Forem: saf

Install Kali Linux

saf — Mon, 27 Jul 2020 05:55:19 +0000

Why Kali Linux?

So, I have an old laptop which I have not used for quite some time now and was thinking on turning this into something useful. Kali Linux is a powerful toolkit for security testing. And I think it is nice to explore and learn Kali Linux during this pandemic.

Requirements:

Kali Linux Installer – Kali linux installer can be downloaded at: https://www.kali.org/downloads/. Make sure to download depending on your computer system.
PowerISO – PowerISO is used to create bootable USB drive. You can download PowerISO here: https://www.poweriso.com/ . I tried using rufus , pen drive linux and balenaEtcher but none of these works for me. You can choose whatever bootable usb software you like.
USB flash drive (4gb or greater)

Create Bootable USB Drive

Follow the steps from https://www.poweriso.com/tutorials/how-to-make-win7-bootable-usb-drive.htm if you are not familiar with creating a bootable usb drive.

Once everything is done, follow the steps below to install Kali Linux on your machine.

Boot Kali Linux installer image
Once booted, select graphical install
Select your preferred language
Select your location. The selected location will be used to set your time zone.
Configure keyboard keymap. As per research, American English is recommended.
Set your machine hostname.
Configure the network
Set your username and password
Set your timezone
Choose partition disk. You can set your own preference on this. But in my case I just leave all files in one partition.
If you have a network proxy for external access, configure it on this screen
Choose software to install.
Install the GRUB boot loader to the master boot record so you can boot your Kali Linux image. Then, select target disk for GRUB installation. Mostly, it is the first disk.
If you don’t have any error during the installation, then your installation is successful. Else, leave a comment below and we'll try to solve it.

Let our Kali Linux adventure begin. :)

Have you ever just stopped what you are doing and focused on the mind and its endless procession of thoughts? Try it sometime, there is a lot going on up there! This is how the mind works, but there is a drawback to this natural process. Most of our errant thoughts are rooted in the past and future – thoughts of fear, fantasy, frustration, envy and regret. Rarely are we completely rooted in the present moment. As Eckhart Tolle says – “The Power of Now”.

Implement CRUD with Laravel Service-Repository Pattern

saf — Mon, 25 May 2020 13:35:50 +0000

Why Laravel Service and Repository Pattern?

Yes, indeed, there are many ways that laravel can interpret the CRUD functionality. But I personally suggest the service-repository design pattern because it’s clean and sustainable. The concept of repositories and services ensures that you write reusable code and helps to keep your controller as simple as possible making them more readable.

Repositories are usually a common wrapper for your model and the place where you would write different queries in your database. A service on the other hand is a layer for handling all your application’s logic. Based on experience, it’s really conducive to separate the logic and the wrapper of the model especially when you’re working on team or big projects.

To illustrate the repository and service, we’ll build a CRUD application.
I assume you already have laravel project installed in your local machine. If none, you may read my previous post on installing laravel project at https://dev.to/jsafe00/set-up-laravel-project-in-a-virtual-machine-with-laravel-homestead-3d4a.

For the purpose of this tutorial to emphasize the service-repository pattern, I’ll be illustrating the backend side only. You may use postman to execute.
You can download then install postman here: https://www.postman.com/downloads/

To get started, let’s set up Model, Controller and Migration by executing:

php artisan make:model Post -mcr

-m, --migration Create a new migration file for the model.
-c, --controller Create a new controller for the model.
-r, --resource Indicates if the generated controller should be a resource controller

Route

Model
Please ensure that our attributes are fillable. Update Post model like below.

Migration
Then, update the post migration like below then execute

php artisan migrate

Repository
Laravel does not have a repository command. You have to do it manually. Just create a Repositories folder then add PostRepository file and add the code below.

We call the Post model in the constructor of our class.

Service
Like repository, laravel doesn’t have a service command. Create a Services folder, add PostService file and add the code below.

We inject the PostRepository dependency into the constructor of our PostService class.

Now that we are done with the repository-service setup. Let’s proceed with creating our CRUD.

Create

PostController -> PostService -> PostRepository

https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/7hry719tcwbt0l0zxs4p.png

$this->postService->savePostData($data) – this part calls the savePostData function in the post service.

