Glynn Bird

Websites

Drummer

A web-based drum machine.

PasswordGen

A simple password generator.

TV

A personal TV planner

RSS

A roll-your-own news service

Transposer

A guitar tab and lyrics store that allows each song's key to be changed.

Teletext

Hacker news presented as Teletext.

Dogfight

Web-based recreation of an old BBC micro game.

Cryptario

Cryptic crossword tools.

Anagram Helper

A tool to help when making anagrams

Open Source Software

kvbackup

Backup & restore toole for Cloudflare KV database

couchimport

JSON import command-line scripts for interacting with Apache CouchDB.

couchcsvexport

CSV export command-line scripts for interacting with Apache CouchDB.

csvtojsonlines

CSV to JSON convert command-line tool

couchbulkdelete

Bulk delete data based on a selector

couchgenerator

Data generation tool for CouchDB. Produces writes/updates/deletes

ccurl

A curl wrapper to make forming requests for Apache CouchDB easier.

nano

Official Apache CouchDB Node.js client.

mangogrep

Grep through jsonl files using Mango selectors or SQL where clauses.

couchsnap

An incremental backup tool for Apache CouchDB.

jsonpour

A streaming JSON parser.

couchreplicate

CLI tool to help with Apache CouchDB replications.

couchmigrate

CLI tool to help migration of index definitions with Apache CouchDB.

rss

Deployable RSS-powered news aggregator.

toot

Mastodon CLI tool. Send toots from the command line.

qrate

A Node.js library to create rate limited, defined-concurrency queues.

kuuid

A Node.js library to generate time-sortable UUIDs.

datamaker

CLI and Node.js library for dummy data generation.

birdle

Wordle clone for CLI fans.

latlongify

Tells you where a lat/long pair is.

Posts

Auth with the SDKs

How to switch auth methods at run-time

New Reducers

Understanding the new MapReduce reducers.

Bulk Delete

How to bulk delete data in Cloudant

Avoiding Query Fallbacks

Prevent runaway queries scanning all documents

IBM Cloud Logs

Using Cloudant with IBM Cloud Logs

Per-database IAM

Finer-grained controls over IAM polices.

QuickJS for Faster Index Builds

A new JavaScript engine that's smaller and faster.

Scaling Up and Scaling Down

Ramping up capacity to deal with peaks in traffic

The Replication Scheduler

Monitoring Cloudant replications using the scheduler

The beginsWith Operator

Using the new $beginsWith Cloudant Query operator

Throttling Replication

Controlling the speed of Cloudant replication jobs

Explaining Explain

How index selection works in Cloudant Query

The Node SDK

Getting started with Node.js and Cloudant

Changes Follower

Following a changes feed with Cloudant SDKs

Provisioning Cloudant With Terraform

How to deploy a Cloudant instance using Terraform.

MapReduce Compound Keys

Using arrays as keys for complex grouped aggregation.

Search Syntax

A primer on Cloudant Search query syntax.

HTTP 429

Handling Cloudant's rate limiting HTTP response

HTTP 409

When is conflict not a conflict?

HTTP 200/201/202

What do CouchDB/Cloudant success response codes mean?

Replication Efficieny Improvements

How Cloudant made replication go faster?

Taxi Service

How to build a taxi service with Cloudant?

How I Backup CouchDB Data

Creating searchable, incremental backups with Apache CouchDB or Cloudant.

Simple Geospatial Queries

Finding data within a rectangle or nearest to a point

Using the Changes Feed

Best practices and pitfalls

Migrating from TXE

Switching from Cloudant TXE to Cloudant Standard

Projection

Storing data in a Cloudant index for faster retrieval

Code Engine & Cloudant

Using IBM's Code Engine platform with the Cloudant database

Removing Tombstones

Purging deleted documents from Cloudant/CouchDB databases

GitHub Webhooks and Cloud Functions

Using GitHub as a trigger for Cloudant data

Repairing a database with conflicts

Removing conflicted documents from a database

Migrating a Cloudant Account

Moving from one Cloudant account to another without downtime

Automated Daily Backups

Backing up Cloudant databases to COS every night.

JSON Schema Validation

Validating JSON schemas with CouchDB Design Documents

Transaction Engine Costs

Following the incentives to get the best performance for the lowest price.

