1649161808
Php Curl Get Response Header – Retrieve Response Headers From PHP CURL
Response Headers in cURL
There is a simple solution built into cURL if you are only interested in the response headers and not the content of the body. By setting the CURLOPT_HEADER and CURLOPT_NOBODY options to true, the result of curl_exec() will only contain the headers. This is useful when you only need the headers, but most of the time, we need the content of the request too.
The solution to this lies in the CURLOPT_HEADER option as well. Setting it to true will include the headers in the output of curl_exec(). However, without the CURLOPT_NOBODY option, we now have an output that contains the headers and the body of the request and we need to split them apart. This can be done with the CURLINFO_HEADER_SIZE parameter in the curl_getinfo() function, which will tell us the length of the headers and we can easily use that value to create two substrings for the headers and the body.
Php Curl Get Response Header – Retrieve Response Headers From PHP CURL
How To Get the Response Headers with cURL in PHP
There is no built-in solution for this, but we can easily create our own
There are two ways to get response headres from PHP cURL.
1. Using CURLOPT_HEADER option
With the curl_setopt() method, when CURLOPT_HEADER is set to true, curl_exec will output response header. At this time, if CURLOPT_NOBODY is set to false, curl_setopt() will return the response header and content body, otherwise only the response header will be returned.
We can use curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HEADER_SIZE) method to return total size of all headers received.
$url = "https://www.google.com";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
// TRUE to exclude the body from the output.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOBODY, 0);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
// After curl_exec
$header_size = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HEADER_SIZE);
$header = substr($response, 0, $header_size);
$body = substr($response, $header_size);
echo $header;
// echo $body;Output
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2020 15:11:27 GMT
Expires: -1
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
P3P: CP="This is not a P3P policy! See g.co/p3phelp for more info."
Server: gws
X-XSS-Protection: 0
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
Set-Cookie: 1P_JAR=2020-04-28-15; expires=Thu, 28-May-2020 15:11:27 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com; Secure
Set-Cookie: NID=203=DasuCttFxUVDirSokzwSf91r3PD60lDxlFogt2-rg5m0BCbhSeCpWcIlJVAmuLiDUkXmBTXuVbKEcP8gT0ifJzTu1MW-9UfriAyIqPESXl2H6fOsb9mvDZH8ng4Nb_YQk4Xv1uMFpCMiVf6GSHZS7dje2cjq1qvgyFiQfb3bOTA; expires=Wed, 28-Oct-2020 15:11:27 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com; HttpOnly
Alt-Svc: quic=":443"; ma=2592000; v="46,43",h3-Q050=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q049=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q048=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q046=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q043=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-T050=":443"; ma=2592000
Accept-Ranges: none
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Transfer-Encoding: chunked2. Using CURLOPT_HEADERFUNCTION option
With the CURLOPT_HEADERFUNCTION option, we can set a callback function.
https://www.pakainfo.com/php-curl-get-response-header/
$headers = [];
$url = "https://www.google.com";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADERFUNCTION,
function ($curl, $header) use (&$headers) {
$len = strlen($header);
$header = explode(':', $header, 2);
if (count($header) < 2) // ignore invalid headers
return $len;
$headers[strtolower(trim($header[0]))][] = trim($header[1]);
return $len;
}
);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
print_r($headers);Output
Array
(
[date] => Array
(
[0] => Tue, 28 Apr 2020 15:12:50 GMT
)
[expires] => Array
(
[0] => -1
)
[cache-control] => Array
(
[0] => private, max-age=0
)
[content-type] => Array
(
[0] => text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
)
[p3p] => Array
(
[0] => CP="This is not a P3P policy! See g.co/p3phelp for more info."
