting Setup

I have decided to start with Laravel as it seems to be the most popular currently. From what I have learned from starting their boot camp, I can see why. Though it kind of frustrates me a bit which I will explain. It seems to be a big ecosystem involved with it. They have embraced AI and have added their own cloud system as well. It is a bit overwhelming, coming from a guy that prefers to host his own projects. Digging in a bit and looking past all of the external pieces, it does look like you can build an application with it and still host it locally.

By Jeff , 21 May, 2026

Updating my PHP Framework Knowledge.

I have been using the PHP framework Laminas for as long as it has been around. I started with the Zend Framework and followed it up to the current iterations of Laminas. It has been a great PHP framework. I love the individual components, the flexibility it has and the ease it is to setup. 

By Jeff , 4 May, 2026

2026 April

Semi-productive month. Unfortunately still no job and still need to finish the libraries. Still debating on switching frameworks but given the jobs out there, I might need to change languages too. Most of the PHP jobs are asking for Larval or Symfony, Laminas isn't really used. Though Laminas itself is seeing thing disappear too. For the MVC component I have to go find something to replace it. Which means a big rewrite, which for at least one it needs it anyways. Which isn't giving much motivation to work on them.

By Jeff , 6 April, 2026

2026 March

Well the most productive month yet I think. It was determine that Gitea doesn't allow HTML in their Wiki tab. Which really sucks because I want to see some HTML that is generated from some of the tools that I am using for metrics and other things. It sounds like there is a Pages plugin that I can use to view those, which I hope to look at as soon as I get caught up with the libraries and maybe the apps.

By Jeff , 2 March, 2026

2026 February

Well, it is amazing what you forget when you haven't touched something for over a year. Got my server reorganized and it seems to be running good. Have a couple things to tweak at some point but nothing major. Code on the other hand I apparently didn't make my Oauth and Auth library completely compatible. So I am beating my head against the code. I have some ideas to hopefully fix it here shortly, but I will see what happens. 

Job front I will hopefully be looking some more actively this next month.

By Jeff , 4 February, 2026

2026 January

Well I am officially unemployed, I was outsourced overseas. At least it was to humans, but everything Youtube has been showing me is that AI is coming up fast. Not a fan. Have some plans to get my server up to date a bit more than it is and then try to add email login for the DynaBallot app. Then start looking for jobs. Though given my age I don't expect much. Might look at free lancing, given I have about 40 weeks to try to see if I can make a go of it. Will still look for a full time job too. 

By Jeff , 5 January, 2026

2025 December

Well less than a month left for my job. If I haven't said it already I am getting outsourced again. This time it isn't some company taking control of a service. It is a company that is replacing me with foreign people. My company is being stupid to think that these people are going to be able to do my job, but that is their loss. I am kind of hoping to get into another position in the company that I can do more programming with, but I haven't heard back so I probably didn't get it. So anyone looking for a semi-amateur programmer that loves PHP and Vanilla JavaScript, let me know.