Best Practice for Transaction Engine

How to get the best out of Cloudant on Transaction Engine

Building a Store Finder

Using Cloudant Search to implement a 'find nearest' store finder.

Optimising Cloudant Queries

Selecting the right index and query for the best performance.

Fast data transfer

A faster alternative to replication

Filtered Replication

Using a selector to filter documents from the changes feed.

Timing HTTP Requests in Node.js

Instrumenting your Node.js app to time HTTP requests in detail

Case-sensitivity in queries

Making a case-sensitive/insensitive query, MapReduce and search.

couchsnapshot

Point-in-time backup tool for CouchDB/Cloudant

Paginating _all_docs

Three ways to page through the CouchDB primary index

Logging with LogDNA

Logging Cloudant requests to LogDNA for monitoring and analysis

Design Docs For Life

Design documents in Cloudant & CouchDB

Error detection with Redis

Configuring retry/reconnection logic with Redis

Replicating from a Query

Replacing filtered CouchDB replication with query/write pattern

Paging with Cloudant bookmarks

Paging through results sets using the Cloudant bookmark feature

Partitioned Databases and Node.js

Using partitioned databases with the Node.js Cloudant library

Scheduled Cloudant Backups

Running regular backups of Cloudant databases using Kubernetes crons.

Optimal Cloudant Indexing

Using fewer indexes across multiple document types.

Analyzing backups with SQL Query

Archiving Cloudant data and querying it at rest on Object Storage.

Time-series data storage

Managing ever-growing data sets with time-boxed buckets.

Building a CRM System

How to build a CRM system with Cloudant's Partitioned Databases

Partitioned Databases - Sizing

Calculating the sizes of the partitions in Cloudant database

Partitioned Databases - Data Migration

Moving data from a non-partitioned to a partitioned database

Partitioned Databases - Data Design

How to design data for a partitioned Cloudant database

Partitioned Databases - Introduction

Introduction to the new partitioned databases feature in Cloudant

Natural Language Classification with CouchDB

Combining CouchDB with the IBM Watson Natural Language Classifier service

The Count Distinct Problem with CouchDB

Counting the distinct numbers of things in a collection is a memory intensive operation, but if you can accept an approximate answer there is a solution.

Caching CouchDB requests with Nginx

Caching frequently-performed searches can make your app run much faster with very little change in your code

CouchDB and the data warehouse

Pairing CouchDB, as a primary data store, and a data warehouse for ad-hoc queries gives you the best of both worlds.

Search Analyzers in Cloudant Search

Picking the right analyzer in your Lucene search

Generating sample data for a JSON data store

Using datamaker to generate meaningful sample data

Time-sortable document ids in Cloudant/CouchDB

Making a document id that is time-sortable and unique

Adding Cloudant search to your static Jekyll blog

Making a static HTML website have dynamic search

Cloudant Fundamentals - Aggregations

_sum-ming up the basics of Cloudant (part 10 of 10)

Removing Cloudant conflicts

Using couchdeconflict, a command-line tool, to declutter your database

Introducing CouchDB Nano 7.0.0

The latest release of the official Node.js library for Apache CouchDB

Using Cloudant from Jupyter Notebooks

Analyse your app’s Cloudant data directly from an interactive notebook

Cloudant Fundamentals - Indexing

Primary or secondary? Type json or text? Understanding your options (part 9 of 10)

Modelling Cloudant data in TypeScript

Using TypeScript classes in your code and saving their JSON representation in a Cloudant database.

Cloudant Fundamentals - Querying in Node.js

Using Node.js to build JSON and SQL queries

Cloudant Fundamentals - Querying

Using Cloudant Query to slice and dice your data

Optimising Cloudant for Serverless

Getting the best out of Cloudant using Cloud Functions

Software Engineering Radio Podcast

Developer Productivity with Open Source

Cloudant Fundamentals - Programmatic CRUD

Reading and writing documents from Node.js

Cloudant Fundamentals - The Bulk API

Using the bulk API to write and fetch documents

Emoji in Cloudant documents

Emoji are everywhere, but can they survive in a JSON data store?

Cloudant Fundamentals - The API

Using the API from the command-line

Date formats for Apache CouchDB & Cloudant

Picking the best format when storing date & time in JSON

Cloudant Fundamentals - The rev token

It's all about revisions. And trees.