In the post service, we validate the data. If there are no errors,

$this->postRepository->save($data); - we call the save function in the post repository to save the data in the database.

If there are errors, for example when we didn’t input a title, then this will be displayed when we execute in postman.

READ

GetAllData

https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/zdpkcz7d7pl4kah4pvli.png

GetById

https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/old8umw7apwjkvkwqb58.png

Update

https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/uddzrcqmolhupsssrk3c.png

Delete

https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/izq5dwwy2n3fy3mmy4zk.png

I hope by just looking at the screenshots you can already see the pattern then you can easily grasp as to why the laravel service-repository pattern is clean and sustainable. You can clone this CRUD sample at https://github.com/jsafe00/laravel-service-repository

I have created a tutorial with interface implementation on this pattern at https://josafebalili.vercel.app/laravel-service-repository-interface

Or you might check my CRUD implementation of repository pattern with Laravel 8 and Php 8 at https://github.com/jsafe00/her-running-medals-api

I've created a simple package for this. You might want to check it.

https://github.com/jsafe00/laravel-s-r-c

Everything has a pattern, you just need to notice it. This goes with the saying that everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

May we see beauty in everything. Beauty is in the eye of the grateful.

Deploy Laravel application with database to Heroku

saf — Sat, 16 May 2020 12:05:41 +0000

Why Heroku?

I would like to start my blog with the question “why” as there are lots of technologies to choose from that are maybe better and more convenient to use but after all, it’s all about personal preferences.

So why Heroku?

Heroku is a public PaaS (Platform as a Service) provider that makes it easy to deploy applications written using several technology stacks at no cost. Application developers all around the globe use Heroku-like services to implement and test their applications remotely without any pain.
It’s free and easy to use.

Prepare your Laravel app

On this tutorial, I will use the repo : https://github.com/rappasoft/laravel-boilerplate. Laravel Boilerplate provides you with a massive head start on any size web application. It comes with a full featured access control system out of the box with an easy to learn API and is built on a Bootstrap foundation with a front and backend architecture. A big thanks to all who made contributions to this open source laravel app. Go ahead, fork and clone that repo or you can use your own depending on your preference.

I assume you tested your app on local and everything worked fine before proceeding to set up the heroku.

Prepare your Heroku CLI
You can download heroku-cli at:

https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-cli#download-and-install.

Download and install Heroku according to your OS.
Once installation is finished, go back to your terminal and try to execute:

heroku login

The heroku login will appear. Click login.

When you go back to your terminal you will see something like this:

Create Procfile inside your main Laravel

Inside your Procfile, put this code line.
web: vendor/bin/heroku-php-apache2 public/

Go back to your terminal and type:

git init - This is for git initialization
heroku create - This command will create your app and repository name in Heroku

After that, commit and push your project to Heroku.

git add .
git commit –m “first commit”
git push heroku master

Now, go to heroku dashboard, you will see something like this.

Try to access your app by clicking Open app button.

This will give you a 500 server error because we have not set any configuration from our .env file on our Laravel app into Heroku.

Add Config Vars setttings in Heroku

Click settings then add the config vars like below. Follow some config in your .env file. The APP_ENV is production while APP_URL is your heroku url. Please refer below my configuration.

Try to access your app. You should see your app is successfully deployed now.

Configure database
Lastly, we will configure our database so that we can run migrations and seeders in Heroku. Actually, we can use MySQL but we need to upgrade our membership. That’s why in this tutorial, we will be using PostgreSQL because it’s free. :)

Click on Resources Menu. Then search for Postgres.

Click install Heroku Postgres. After successful installation, heroku postgres is available in our dashboard resources just like below.

After that, go to your terminal and type:

heroku config

Take note on your DATABASE_URL.

Change DATABASE_URL to the url on your heroku config.

Sample Heroku config setup:

Set pgsql as your default database setup.

So far, this is the best practice I know. Please read comments section for details or share better practice you know :).