)
[server] => Array
(
[0] => gws
)
[x-xss-protection] => Array
(
[0] => 0
)
[x-frame-options] => Array
(
[0] => SAMEORIGIN
)
[set-cookie] => Array
(
[0] => 1P_JAR=2020-04-28-15; expires=Thu, 28-May-2020 15:12:50 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com; Secure
[1] => NID=203=ZC5X9W1OFIFk7p_y1HUQ1ZhluIAq1QMJcoiaWNvjtggga9w0By1ULn01BaSxfswmYixQ8arShOwTpHMWyDRXu6vy5xdS19FmFYLyUsdz0n5wOs9_dkb4xBPLOc4SRKdZN7QhcgS8sMVwugrM-CEyg2ENJq_t__UJlwM2cgOdyfg; expires=Wed, 28-Oct-2020 15:12:50 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com; HttpOnly
)
[alt-svc] => Array
(
[0] => quic=":443"; ma=2592000; v="46,43",h3-Q050=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q049=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q048=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q046=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-Q043=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-T050=":443"; ma=2592000
)
[accept-ranges] => Array
(
[0] => none
)
[vary] => Array
(
[0] => Accept-Encoding
)
[transfer-encoding] => Array
(
[0] => chunked
)
)What is GEEK
Buddha Community
1586415180
Everything You Need to Know About Instagram Bot with Python
How to build an Instagram bot using Python
Instagram is the fastest-growing social network, with 1 billion monthly users. It also has the highest engagement rate. To gain followers on Instagram, you’d have to upload engaging content, follow users, like posts, comment on user posts and a whole lot. This can be time-consuming and daunting. But there is hope, you can automate all of these tasks. In this course, we’re going to build an Instagram bot using Python to automate tasks on Instagram.
What you’ll learn:
- Instagram Automation
- Build a Bot with Python
Increase your Instagram followers with a simple Python bot
I got around 500 real followers in 4 days!
Growing an audience is an expensive and painful task. And if you’d like to build an audience that’s relevant to you, and shares common interests, that’s even more difficult. I always saw Instagram has a great way to promote my photos, but I never had more than 380 followers… Every once in a while, I decide to start posting my photos on Instagram again, and I manage to keep posting regularly for a while, but it never lasts more than a couple of months, and I don’t have many followers to keep me motivated and engaged.
The objective of this project is to build a bigger audience and as a plus, maybe drive some traffic to my website where I sell my photos!
A year ago, on my last Instagram run, I got one of those apps that lets you track who unfollowed you. I was curious because in a few occasions my number of followers dropped for no apparent reason. After some research, I realized how some users basically crawl for followers. They comment, like and follow people — looking for a follow back. Only to unfollow them again in the next days.
I can’t say this was a surprise to me, that there were bots in Instagram… It just made me want to build one myself!
And that is why we’re here, so let’s get to it! I came up with a simple bot in Python, while I was messing around with Selenium and trying to figure out some project to use it. Simply put, Selenium is like a browser you can interact with very easily in Python.
Ideally, increasing my Instagram audience will keep me motivated to post regularly. As an extra, I included my website in my profile bio, where people can buy some photos. I think it is a bit of a stretch, but who knows?! My sales are basically zero so far, so it should be easy to track that conversion!
Just what the world needed! Another Instagram bot…
After giving this project some thought, my objective was to increase my audience with relevant people. I want to get followers that actually want to follow me and see more of my work. It’s very easy to come across weird content in the most used hashtags, so I’ve planed this bot to lookup specific hashtags and interact with the photos there. This way, I can be very specific about what kind of interests I want my audience to have. For instance, I really like long exposures, so I can target people who use that hashtag and build an audience around this kind of content. Simple and efficient!
My gallery is a mix of different subjects and styles, from street photography to aerial photography, and some travel photos too. Since it’s my hometown, I also have lots of Lisbon images there. These will be the main topics I’ll use in the hashtags I want to target.
This is not a “get 1000 followers in 24 hours” kind of bot!
So what kind of numbers are we talking about?
I ran the bot a few times in a few different hashtags like “travelblogger”, “travelgram”, “lisbon”, “dronephotography”. In the course of three days I went from 380 to 800 followers. Lots of likes, comments and even some organic growth (people that followed me but were not followed by the bot).
To be clear, I’m not using this bot intensively, as Instagram will stop responding if you run it too fast. It needs to have some sleep commands in between the actions, because after some comments and follows in a short period of time, Instagram stops responding and the bot crashes.
