Category: Development

Basic HTML

Dana Sallow wrote me a note:

“Hello – I read your page markohoven.com/2020/05/15/css-stylesheet-selectors/ and have two words: incredibly useful! I loved the HTML-related resources you mention there. I shared your post with a co-worker, and he shared with me a very helpful guide on how to use HTML. https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/html-guide-beginners/ Since your readers might need this for either their work or personal life, I do believe they’ll find it useful if you add it to your page. Thanks again for the resource! Best, Dana.”
So here it is:

Continue reading Basic HTML

Unix timestamp in VB

Okay, remember these date functions?
Here is another one when asked to submit a date/time as a Unix timestamp…

Calculated in seconds from January 1st, 1970 in Visual Basic.

Public Function fncConvertToUnixTimestamp(datDate As DateTime) As Double
    Dim datOrigin As DateTime = New DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, DateTimeKind.Utc)
    Dim diff As TimeSpan = datDate.ToUniversalTime() - datOrigin
    Return (Math.Floor(diff.TotalSeconds))
End Function

Have a nice day!

Cordova and VSCode

Combining these takes a bit of tweaking.
CTRL-` starts the command line in a nice window, but I would like to use a different startup-folder.

How to change the default terminal directory in vscode?
Read from this link:
Navigate to File -> Preferences -> Settings.
Type cwd in search.
Choose Terminal > Integrated: Cwd settings.
Type the default path you want to set in the text block below (simply, no need for double hashes to escape)
No need for saving, It’s automatic.
Restart VS Code.

Next issue is trying to start cordova. It gives an error which can also be solved by setting the correct permissions for the Powershell. Read this link:
Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser

Have a nice day!

Converting Phonegap Build to Cordova CLI

While the previous article focussed on installing Cordova, this one has some usefull tip and tricks. A lot of possible issues and solutions to keep in mind while trying to get your app functional again.

Read it on stackoverflow here.

I have several apps that currently rely on PhoneGap Build to create native apps for Andriod and iOS. It seems that Adobe is about to abandon iOS compatibility by failing to upgrade to the latest Cordova iOS version to meet Apple’s requirements. It’s time to move to CLI. I’m hoping that someone who’d done this before can provide some tips on how they did this. In particular, changes to workflow, handling keys and config.xml, etc.

Continue reading Converting Phonegap Build to Cordova CLI

Phonegap Build died! Moving on to Cordova CLI…

Read the full article here.

And don’t forget to read the official documentation as well.

MIGRATING TO THE CORDOVA CLI

With PhoneGap Build shutting down, many developers are now left trying to find options to continue building their Cordova-based applications. While several new services like Ionic’s Appflow and Monaca Cloud have entered the market as replacements. Their cost might be too much for the independent developer. One of the things that attracted many to use PhoneGap Build was it was included as part of your Creative Cloud subscription. There was even a free version for open-source projects. For those developers who are either resource constrained or want complete control over their build system, they should migrate to using the Cordova CLI and building locally.

There are four general steps we need to take to accomplish this:

  1. Install the Cordova CLI
  2. Install the native build environments
  3. Migrate our existing PhoneGap Build App to use Cordova
  4. Build and Test!
Continue reading Phonegap Build died! Moving on to Cordova CLI…

Convert between Local Time and UTC or Zulu time

Here is some visual basic code for you!
You receive a ZULU time and want to store it in your local time?

Dim MyZulu As New Date(year,month,day,hr,min,sec,DateTimeKind.Utc)
Dim MyLocal As DateTime = MyZulu.ToLocalTime()

Or is someone or some API asking you for the next format in return, and all you have is a DateTime with your local time in it?

*UTC + offset as (YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss+hh:mm)
Continue reading Convert between Local Time and UTC or Zulu time

System.NullReferenceException: ‘Object reference not set to an instance of an object.’

A happy error while coding in visual basic, vb.net
It is not the line where you get this error, but something that happened before, that made one of your variables invalid and unusable.

Read this. (@ NullReference Exception — Visual Basic)

Continue reading System.NullReferenceException: ‘Object reference not set to an instance of an object.’