TPDP Episode #24: Mobile Application Security

I’m pleased to announce that the latest episode of The Polyglot Developer Podcast titled, Mobile Application Security, has been published to iTunes, Pocket Casts, and every other major podcasting network that consumes the feed!

In this episode, which is the 24th episode of the show, I’m joined by first time guest, Rob Lauer, and returning guest TJ VanToll. Both of these guests work for Progress, which is the company behind NativeScript, and you’ll remember that episode 5 was strictly around getting to know what NativeScript has to offer. The focus of this episode isn’t around NativeScript, but around the security of your mobile applications. Just like with web applications, security is important with mobile, even if it isn’t talked about as much.

In this episode you’ll learn about protecting your application source code from reverse engineering, protecting your users data at rest, and securely transferring your data between remote web services.

Hash Password Data In MongoDB With Mongoose And Bcrypt

When creating a web application that handles user information it is a good idea to protect anything considered sensitive rather than storing it as plaintext within a database. The goal is to make it as difficult as possible for a malicious person to obtain access to this sensitive information. Rather than encrypting sensitive information with the knowledge that it can one day become decrypted, it is better to hash this sensitive data instead because hashing is a one-way process.

In this tutorial we’re going to take a look at hashing password data with bcryptjs before storing it in a MongoDB NoSQL database with Mongoose and Node.js.

Use A YubiKey For PGP Signing, Encryption, And Authentication

As you know, based on a few of the tutorials that I’ve published recently, I have a YubiKey that I’ve been learning how to take full advantage of. In previous tutorials I demonstrated how to implement U2F in your web application, but most YubiKey devices do so much more than just U2F authentication. For example, the YubiKey NEO and YubiKey 5 have support for U2F, FIDO2, OpenPGP, OTP, and a bunch of other crazy technologies.

In this tutorial, we’re going to explore using the YubiKey as a smart card for storing our PGP signing, encryption, and authentication subkeys.

Building A REST API With MongoDB, Mongoose, And Node.js

About a week or so ago I had written a tutorial titled, Getting Started with MongoDB as a Docker Container Deployment, which focused on the deployment of MongoDB. In that tutorial we saw how to interact with the MongoDB instance using the shell client, but what if we wanted to actually develop a web application with MongoDB as our NoSQL database?

In this tutorial we’re going to see how to develop a REST API with create, retrieve, update, and delete (CRUD) endpoints using Node.js and the very popular Mongoose object document modeler (ODM) to interact with MongoDB.

Getting Started With MongoDB As A Docker Container Deployment

MongoDB is one of the most popular NoSQL databases on the market right now and is used heavily with Node.js development in particular. So what if you wanted to give MongoDB a spin and see what it’s all about?

There are plenty of deployment options when it comes to using MongoDB. For example, I had recently written a tutorial titled, Developing a RESTful API with Node.js and MongoDB Atlas which focused on the MongoDB cloud solution called Atlas. However, you can also install MongoDB on premise using multiple options.

In this tutorial we’re going to focus on using Docker to deploy MongoDB as a container and interact with it with the shell client.

TPDP Episode #23: Being A Freelance Developer Contractor Or Consultant

I am pleased to announce that the latest episode of The Polyglot Developer Podcast has been published to iTunes and all of the other popular podcasting networks! Being in the development game is tough and the competition for work is fierce. You can go down the route of working for a company as a full-time or part-time employee, or you can operate on your own.

In the 23rd episode of the show titled, Being a Freelance Developer Contractor or Consultant, I’m joined by Nolan Erck, professional freelance consultant and owner of South of Shasta Consulting in Sacramento, CA.

The topic of this episode is working for yourself as a freelance developer consultant or contractor. In this episode Nolan and I explore everything from finding work, negotiating your rate, and ultimately accomplishing a task and building your reputation as a freelance developer.

Query A GraphQL API On Android And iOS With NativeScript And Angular

I’ve recently written several tutorials around GraphQL and there are more to come. However, most of these tutorials, including my eBook and video course, Web Services for the JavaScript Developer, have focused on the backend side of things and less of the frontend side of things. Knowing how to create a GraphQL powered API is great, but what if you need to query it from a client facing application?

In a recent tutorial I demonstrated querying a GraphQL API from a Vue.js web application, but what if we wanted to explore something with an Android or iOS mobile application?

In this tutorial we’re going to see how to create an iOS and Android mobile application using NativeScript and Angular and then query a GraphQL API from that application using numerous methods.