Cloudant Fundamentals - The _id

Unlocking the mysteries of the unique _id field.

Cloudant Fundamentals - The Document

General tips on data modelling JSON documents.

Protecting Your Website Forms With Serverless CAPTCHA

Using a serverless function to prevent spam form completions.

Keeping Your Secrets Between Cloud Object Storage and Your Browser (Part 2)

Downloading files from Object Storage to the browser

Keeping Your Secrets Between Cloud Object Storage and Your Browser (Part 1)

Uploading files to Object Storage from a browser

Cloudant and CouchDB Replication with couchreplicate

A new command-line tool for managing and monitoring multiple replication jobs

Keeping Local Documents Local in a CouchDB-Style Replication Job

For when you replicate data, but need to leave a bit of config behind

Sharing variables between Python & Node.js in Jupyter notebooks

They live apart and speak different languages, but these variables hold common values

Creating partial Cloudant indexes

Filter data before it’s indexed to get the most out of your storage

Detatching Cloudant attachments to Object Storage with Serverless functions

How to build a pipeline to move Cloudant attachments to object storage using IBM Cloud Functions

Using your own domain name with Cloudant

Secure your custom domain using serverless functions on the IBM Cloud

Creating a Cloudant/Elasticsearch hybrid

Copying data from Cloudant to Elasticsearch using serverless OpenWhisk

Mapping the songs of Bruce Springsteen

Plotting geographical references from Springsteen lyrics on a map with Pixiedust

Track your crypto-currency portfolio with serverless functions

Poll an API to get bitcoin pricing and store it in Cloudant using OpenWhisk

Notebooks for Spreadsheet Users

Perform spreadsheet-like tasks in notebooks with this handy guide

Couchimport revisited

Updates to couchimport to allow multiple documents per line of CSV to be created.

Cloudant Envoy - Serverless Edition

The CouchDB one-database-per-user pattern, now with less infrastructure

Offline First Drum Machine

Offline-First drum machine modelled on a CR78 built with Vue.js and PouchDB

Building the fastest website in the world

From the Amp project and Google’s Lighthouse, to Offline First and service workers

Reading the open-source nutrition labels

The open-source projects that underpin various IBM cloud services.

Custom Indexers for Cloudant

Using JavaScript and Redis for problems that don’t fit Cloudant’s indexing engines.

Nodebooks - Custom Node.js visualisations in Notebooks (part 3)

Using Node.js modules, adding HTML and images and connecting to Redis databases from a Notebook with Node.js.

Nodebooks - Sharing data between Node.js and Python (part 2)

See how you can use Python and Node.js code in the same Jupyter notebook and share data between the two languages, using Pixiedust to visualise the results

Nodebooks - Node.js in Jupyter notebooks (part 1)

Developers can use notebooks too, for prototyping, data exploration and visualisation of results. If you're a Node.js developer, check out pixiedust_node for Jupyter notebooks

Open Source for Fun, Learning, and Kudos

Reflecting on my career, and advice on getting started

Custom Cloudant Replication

Use OpenWhisk to replicate a Cloudant database into many sub-databases, ready for replication. Read this worked example, using a bus timetabling display as a demo.

Serverless Autocomplete

Autocomplete is an excellent use of serverless technology because the autocomplete data set can reside in the same container as your API code. Find out how.

Querying Your PouchDB Database with SQL

You can now query your PouchDB databases with SQL using the pouchdb-silverlining plugin.

CouchDB Writes - Piecemeal, Bulk, or Batch?

There are several ways of writing data to Cloudant, this article explores the trade-offs between each approach.

Querying Cloudant with SQL

Cloudant doesn't natively support SQL queries, but now the cloudant-quickstart library allows SQL queries to be converted into Mango-JSON which Cloudant does understand.

Hacking vs. Prototyping vs. Production Code

Exploring the difference between knocking up a quick demo to producing prodction-ready code that others can build on. It uses the example of couchbackup, which went from hack to production this year.

API Rate-limiting with qrate

Avoid 429 error codes by rate limiting the API calls you make to third-party API services. qrate is a drop-in replacement for async.queue. Find out how easy it is to use.

Choosing a Cloudant Library

This articles the choices you have for Node.js libraries that talk to Apache CouchDB or Cloudant and the levels of abstraction they use.

