Today I Learned

Living document, last updated on 25/07/2024

This document is a collection of things I learn on a daily basis, without specific order nor specific format.

25th of July 2024

→ git switch -

git switch - allows you to switch to the previous branch you were on.

Also cd - works kinda the same way to switch to the previous directory you were in.

26th of September 2023

→ TS allows narrowing a string enum to the union of its values

enum Direction {
  Up = "up",
  Down = "down",
  Left = "left",
  Right = "right",
}

type DirectionValue = `${Direction}`; // --> "up" | "down" | "left" | "right"

6th of September 2023

→ Redirect (300+) HTTP status codes are not considered 'ok' on JavaScript Response objects

The ok property of JavaScript's Response objects is true if the status code is between 200 and 299, and false otherwise.

new Response(null, { status: 200 }).ok; // --> true
new Response(null, { status: 301 }).ok; // --> false

It's a thing to keep in mind when handling error statuses on fetch calls: Response.ok is probably not what you want to check. The proper way to check if a response is an error is probably to check if the status code is 400 or more:

const response = await fetch("https://example.com");

if (response.status >= 400) {
  // handle error
}

See Response: ok property on MDN's website

29th of August 2023

→ URL.canParse

The URL constructor has a canParse static method that returns true if the given string is a valid URL, and false otherwise. It's a great way to check if a string is a valid URL without having to add a try/catch.

URL.canParse("https://google.com"); // --> true
URL.canParse("/malformed-url"); // --> false

Learned from https://davidwalsh.name/url-canparse

21st of August 2023

→ Any JSON file is valid YAML

YAML is actually a superset of JSON, meaning that any valid JSON file is also a valid YAML file.

See What is YAML? on Red Hat's website

4th of August 2023

→ The weird case of calling fetch() with redirect: "manual"

By default, fetch will follow HTTP redirects (= 30X status code + Location header) and return the response of the final URL.

But, there's a redirect option on fetch that can be set to "manual" to prevent this behavior and return the response of the first URL. Great !

But, if you do so, your browser will make this response an opaqueredirect response and hide all of its headers and body (from JS code only), and so you won't be able to access the Location header to do the redirect manually. Even setting Access-Control-Expose-Headers: Location on the server response doesn't change this behavior.

Turns out the redirect: "manual" option exists only to allow Service Workers to handle redirects offline, and is not really intended to be used anywhere else: https://fetch.spec.whatwg.org/#ref-for-concept-filtered-response-opaque-redirect.

27th of July 2023

→ Email clients do not have a good support of latest web features because... they don't need to

As web developers we might think "why do I still need to write HTML emails using f*cking tables and inline styles in 2023?", and the answer is: because email clients do not need to support latest web features to be competitive.

What really bothers email clients teams is the following: users want to be able to read their emails quickly, on any device (= not only on web-based clients), and without being exposed to any security risks.

Letting email developers use latest web features would mean maintaining such features (on all of their platforms), and wouldn't add any value to their end users, which do not care at all how you built it. So they don't do it.

If you want to know what you can use while building emails, check https://www.caniemail.com/.

17th of July 2023

→ SVG elements can be kinda magically animated using CSS

Basically this article : https://css-tricks.com/svg-line-animation-works/

By setting a stroke on an SVG shape and using a simple CSS animation, you can animate the drawing of the shape. Here's the trick on a circle + check mark SVG:

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="200" height="200">
  <circle cx="100" cy="100" r="80" pathLength="1" />
  <path d="m54 107.5 34 31 56.5-71" pathLength="1" />
</svg>

<style>
  @keyframes draw {
    to {
      stroke-dashoffset: 0; /* 3. the offset is animated to 0 */
    }
  }

  circle,
  path {
    stroke: #40ad4a;
    stroke-width: 20px;
    stroke-dasharray: 1; /* 1. the shape is a single dash */
    stroke-dashoffset: 1; /* 2. the dash is hidden by default */
    stroke-linecap: round;
    stroke-linejoin: round;
  }

  circle {
    transform-origin: 100px 100px;
    transform: rotate(-90deg);
    animation: draw 0.6s linear forwards;
  }

  path {
    animation: draw 0.4s linear forwards 0.6s;
  }
</style>

Here's what it looks like on a button (just inspect to get the whole snippet):