Automation

LAMP based dynamic DNS over HTTP(s) on premises

For internal infrastructure tasks, we needed a simple, robust and reliable tool for dynamic DNS updates.

We were not aware of any DDNS provider completely meeting our requirements. Neither did various approaches out in the wild. Also we prefer processing sensitive data on premises anyway. In the end, I decided to refactor a set of legacy tools I once had quickly written (and which soon had become a “persistent interim” for some years).

When Drupal's batch meets drush

While Drush is a nice and handy CLI tool that especially eases shell and cron integration in advanced *X setups, Drupal’s so-called batch API was once designed to work around problems resulting from the lack of a full root access which was widespread standard with web hosting those days (and often still is).

This can become a problem once you want to build advanced environments with sophisticated workflows. Today’s example is (otherwise great) pathauto module.

Twitter user specific meta tags in Drupal pages

When it comes to Twitter integration, you are likely to hit the corresponding module. While the module is actually fine and handily integrates a lot of Twitter’s API functions as well as OAuth 2.0 login to your Drupal site, it lacks well-thought support for a few important standard Drupal APIs, such as token or fields.