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Developer Corner

Custom Buttons – Client Scripts in Frappe Framework and ERPNext

by karani November 6, 2022

written by karani

Client scripts are powerful! They give you the flexibility to control how you want your application to behave. With these pieces of code we can even alter how our application works currently.

In this video, we are going to have a quick introduction to the Frappe Framework and ERPNext client scripts. We will also explore the following topics in custom buttons:

How to create a custom button
How to create a group of buttons
How to add a custom button to a group button created by Frappe or ERPNext
How to rename a button created by Frappe or ERPNext

See more from Documentation

Client Script: Click here to view

Adding Custom Buttons: Click here to view

November 6, 2022 0 comment

Unknown log format “main” – Nginx

by karani August 3, 2022

written by karani

This error can occur during installation of ERPNext as nginx: [emerg] unknown log format “main” in /etc/nginx/conf.d/frappe-bench.conf:101. This error can also occur when setting up nginx outside ERPNext. Either-way, here is a brief on the causes of the error and how to get it resolved.

The main reason for the failure was that I had explicitly commented out log_format main.

Configuring Access Logs in Nginx Under Nginx, all client requests to the server are recorded in the access log in a specified format using the ngx_http_log_module module.

The default log file is log/access.log (usually /var/log/nginx/access_log on Linux systems) and the default format for logging is normally the combined or main format (this can vary from one distro to another).

The access_log directive (applicable in the HTTP, server, location, if in location and limit except for context) is used to set the log file and the log_format directive (applicable under the HTTP context only) is used to set the log format. The log format is described by common variables and variables that generated only at the time when a log is written.

The syntax for configuring a log format is:

log_format format_name 'set_of_variables_to_define_format';

Open the file etc/nginx/nginx.conf in a text editor of choice

Add the below piece of code inside http as shown in the section following the code snippet:

log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
                      '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                      '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

Sample Nginx file with changes

user www-data;
worker_processes auto;
pid /run/nginx.pid;
include /etc/nginx/modules-enabled/*.conf;

events {
	worker_connections 768;
	# multi_accept on;
}

http {

	##
	# Basic Settings
	##

	sendfile on;
	tcp_nopush on;
	tcp_nodelay on;
	keepalive_timeout 65;
	types_hash_max_size 2048;
	# server_tokens off;

	# server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;
	# server_name_in_redirect off;

	include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
	default_type application/octet-stream;


	log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
                      '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                      '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';


	##
	# SSL Settings
	##

	ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3; # Dropping SSLv3, ref: POODLE
	ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

	##
	# Logging Settings
	##

	access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
	error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

	##
	# Gzip Settings
	##

	gzip on;

	# gzip_vary on;
	# gzip_proxied any;
	# gzip_comp_level 6;
	# gzip_buffers 16 8k;
	# gzip_http_version 1.1;
	# gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;

	##
	# Virtual Host Configs
	##

	include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
	include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}


#mail {
#	# See sample authentication script at:
#	# http://wiki.nginx.org/ImapAuthenticateWithApachePhpScript
# 
#	# auth_http localhost/auth.php;
#	# pop3_capabilities "TOP" "USER";
#	# imap_capabilities "IMAP4rev1" "UIDPLUS";
# 
#	server {
#		listen     localhost:110;
#		protocol   pop3;
#		proxy      on;
#	}
# 
#	server {
#		listen     localhost:143;
#		protocol   imap;
#		proxy      on;
#	}
#}

August 3, 2022 0 comment

Coding School Developer Corner

Will Tech Giants Kill Startups In Africa?

by karani October 25, 2021

written by karani

It is important to consider this topic since we have been having technology giants around for some time now. More and more are expressing their interests to join the African movement, promising billions of dollars to the highly potent continent. In this article, I will quickly look at the risks we have at hand, the solution that we can employ to mitigate the risks, and where to start to safeguard our interests as individuals, as individual countries and as a continent.

The problem

When technology giants started coming to Africa, everyone was happy to have them around. Not long, they started to hire aggressively to meet their tech gaps. The kind of salaries they offered software engineers were so high for local startups to match. The startups started losing employees to the giants. The talents the startups polished over the years started leaving, and the companies had little or nothing to do to keep them. This is still happening and threatening the longevity of the startups.

Technology giants taking away all the good software engineers is not all. Those that remain are hired to work for them in their countries. They allow them to work at the comfort of their homes, work for less hours, and still pay triple the amount our local startups are can keep up with.

The solution

The solution to this is to employ ecosystem-level risk management strategies. Governments need to partner with technology companies to train more tech talent. The government’s responsibility will be to provide the necessary infrastructure, while the technology companies provided the relevant curriculum and the needed training.

How do we start?

Code with Karani is a Software Development Training Institution that provides hands on training for software engineers that is propelled by information. The institution is currently purely online, with all content delivered to students through the internet. The current students are not only African but are spread all over the world.

