Announcing Berroku
Sudoku, meet Minesweeper. A berry-themed logic puzzle game, now live on the App Store.
James Brooks
I’m James Brooks. I build epic developer tools.
Latest posts
Getting into public speaking
Here are ten things I learnt about public speaking.
Supercharging Rate Limiting with Cloudflare
Enhance Laravel’s rate limiting by using Cloudflare’s Web Application Firewall (WAF) to block excessive requests at the edge, reducing server load and improving API performance.
2024 Recap
Looking back over 2024.
A Poem Of Grief
A poem I wrote shortly after the passing of my brother and the birth of my first child.
tweet.new
I bought a .new domain to simplify tweeting—say hello to tweet.new, your shortcut to posting faster on X!
Secrets of the Laravel Team Talk Video
Watch my Documenting Laravel APIs talk from Laracon AU.
Laravel Artisan Cheatsheet API
In October 2023, I updated the Laravel Artisan Cheatsheet to Nuxt 3.x. Along with several other changes, I wanted to add a new feature to the site, an API.
TIL: macOS’ Hidden Gem – The "caffeinate" Command!
Did you know macOS has a built-in alternative to Caffeine? It’s called caffeinate and it’s awesome.
Documenting Laravel APIs Talk Video
Watch my Documenting Laravel APIs talk from Laracon AU.
Review: Three Peaks GBR Commuter 22L
A review of the Three Peaks GBR Commuter 22L backpack
My Git Aliases
Here’s how I alias Git commands and increase my productivity.
Extending Laravel’s "about" Command
Let’s take a look into Laravel’s "about" command and how we can extend it to add our own application / package information.
2022 Recap
With 2022 already being all but a distant memory, I thought it’d be nice to look back at the last year and reflect on the year long journey.
Upgrading macOS with Homebrew
Updates that break Homebrew happen so frequently and I forget how to solve it, that I’ve finally caved and documented it.
PHP Stoke
Introducing PHP Stoke, a meetup for PHP developers in Stoke-on-Trent.
Deployment Hook Error Handling in Envoyer
Laravel’s Envoyer service allows you to break up your deployment process into multiple steps, which makes it really easy to manage deployments. Envoyer runs each step individually, checking the exit code of the last command within the step. Because each deployment step is Bash, if it’s a non-zero exit code then it gets reported back as a failure.
A GitHub Action for Laravel Forge
Today I’m pleased to announce the availability of a new GitHub Action for Laravel Forge deployments.
Injecting Additional Data into Laravel Queued Jobs
We've shipped an enhancement to Laravel Forge that stores the ID of the user who initiated an event.
Installing Private Repositories using GitHub Actions
I've been testing out the new Laravel Spark package before it gets launched and implemented it into my new side project (more details coming soon).
Laravel Form Request Tip
Over Christmas I started tinkering with a little project to learn about some of the emerging technologies and frameworks that I don't have a chance to play with day to day. For this project, I've been using Jetstream 2 and Inertia.js, which I've loved! I'd like to write a bit more about these when I get chance.
Building The Laravel Artisan Cheatsheet
Introducing the Laravel Artisan Cheatsheet, a bookmarkable and shareable resource for all Laravel's default artisan commands. The source code for this resource is available on GitHub
AWS CLI - S3 and Alibaba Object Storage Service
How to configure Laravel Forge’s database backups with Alibaba OSS.
2020 Recap
I recap on what happened over the year of 2020.
Laravel Localization Case Tips
Here is a little tip for Laravel’s Localization that I discovered today whilst looking through the open Laravel Nova issues. Although it’s documented it’s not well known - at least, I didn’t know about it before today!
Implementing RICE in Trello
At Laravel we use Trello to store all of the ideas we come up with and also any suggestions that are sent to us.
Creating Happiness Out Of Sadness
On the 30th October 2019, I launched Happy Dev a podcast in which I interview software developers and we discuss mental health.
Nova Customisable Resource Fields
This week I’m back working on Laravel Nova, which includes working my way through the nova-issues repo and seeing what’s what.
Tighten’s Jigsaw, GitHub Pages and GitHub Actions
How to configure Tighten Jigsaw to deploy to GitHub Pages with a custom GitHub Action.
Not My First Blog Post
We’re about to enter a new decade, so let’s start it with a new blog.
Laravel 4 & Dokku: Queue Workers
How we implemented Laravel 4’s Queue Component in our CRM system for improved email handling and UI responsiveness.