As part of the standard library, Python provides a very flexible logging module that includes the ability to define custom handlers. Commonly this is used to log errors to Syslog, …

Continue reading “Python Error Logging to Amazon Web Services’ Simple Notification Service (SNS)”

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a great way to begin building highly-scalable, durable web apps almost immediately… er, which is a bit of a problem. If you’re developing applications on …

Continue reading “3 Things You Must Know If You Develop on Amazon Web Services (EC2)”

For years I’ve been using this simple design pattern when building a new user authentication backend for a project. Rather than just querying whether a username and password is valid, …

Continue reading “A better way to authenticate users via a SQL database.”

I’ve been working with credit card payment gateways as a web developer since 1997, when I built an e-commerce website for a small computer store. It’s a complex industry with …

Continue reading “4 Non-Obvious Tips When Developing with Credit Card Gateways”