Why Code with Karani is the best Platform to learn Software Engineering

A lead instructor with:

A decade of enterprise level software development experience
A passion to share what I have learnt over the years
Experience teaching locally and internationally
Desire to create employments for our youth
A drive to see our startups thrive at home

An effective THREE-POINT delivery strategy:

Produce world-class software development training curriculum and content
Weekly stand-up calls to catch up and discuss areas of difficulty
Hold hands for a year after graduating and ensure success in career and/or projects

Are you ready to get started? CLICK HERE to Register NOW for FREE!

You can watch the video below.

October 25, 2021 0 comment

Developer Corner Featured Technology

How to avoid Burnout as a Software Developer

by karani October 11, 2021

written by karani

When I graduated from college and landed a Software Developer job at Futuristic, I was all in. I was so enthusiastic about code that finding time to have my lunch was becoming difficult by the day. I wanted to write these little symbols on my computer that made people’s problems fade away. It was so satisfying. This, however, is a pretty common occurrence, especially in small companies: most junior developers are thrown into the deep end, struggle a bit, learn a lot and use their youthful energy to code and work all over the place.

For most developers, this is not the only case. They want to be involved in developer evangelism, meaning they go for hackathons and conferences in addition to their day job. They also have tonnes of personal projects to work on whenever they have a minute spared. I know, it feels good: it makes one feel like they are growing at a supersonic speed, and say yes to everything.

This wasn’t very different from my case, and I burnt out, hard. Saying yes to everything meant I didn’t have time to rest, reflect on life and have quality personal time.

Unfortunately, burnout is difficult explain to anyone who hasn’t been through it. When I burn’t out, I didn’t want to speak to anyone, and the thought of going to work in the morning made me want to cry (actually, I often did). I thought saying no to people would mean I have let them down, and therefore didn’t have the courage to say so.

On this fateful day my alarm went off at 5.30 A.M as usual, I responded to it, prepared and left my house for work. I waited at the bus stop for a ‘matatu’ as we commonly refer to them in Kenya. When the matatu arrived, I stepped one foot inside, thought for a moment and decided not to board. I went back home and just like that, I had lost all interest in the job and worst of all, quit. This is a situation I wouldn’t want anyone to find themselves in.

This didn’t leave me without a change. It gave me valuable lessons. When I recovered considerably, I decided to try out a different company, speak less and pursue my interests more. This is how I joined Software Technologies. The new resolutions made me much more comfortable in my new role, and this way I realized career growth and completed more enterprise level projects. Since then, I have worked with other companies and have learnt even more about developer burnout.

Causes of Burnout

The most common cause of burnout for software developers is a prolonged state of intense stress, accompanied by a perceived feeling of lack of control. Burnout grows slowly and builds up a little step at the time. I’ve seen it manifest when developers feel stuck working very hard and for long periods on projects that:

Require large amounts of personal sacrifice
Seem impossible to complete
Are high-stake
Offer no relief in sight

Actually some people define this kind of project as a “death march”, a term that for the bigger part describes a preventable reality.

In those conditions, burnout starts taking hold of your life causing progressively worsening feelings of:

Emotional and physical fatigue
Lack of accomplishment
Ineffectiveness
Cynicism
Sense of doubt
Indifference

A death march is a project that, after the autopsy, usually reveals the following characteristics:

It has a fixed and immovable scope, timeline and resources available to get it done
Everyone who understands the details agrees it is not achievable, but management doesn’t want to hear it
Management gets progressively more and more worried and loses trust in its people. It gets to a point where a significant portion of people’s time is spent giving status
The people who are doing the work struggle to understand the value of the project

Being on a death march feels like walking in the middle of a railway tunnel, too far from the entrance to run back, and too exhausted to continue moving forward. You see the light in front of you, but you have the feeling that what you see is not sunlight. It comes from an old and rusty locomotive headlamp. You can feel the vibration, and you can hear the train’s whistle. It looks like it is coming at full speed toward you. You realize that you forgot why you even started walking in that tunnel, and you keep getting text messages from your boss asking when you are going to be out of the tunnel, and from your family asking at what time you are going to be back home for dinner.

Symptoms of Burnout

Burnout enters your life slowly, and manifest itself with symptoms that increase in intensity over time. Those include the following, but this list is definitely not exhaustive. I will keep updating it to make it more exhaustive with time:

Insomnia
Anxiety
Depression
Lack of attention span
Fatigue
Chest pains
Shortness of breath
Dizziness
Headaches
Loss or increase of appetite
Irritability
Pessimism
A sense of detachment
Loss of enjoyment of things you used to enjoy
A general feeling of being disconnected
Apathy
Hopelessness
Poor performance

How to avoid Burning out

It is far easier to stop burnout during the early stages. It is much harder to fix once you’ve been deep in it for weeks or months.

