Pro Tips for Developer Relations
I’ve been a professional developer advocate for a little over two years. I started out at Stormpath, and six months later, I leapt at the opportunity to do the same thing at Okta. I say "professional" because even though I’ve been a technical speaker since 2004, I never got paid for it. During my first year (2017) at Okta, I traveled and spoke a lot. A lot being more than I’d ever traveled and spoken...
Nobody Cares About OAuth or OpenID Connect
If you’re reading this post, there’s a good chance that you’re a web developer who’s very interested in web security. You’ve probably heard about OAuth or OpenID Connect (OIDC) before. You may have even used them at some point in your career. But here’s the thing: almost nobody actually cares about OAuth or OIDC. Not you, not me, and not even other developers in the security industry. To understand why nobody cares about these two...
What's New in JavaScript for 2019
For the last several years, JavaScript has been evolving on a steady cadence with new language features. If you’re curious to see what’s in store for the next version of JavaScript, this post is for you! Before we talk about the latest features, it’s important to understand how new ideas become part of the JavaScript language. The Process for New JavaScript Language Features In a nutshell, the language specification that drives JavaScript is called ECMAScript....
Why OAuth API Keys and Secrets Aren't Safe in Mobile Apps
It’s pretty common for mobile apps to access backend API services to fetch data. It’s also pretty common for APIs to require secret keys in order to access them. So how do you securely include API keys in a mobile app? Well, the short answer is you don’t. The long answer is the rest of this blog post. Let’s take a look at two ways it’s possible to hack secret API keys out of mobile...
Which Java SDK Should You Use?
There has been a lot of confusion lately about Java and its available SDKs (Software Development Kits). You might’ve heard the Java SDK called the JDK. They’re one and the same. Java SE (Standard Edition) is a specification that’s governed by the JCP (Java Community Process). This process decides what goes into (or gets removed from the JDK). Anyone can implement the Java specification. If they pass the TCK (Test Compatibility Kit), they’re considered a...
The History (and Future) of Asynchronous JavaScript
Everyone knows that JavaScript is eating the world. The problem is, there are lots of developers responsible for building software with JavaScript without a particularly deep knowledge of the language. It is easy to learn the basics and be productive, but newer programmers have a tendency to misuse some of JavaScript. Asynchronous JavaScript is particularly misunderstood. In this post, I will show you the most common ways to make asynchronous JavaScript calls and when to...
Build a Basic CRUD App with Laravel and Vue
Laravel is one of the most popular web frameworks today because of its elegance, simplicity, and readability. It also boasts one of the largest and most active developer communities. The Laravel community has produced a ton of valuable educational resources, including this one! In this tutorial, you’ll build a trivia game as two separate projects: a Laravel API and a Vue frontend (using vue-cli). This approach offers some important benefits: It allows you to separate...
Build Simple Login in PHP
Building a user authentication system for your Web application from scratch can be a deceptively tricky job. It seems easy at first, but there are so many details you have to consider - hashing the passwords properly, securing the user sessions, providing a way to reset forgotten passwords. Most modern frameworks offer boilerplate code for dealing with all of these issues but even if you’re not using a framework, do not despair. In this article,...
Build a Basic Android App with Xamarin and Visual Studio
Are you a .NET developer that has always wanted to make a mobile application? Or maybe you have tried building native mobile apps with Android or iOS but didn’t like the languages? Well then, you are in luck! The .NET world has been blessed with Xamarin; a set of tools that lets you build mobile apps for Android, iOS, and Windows within Visual Studio. Xamarin has two main flavors: Xamarin platform (Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android) and...
Design and Develop an Android App with React Native and Publish to Google Play Store
As mobile app usage is expected to continue to grow, now is as good a time as any to get into the market. Android is by far the most popular OS worldwide and the dominant way to get Android apps to phone users is the Google Play Store. In this tutorial, you’ll build a React Native app and I’ll walk you through everything from how to pick a design, as well as setting up your...