Now, we will commit and push our changes in heroku repo. In your terminal run these commands below.

git add .
git commit –m “update db connection”
git push heroku master

Then, run migration in heroku.

heroku run php artisan migrate

After migration, don’t forget to execute
heroku run php artisan db:seed

Then access your heroku app

http://whispering-wave-57771.herokuapp.com/.
Use the email and password below to explore laravel-boilerplate.
email: admin@admin.com
password: secret

To rename your app, execute the ff:

heroku apps:rename newname

There you have it! You now have a running laravel-boilerplate app with database deployed in heroku.

Hopefully this tutorial is useful to you.

Ending this tutorial with something I read last night which I think is worth sharing. 🙂

https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/05/14/the-most-successful-developers-share-more-than-they-take/

Set up laravel project in a virtual machine with laravel homestead

saf — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 11:15:23 +0000

Why Laravel Homestead?

Laravel Homestead is an official, pre-packaged Vagrant box that provides you a wonderful development environment without requiring you to install PHP, a web server, and any other server software on your local machine. No more worrying about messing up your operating system! That’s why I highly recommended this virtual environment setup.

Before launching your Homestead environment, you must download and install on your pc the ff:

VirtualBox – an application that lets you run an operating system within your operating system. It keeps the data and activity of the operating system inside of it, which is called the guest operating system, separate from your regular operating system, which is called, the host operating system
Download virtual box here: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
Vagrant - tool for working with virtual environments, and in most circumstances, this means working with virtual machines. Vagrant provides a simple and easy to use command-line client for managing these environments, and an interpreter for the text-based definitions of what each environment looks like, called Vagrantfiles. Vagrant is open source, which means that anyone can download it, modify it, and share it freely.
Download vagrant here: http://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html
Homestead – Homestead is a vagrant package that provides a dev environment without the need to install PHP. To install homestead, you need to have a Git installed in your system. If none, download and install Git here: https://git-scm.com/downloads
Composer - tool for dependency management in PHP. It allows you to declare the libraries your project depends on and it will manage (install/update) them for you.
Download composer here: https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md

I like to put my Laravel project in this directory:

C:\Users\Dell

In your desired directory, execute the command below:

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel Laravel

Now, we have a fresh laravel project in your local machine.

Run the below command thru git bash in your desired directory:
vagrant box add laravel/homestead

You will be prompted to select your choice for

hyperv
parallels
virtualbox
vmare_desktop

Choose number 3 then press enter.

Once laravel/homestead is added successfully for virtualbox, run this command:

git clone https://github.com/laravel/homestead.git Homestead

this will clone the homestead repository.

Then execute the ff:

bash init.sh

this will create the Homestead.yaml file.

Your Homestead.yaml file is inside your Homestead folder. Open it and configure accordingly.
Please see below configuration. I will explain it by section.

The above configuration is all about your IP address, cpus and provider of your VM. You can update it according to your desire but on my part, I’ll leave it as is.

If you are already working with git, you may have an SSH already. But if you don’t have, please run the command below:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C your_email@example.com

This will create a ssh key for you and you don’t need to do anything else.

This is the part where we specify which folders in Windows should be synchronized with the virtual machine. In my case my map is: C:/Users/Dell/Laravel since my Laravel project is in that directory and I want it to mimic in /home/vagrant/Code directory in my virtual machine.

This section will let us map our domain to a folder in our VM. In my case I name my domain as homestead.test then map it to /home/vagrant/code/public in my virtual machine.

This is the summary of my Homestead.yaml

Don’t forget to edit your host file at: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts, then add this at the end of the file:

192.168.10.10 homestead.test

Go to your Homestead directory

cd Homestead

Then run this command:

vagrant up

this will create the environment. If the environment was already created and the up is just resuming a machine or booting it up.

Execute vagrant ssh:

Type cd Code then ll. The Laravel project that we have in our local machine is mimic in our vm.

We can easily access our Laravel project via this address: http://homestead.test.

To shut down the vagrant machine, execute the ff:

vagrant halt

Note: if you change something on your Hometead.yaml, you need to run the command:
vagrant reload –provision

vagrant reload --provision will reboot the VM and run the provision steps.

My programming blog begins here, my Home - Laravel Homestead.

Please don't hesitate to leave a comment or ask any question to make this tutorial easily doable as possible to others.