Here are the strategies that I recommend. Note that this is also not all and I will certainly keep adding to it:

Understand that you are the captain of your ship

You have a boss, and you have a job. Your boss could be a client, a manager, the board, or who knows what else. It doesn’t matter who you report to. Everybody reports to someone or something. What matters is that you are ultimately in control of what you choose to do.

Your boss can choose to fire you if he or she is not happy with your performance. If you do your absolute best, and your boss decides to let you go, maybe it wasn’t meant to be, and you should move forward and do something else. No job is worth losing your health for, and you are responsible for deciding what you need to stay healthy and productive. Most importantly, you are responsible for letting your boss know what you need to be at your best to achieve the best.

Understand that, if you burnout, you won’t be productive

If you burnout, your productivity goes down to almost zero, your life becomes miserable, and all your efforts to get your work done were for nothing. If you care about the work you are doing, you need to avoid getting to that point. It will not help you, your career, your family, your team or your client.

Define your non-negotiable boundaries and make them clear

We are all different. Nobody knows where your breaking point is. Your boss might be a beast that can work 18 hours a day for years, never eat or sleep and still be productive. That’s commendable, but maybe that’s not you.

If your boss is a gymnast who can perform flips in the air from a standing position, you might be in awe of his or her skills, but you don’t get to that point just because you are asked to stretch. You won’t be able to do it from one day to the next, and you should not give the impression that you commit to doing it with no help if you know it is not possible. You’ll fall on your head and break your neck.

In a given context, you might be more of a 10 hour work day maximum kind of person, imagine that, and you might be one of those people that needs to eat a few times a day and sleep a few hours a night. Go figure.

Regardless of where your “too much” point is, it is your responsibility to make it clear to your boss and the organization you work for. You need to establish your “non-negotiables,” and you must make them clear. Your boss might not tell you, but he or she expects that from you.

You also need to be at peace with the potential consequences of your non-negotiables. If your boss is not happy with your limits, you might not get that promotion or raise that you wanted. You should be okay with that because you already established that you cannot go past your non-negotiables. If your limits are not compatible with your company expectations, you might have to find a place that is more compatible with you.

Keep in mind that if you keep telling everyone “I’ll try,” even if you know that you won’t be successful, you are not doing a favor to your company or your team. Be realistic, and don’t promise things that you know are not going to happen. If you do and fail, you are entirely responsible for it.

On the other hand – and, this is very important – your non-negotiables do not define you. They only establish how you can and should operate in a given context. There are companies and projects where working crazy hours is not a problem. In fact, it can be a lot of fun. I’ve been there, and it is a fantastic experience. It depends on the support you get from the company, the environment, the team, the boss, the reasons for the push, the mission, what is on the horizon and the people you have around.

If you feel like you are with friends and you have a stable support structure around you, what could be unbearable becomes doable. That is why good leadership and a great culture are essential for teams to become highly-performant and operating at their best.

Communicate What You Need To Be Successful

It is your responsibility to communicate to your boss what you and your team need to be successful. If you need more resources, make it clear. If the timeline is too short, make it clear. If the project is too big, make it clear. Be vocal. Don’t make people guess.

Your boss might not always be able to give you what you need. However, if you painted an explicit picture of reality, and you believe that you have good, unselfish and ethical reasons for what you are asking, then you did what you could, and you should be able to sleep soundly at night.

Stay physically healthy

You have heard it one million times and maybe ignored it. There are more books on the topic than letters in this blog post. I’ll just give you the 30 seconds executive summary.

Eat healthy food
Sleep enough hours
Maintain a stable schedule
Move around as much as possible
Take care of your body
Exercise regularly

I’ll let the real experts tell you what flavor of each of those points is right for you, but please don’t ignore it. Your brain needs your body to function. You cannot do your best if your body is falling apart. A Ferrari with flat tires is going to lose a race against a Toyota 110.

Make time for doing things that you like doing

For some people, life is work. For others, work is life. For the majority, a balance of work and non-work activities is a healthy balance for a happy life.

For example, I have a demanding job and working on a project to which I have become very attached that is very important to me. However, I also want to dedicate myself to other activities outside of work. That includes time with my family, reading, writing articles, teaching programming, hiking, etc. I need it not because I don’t like work. I need it because it makes me better at my job, and happier in general.

Do not sacrifice some of the things you like to do because there is not enough time in your day. Make the time; it will boost your performance at work. Find a right balance, and put it on your list of non-negotiables.

Conclusion

If there is one message that I hope you’ll take away from this post is that you are in control of what you are going to do. Don’t let things happen to you. Eliminate any fatalist view of reality, and take ownership of your actions. Make it clear to everyone what your boundaries are, tell people what you need for you to be successful, and accept that others might not agree with you.

Ultimately, you can’t control what other people do or think, but you can positively influence it. Doing so will go a long way to keep you out of burnout and in control of what railway tunnel you choose to cross.

October 11, 2021 0 comment