...
$period = CarbonPeriod::create($startDate, $endDate);

foreach ($period as $date) {
	$date->format('Y-m-d');
}

$dates = $period->toArray();

To optimize the performance of a map function in JavaScript, you can do a few things:

1. Use the forEach method instead of map if you are not creating a new array from the iteration. forEach is faster because it does not create a new array.

2. Use the map method on a smaller array if possible. For example, if you have a large array and you only need to map over a subset of it, create a new array with just the subset and use map on that.

3. If you are using map to transform each element of the array, use a specialized method for the transformation instead of using map. For example, if you are transforming each element to a string, use the toString method instead of using map.

4. If you are using map to filter an array, use the filter method instead. filter is optimized for filtering and will be faster than using map for that purpose.

5. Use a for loop instead of map if you need to perform complex operations on each element of the array. map is optimized for simple transformations, so a for loop will be faster for more complex operations.

The challenge I encountered was accessing the Meteor.user() in React Router's route loader property.

Alternatively, instead of querying the server, I'm picking up the user id from localStorage. The absence of it indicates the user is logged off or never logged in. Until Meteor kicks off, no sensitive data is displayed anyway.

...
{
  path: '/',
  element: <App />,
  errorElement: <ErrorPage />,
  loader: async () => window.localStorage.getItem('Meteor.userId'),
}
...

and in app.tsx:

const userId: UserId | null = useLoaderData()
const navigate = useNavigate()

useEffect(() => {
  if (userId === null) navigate('/login')
}, [userId])

Node's mongo driver appends the returned _id field to the original object reference.

myCollection.insert(myObject, () => { 
	const {_id } = myObject
  return _id;
})

Step 1. Make cron persist on restarts

unifi-os shell
curl -L https://github.com/unifi-utilities/unifios-utilities/raw/main/on-boot-script/packages/udm-boot_1.0.5_all.deb -o udm-boot.deb
dpkg -i udm-boot.deb
rm udm-boot.deb
exit

Step 2. Add root ssh keys on restart

cd /mnt/data/on_boot.d
vi 15-add-root-ssh-key.sh

File contents

#!/bin/sh

#####################################################
# ADD RSA KEYS AS BELOW - CHANGE BEFORE RUNNING     #
#####################################################
# set -- "ssh-rsa first key here all keys quoted" \ #
#        "ssh-rsa each line appended with slash " \ #
# 	 "ssh-rsa last one has no backslash"        #
#####################################################
set -- "ssh-rsa ..." \
        "ssh-rsa ...."

KEYS_FILE="/root/.ssh/authorized_keys"

counter=0
for key in "$@"
do
	# Places public key in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys if not present
	if ! grep -Fxq "$key" "$KEYS_FILE"; then
		let counter++
		echo "$key" >> "$KEYS_FILE"
	fi
done

echo $counter keys added to $KEYS_FILE

Make file executable and run it

chmod +x 15-add-root-ssh-key.sh 
./15-add-root-ssh-key.sh 

Step 3. Update banner

cat /dev/null > /issue
cat /dev/null > /etc/issue
cat /dev/null > /etc/motd

vi /etc/motd

# Insert your own banner 

Step 4. Update ssh configuration

UDM uses dropbear as ssh server and therefore the configuration is done on init.

Edit the dropbear configuration file

vi /etc/default/dropbear 
 
// See https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dropbear
DROPBEAR_OPTS="-sg"

Restart the dropbear service

/etc/init.d/dropbear restart

The problem

When using Typescript and Firestore, we usually have to do a lot of manual casting when working with documents. One such example would be getting the data of a document:

const thread = threadDocument.data(); // this will be of type any

Should we want to interact with the data in a type-safe manner, we'll have to cast it, which can quickly become tedious.

const thread = <ThreadData>threadDocument.data();

Additionally, when we write data to Firestore, there are no restrictions on how the data should look.

The solution

This is when Firestore Data Converters can come in handy. All we have to do is implement two methods - one where we constrain the data that gets written and one where we cast the data coming from Firestore:

const converter = {
  toFirestore: (dataToBeWritten: ThreadData) => data,
  fromFirestore: (document: QueryDocumentSnapshot) => <ThreadData>document.data(),
};

To take this one step further, we can store the "converted" collection reference so we won't have to apply the converters each time we query the collection:

const threadCollection = db.collection("threads").withConverter(converter);

Now we can safely interact with the collection without having to cast the data:

const threadDocument = await threadCollection.doc(id).get();
const thread = threadDocument.data(); // this will be of type ThreadData

This is how we can obtain reactivity in our custom React.js hooks while working with the local storage, using the Pub/Sub (Observer) design pattern (with TypeScript support).

The goal is to implement a "useLocalStorage" custom hook, which will abstract away the complexity of reading from and writing to the local storage. As we know, each custom hook instantiates its own state. That is a problem in our case because when one instance of the hook updates the local storage, the state copies held by all the other hook instances will be out of sync and will never be updated.