Diff your database

Introducing couchdiff, a tool to tell you the difference between two CouchDB databases.

PouchDB - the Swiss army knife of databases

How I love PouchDB. Let me count the ways.

Serverless, Watson-powered chatbot for your business

Create a concierge service for your small business using Watson and OpenWhisk

Moving data from DocumentDB to Cloudant

Export data from Azure's DocumentDB to CouchDB or Cloudant

Alexa skills with Cloudant and OpenWhisk

Create your own Amazon Alexa skills using OpenWhisk.

Moving DynamoDB data to Cloudant

Export Amazon DynamoDB data to CSV then import to Cloudant

Analysing Cloudant data in notebooks

Use Runkit to analyse Cloudant data using JavaScript

Scalable online-petition with OpenWhisk

Building scalable serverless systems with OpenWhisk and Cloudant

Installing web apps with Electron

Distribute your web apps as installable applications on Mac, Windows & Linux.

Keeping secrets secret in Node.js

Tips on how to keep your API keys secret in Node.js applications

Dogfight - making retro game multiplayer

Turning a 1983 BBC Micro game into a web-base mulitplayer game.

Cloudant and Node.js Made Simple with the cloudant-quickstart (formerly silverlining) Library

A Cloudant and Node.js Made Simple with the cloudant-quickstart (formerly silverlining) Library

Creating a custom domain for Cloudant

Using Cloudflare in front of Cloudant allows you to have a custom domain, caching and more

Blazingly Fast Geospatial Queries with Redis

Import geospatial data into Redis using Python and make super fast 'find nearest' queries

Building Offline-First, Progressive Web Apps

Make web apps that sync offline, are installable on mobile phones and render on all devices.

OpenWhisk Microservices

Create microservices simply with OpenWhisk for event-driven computing.

Offline First QR Code scanner

An offline-first, web-based QR-code scanning app that syncs to Cloudant.

Searchable Game of Thrones

Importing Game of Thrones character data into the Simple Search Service

Multiplying Microservices

Adding simple metrics aggregation microservice for metrics collection.

Simple CouchDB & Cloudant backup

Three ways to backup your Cloudant or CouchDB databases.

Deploying the metrics collector microservice on Compose

Using Compose and IBM Cloud to deploy the Metrics Collector Microservice

Metrics Collector Microservice

Website and app metrics collector as Microservice using Redis/RabbitMQ/Kafka and writing to Cloudant/MongoDB/ElasticSearch

PouchDB in a Web Worker

PouchDB gives you offline-first storage in a browser. It can also run in a Web Worker to improve performance.

Simple Search Service

Created a faceted search engine by uploading a CSV file.

Introduction to Queues

A look at the differences between the various queue and broker technologies, listed here in order of increasing complexity, resilience, and capacity

Scaling Web Apps

How to use Message Hub (Kafka) or RabbitMQ to scale up a busy website

Command-line tools for CouchDB

Backup, design doc migration, shells and JSON parsers on the command-line.

Greenkeeper interview

Interview with the Greenkeeper.io creators about their Node.js change management tool.

Export Cloudant to CSS, RSS and iCal

How to turn Cloudant JSON into other data formats directly from Cloudant

Slack to Cloudant

Writing data directly to Slack from Cloudant

Defensive coding in MapReduce

Avoid common pitfalls in writing MapReduce functions with Cloudant.

Spreadsheet to search

Turning your structured data into a faceted search engine is easy with Cloudant Search.

Cloudant Query Grows Up

A run-through of the features of Cloudant Query 'text' indexes for performing ad-hoc searches.

Replication guide

A beginners guide to replication

Design Document Management

A guide to CouchDB/Cloudant design documents, how they work and how to manage change control.

Building a Cloudant cluster from Raspberry Pis

A guide to building a distributed database with 13 Raspberry Pis.

A guide to Cloudant document conflicts - Part Three

The third part of triology on CouchDB document conflicts, how they work and how to resolve and avoid them

A guide to Cloudant document conflicts - Part Two

The second part of triology on CouchDB document conflicts, how they work and how to resolve and avoid them

A guide to Cloudant document conflicts - Part One

The first part of triology on CouchDB document conflicts, how they work and how to resolve and avoid them