Karl Hughes
All Posts by Karl Hughes
A Quick Guide to Regular Expressions in Java
Whether you’re coding, using a search engine, searching and replacing text in a text editor, or using the command-line utilities grep, sed, and awk in Linux, you’re using regular expressions (also known as “regex” or “regexp”). Yes, they’re everywhere. A regular expression is a sequence of characters used to describe a text pattern. Working with regular expressions is rarely described as fun, but they are useful for various problems while coding a feature, such as...
The Ultimate Guide to Password Hashing in Okta
As more of our critical work and personal functions go online, the risk of data and security breaches continues to increase. In 2019, there were over 1400 data breaches reported that exposed nearly 165 million records, many of which included passwords and personal information. While security specialists bear much of the responsibility in ensuring their organizations are handling sensitive data properly, web developers at all levels must take part as well. By understanding fundamental concepts...
Build and Secure an API in Python with FastAPI
As Python grows in popularity, the variety of high-quality frameworks available to developers has blossomed. In addition to steadfast options like Django and Flask, there are many new options including FastAPI. First released in late 2018, FastAPI differentiates itself from other Python frameworks by offering a modern, fast, and succinct developer experience for building reliable REST APIs. While one of the newer open-source Python frameworks available, FastAPI has quickly gained a following with over 22,000...
Comparing Authentication in Laravel Versions 6, 7, and 8
Laravel is one of the most popular PHP frameworks in use today. Version 8 was released in September 2020, and while the bulk of the framework hasn’t changed, each of the three most recent versions have included updates to the authentication pattern. While Laravel 7 and 8 will both stop receiving updates in 2021, Laravel 6 is a long-term support version and will include security fixes until September 2022. So, if you’re upgrading or starting...
Protecting a Laravel API with JWT
With the increasing popularity of single-page apps and the growing API economy, JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) are becoming a very popular method for authenticating users. Rather than relying on the server to store the user’s state, JWTs encode information in a keyed payload stored on the client. JWTs are not inherently less secure than server-side session storage. But developers should understand the tradeoffs and know what to do if a JWT is compromised. You should...
What's New in Laravel 8
With Laravel 8’s release in September 2020, the popular PHP framework continues to offer new features and improvements. After version 5, Laravel moved to semantic versioning and the more frequent releases have meant smaller changes between each one. That said, there are still several exciting updates in this version of the framework. While Laravel will continue to offer security fixes for version 7 until early 2021, no more bug fixes will be released after October...