We can solve this issue using the following idea: we can mimic a centralized shared state between our custom hook instances by delegating the responsibility of holding these in sync with the local storage to a custom "manager", the Observer object.

Our custom hook will work based on these ideas:

1. Custom Hook instances will subscribe their inner state updater functions to this manager
2. Custom Hook instances will publish the new state to the manager when updating a key of the local storage
3. The manager will trigger all subscriber functions and thus update the inner states of the custom hook instances.

The observer object:

export type Listener<EventType> = (event: EventType) => void;

export type ObserverReturnType<KeyType, EventType> = {
  subscribe: (entryKey: KeyType, listener: Listener<EventType>) => () => void;
  publish: (entryKey: KeyType, event: EventType) => void;
};

export default function createObserver<
  KeyType extends string | number | symbol,
  EventType,
>(): ObserverReturnType<KeyType, EventType> {
  const listeners: Record<KeyType, Listener<EventType>[]> = {} as Record<
    KeyType,
    Listener<EventType>[]
  >;

  return {
    subscribe: (entryKey: KeyType, listener: Listener<EventType>) => {
      if (!listeners[entryKey]) listeners[entryKey] = [];
      listeners[entryKey].push(listener);
      return () => {
        listeners[entryKey].splice(listeners[entryKey].indexOf(listener), 1);
      };
    },
    publish: (entryKey: KeyType, event: EventType) => {
      if (!listeners[entryKey]) listeners[entryKey] = [];
      listeners[entryKey].forEach((listener: Listener<EventType>) =>
        listener(event),
      );
    },
  };
}

export const LocalStorageObserver = createObserver<
  LOCAL_STORAGE_KEYS,
  string
>();

export const { subscribe, publish } = LocalStorageObserver;

The useLocalStorage custom hook (window checks are optional, depending on which environment this JavaScript will run on):

export function useLocalStorage<T>(key: LOCAL_STORAGE_KEYS, initialValue: T) {
  const [storedValue, setStoredValue] = useState(() => {
    if (typeof window === 'undefined') {
      return initialValue;
    }
    try {
      const item = window.localStorage.getItem(key);
      return item ? JSON.parse(item) : initialValue;
    } catch (error) {
      return initialValue;
    }
  });

  LocalStorageObserver.subscribe(key, setStoredValue);

  const setValue = (value: T) => {
    try {
      const valueToStore =
        value instanceof Function ? value(storedValue) : value;
      setStoredValue(valueToStore);
      LocalStorageObserver.publish(key, valueToStore);
      if (typeof window !== 'undefined') {
        window.localStorage.setItem(key, JSON.stringify(valueToStore));
      }
    } catch (error) {
      console.error(error);
    }
  };
  return [storedValue, setValue];
}

If you need to manually test a package you are developing and don't want to make a release each time you modify something, you can install it directly from your local machine.

You can achieve this by using the following commands, depending on the package manager you use:

yarn add [path-to-your-package]

npm install [path-to-your-package]

This will have the following equivalent in package.json:

...
"dependencies": {
    "[package]": "file:[relative-path-to-package]",
    ...
},

How to run a node command from the UI.Vision RPA chrome extension

The anatomy of a basic UI Vision task looks like this:

{
  "Command": "XType",
  "Target": "Hello World${KEY_ENTER}",
  "Value": "",
  "Description": ""
},

It can be a very simple task such as typing some text in the before-selected input control. But it can also perform advanced sequences. These sequences can involve conditional structures, and system calls. It can even execute javascript in a sandboxed context.

The two most important parameters are Value and Target. But sometimes its usage is not very intuitive.

Luckily, the documentation is clear and accessible. As a quick link next to the command dropdown.

Let's call a node.js process sometime in our automation flow.

To do this, make sure you have the UI Vision extra X Modules installed. If you're running this on mac, make sure to also grant the necessary permissions.

The inconsistent usage of Value and Target made me spend some time figuring out how to split the command. I've found that this works:

{
  "Command": "XRun",
  "Target": "/My Path/.n/bin/node",
  "Value": "/My Path/automations/my_automation.js",
  "Description": ""
},

The Target is the binary we want to run, and the Value is the parameter we want to pass to it. In our case, a javascript file.

Another mention-worthy caveat: In the Chrome extension, you can't pass the Terminal as Target process due to security concerns.

Using DocumentFragment does the trick because it isn't part of the active document tree structure.

This means it doesn't interact with the main document until mounted.

Hence, it doesn't impact the performance when changes occur to its contents.

// Setup
const outlet = document.getElementById('#myList');
const fragment = new DocumentFragment();
const results = fetchResults(); // returns Array<Result>

We then go through each result and prepare it properly:

results.map((result, index) => {
    const li = document.createElement('li');
    li.textContent = result;
    li.classList.add('result');
    // We append to the DocumentFragment
    fragment.appendChild(li);
 });

Finally, we append the end result to the list:

outlet.appendChild(fragment);

If we were to append each item to the list outlet within the map above, it would have triggered a repaint/reflow every time we performed the action.