2025-03-25 06:58:30
Managing media is a really difficult task if you try to do all of it yourself, especially if the media comes from other sources. The file can be submitted in any state and size, but what if you need something really specific? You can code it all yourself or you can use an awesome service like Filestack, a utility to upload, transform, and deliver that media in the most optimal style imaginable!
The first step in the Filestack journey is signing up for free. You’ll get at 21 day free trial and can cancel at any time. Once signed up, you’ll have full access to the Filestack libraries of code. You’ll also want to spend time catching up on the Filestack documentation, which is a developer’s dream — code samples and detailed usage information.
Allowing your users to take advantage of easy uploading with Filestack starts with the
// Using JavaScript
const client = filestack.init("apikey");
const picker = client.picker();
picker.open();
The result is an elegant, highly functional, and feature filled file uploading UI component:
This great utility integrates with 20+ popular services like Google Drive, Dropbox, GitHub, Facebook, Instagram, and more. As the Filestack picker also illustrates, users can take advantage of the ease of dragging and dropping files to upload.
If you prefer to do your uploading on the back end, you can use the Filestack Python library:
from filestack import Client
client = Client(APIKEY)
store_params = {
'location': 's3',
'path': 'folder/subfolder/',
'upload_tags': {
"foo":"bar"
}
}
filelink = client.upload(filepath='path/to/filename.jpg', store_params=store_params)
Unlike many services, Filestack provides a number of code libraries to make the developer experience much easier. With files uploaded, it’s time to transform!
Users can upload any type of file at any size or format, so the ability to quickly and easily transform file that file into something more to the developer’s liking is key. Transformations can be applied to videos, images, and even documents. Transformations can also be done on in real time or via sync workflows.
For example, you can resize and manipulate images by adjusting URL parameters:
// Resize an image to have a width of 300px https://cdn.filestackcontent.com/resize=width:300/pdn7PhZdT02GoYZCVYeF // Add a color filter, rotate the image, and add a "polaroid" border to the image https://cdn.filestackcontent.com/resize=width:300/sepia=tone:80/polaroid/pdn7PhZdT02GoYZCVYeF
So what else can be done with transformations beside file dimension and effects? Lots!
All of these commands can be combined to completely transform any file into exactly what you’d like to present to your users! And if you’d prefer to have a UI for users to transform media themselves, you can!
With the files uploaded and transforms completed, the last step is delivering to clients. That delivery is incredibly important, as reliability and fast rendering can impact user retention and business conversion.
Filestack’s CDN caches Filestack URLs the first time they are accessed, such as in the case of storage aliases or transformations. The cached copy of any unique Filestack URL will live for 30 days – it will then be re-cached only when it is requested again.
Filestack’s platform is incredibly flexible, powerful, and useful. From the start of uploading, to transforming into a custom file, and delivering that file quickly, Filestack is a great platform that takes those files from start to finish; from source to consumer!
The post Easy way to upload, transform and deliver files and images (Sponsored) appeared first on David Walsh Blog.
2024-09-04 12:42:36
The ability to download media on the internet almost feels like a lost art. When I was in my teens, piracy of mp3s, movies, and just about everything else via torrents and apps like Kazaa, LimeWire, Napster, etc. was in full swing. These days sites use blob URLs and other means to prevent downloads. Luckily we have tools like yt-dlp to download individual YouTube videos or entire channels of content.
To download an entire channel, you can use yt-dlp:
yt-dlp https://www.youtube.com/@beetlejuicearchives3490
If you’re like me and only care for the audio, you can use a few more arguments:
yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 https://www.youtube.com/@beetlejuicearchives3490
youtube-dl used to be the standard for downloading YouTube videos but yt-dlp seems to have taken the throne. YouTube has such a wealth of information on just about anything, be sure to download content for travel, long walks, or any other reason!
The post How to Download a YouTube Video or Channel appeared first on David Walsh Blog.
2024-08-04 00:51:46
curl is one of those great utilities that’s been around seemingly forever and has endless use cases. These days I find myself using curl to batch download files and test APIs. Sometimes my testing leads me to using different HTTP headers in my requests.
To add a header to a curl request, use the -H flag:
curl -X 'GET' \ 'https://nft.api.cx.metamask.io/collections?chainId=1' \ -H 'accept: application/json' \ -H 'Version: 1'
You can add multiple headers with multiple -H uses. Header format is usually [key]: [value].
The post How to Add a Header to a curl Request appeared first on David Walsh Blog.
2024-06-19 19:31:27
CSS selectors never cease to amaze me in how powerful they can be in matching complex patterns. Most of that flexibility is in parent/child/sibling relationships, very seldomly in value matching. Consider my surprise when I learned that CSS allows matching attribute values regardless off case!
Adding a {space}i to the attribute selector brackets will make the attribute value search case insensitive:
/* case sensitive, only matches "example" */
[class=example] {
background: pink;
}
/* case insensitive, matches "example", "eXampLe", etc. */
[class=example i] {
background: lightblue;
}
The use cases for this i flag are likely very limited, especially if this flag is knew knowledge for you and you’re used to a standard lower-case standard. A loose CSS classname standard will have and would continue to lead to problems, so use this case insensitivity flag sparingly!
The post Case Insensitive CSS Attribute Selector appeared first on David Walsh Blog.
2024-06-17 20:01:38
Working on a web extension that ships to an app store and isn’t immediately modifiable, like a website, can be difficult. Since you cannot immediately deploy updates, you sometimes need to bake in hardcoded date-based logic. Testing future dates can be difficult if you don’t know how to quickly change the date on your local machine.
To change the current date on your Mac, execute the following from command line:
# Date Format: MMDDYYYY sudo date -I 06142024
This command does not modify time, only the current date. Using the same command to reset to current date is easy as well!
The post How to Set Date Time from Mac Command Line appeared first on David Walsh Blog.
2024-05-13 18:45:29
Remembering the WiFi password when on a guest network is never easy. Even worse is when it’s no longer posted and someone else is asking you for it. Luckily there’s a built in Windows command to recover the password of a given WiFi network.
Open cmd and execute the following command:
netsh wlan show profile name="David Walsh's Network" key=clear
The result of the command, assuming the network is found, is a long text output with a variety of information about the network. To get the see the password for the network, look under the “Security settings” heading which will look like this:
Security settings
-----------------
Authentication : WPA2-Personal
Cipher : CCMP
Authentication : WPA2-Personal
Cipher : GCMP
Security key : Present
Key Content : **THE_PLAIN_TEXT_PASSWORD**
As with any complicated command line format, it’s best to create an alias so that you don’t need to remember the full string!
The post How to Retrieve WiFi Password on Windows appeared first on David Walsh Blog.