You will be logged into your account, so I’m almost sure that Instagram can know you’re doing something weird if you speed up the process. And most importantly, after doing this for a dozen hashtags, it just gets harder to find new users in the same hashtags. You will need to give it a few days to refresh the user base there.
But I don’t want to follow so many people in the process…
The most efficient way to get followers in Instagram (apart from posting great photos!) is to follow people. And this bot worked really well for me because I don’t care if I follow 2000 people to get 400 followers.
The bot saves a list with all the users that were followed while it was running, so someday I may actually do something with this list. For instance, I can visit each user profile, evaluate how many followers or posts they have, and decide if I want to keep following them. Or I can get the first picture in their gallery and check its date to see if they are active users.
If we remove the follow action from the bot, I can assure you the growth rate will suffer, as people are less inclined to follow based on a single like or comment.
Why will you share your code?!
That’s the debate I had with myself. Even though I truly believe in giving back to the community (I still learn a lot from it too!), there are several paid platforms that do more or less the same as this project. Some are shady, some are used by celebrities. The possibility of starting a similar platform myself, is not off the table yet, so why make the code available?
With that in mind, I decided to add an extra level of difficulty to the process, so I was going to post the code below as an image. I wrote “was”, because meanwhile, I’ve realized the image I’m getting is low quality. Which in turn made me reconsider and post the gist. I’m that nice! The idea behind the image was that if you really wanted to use it, you would have to type the code yourself. And that was my way of limiting the use of this tool to people that actually go through the whole process to create it and maybe even improve it.
I learn a lot more when I type the code myself, instead of copy/pasting scripts. I hope you feel the same way!
The script isn’t as sophisticated as it could be, and I know there’s lots of room to improve it. But hey… it works! I have other projects I want to add to my portfolio, so my time to develop it further is rather limited. Nevertheless, I will try to update this article if I dig deeper.
This is the last subtitle!
You’ll need Python (I’m using Python 3.7), Selenium, a browser (in my case I’ll be using Chrome) and… obviously, an Instagram account! Quick overview regarding what the bot will do:
- Open a browser and login with your credentials
- For every hashtag in the hashtag list, it will open the page and click the first picture to open it
- It will then like, follow, comment and move to the next picture, in a 200 iterations loop (number can be adjusted)
- Saves a list with all the users you followed using the bot
If you reached this paragraph, thank you! You totally deserve to collect your reward! If you find this useful for your profile/brand in any way, do share your experience below :)
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from time import sleep, strftime
from random import randint
import pandas as pd
chromedriver_path = 'C:/Users/User/Downloads/chromedriver_win32/chromedriver.exe' # Change this to your own chromedriver path!
webdriver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=chromedriver_path)
sleep(2)
webdriver.get('https://www.instagram.com/accounts/login/?source=auth_switcher')
sleep(3)
username = webdriver.find_element_by_name('username')
username.send_keys('your_username')
password = webdriver.find_element_by_name('password')
password.send_keys('your_password')
button_login = webdriver.find_element_by_css_selector('#react-root > section > main > div > article > div > div:nth-child(1) > div > form > div:nth-child(3) > button')
button_login.click()
sleep(3)
notnow = webdriver.find_element_by_css_selector('body > div:nth-child(13) > div > div > div > div.mt3GC > button.aOOlW.HoLwm')
notnow.click() #comment these last 2 lines out, if you don't get a pop up asking about notifications
In order to use chrome with Selenium, you need to install chromedriver. It’s a fairly simple process and I had no issues with it. Simply install and replace the path above. Once you do that, our variable webdriver will be our Chrome tab.
In cell number 3 you should replace the strings with your own username and the respective password. This is for the bot to type it in the fields displayed. You might have already noticed that when running cell number 2, Chrome opened a new tab. After the password, I’ll define the login button as an object, and in the following line, I click it.
Once you get in inspect mode find the bit of html code that corresponds to what you want to map. Right click it and hover over Copy. You will see that you have some options regarding how you want it to be copied. I used a mix of XPath and css selectors throughout the code (it’s visible in the find_element_ method). It took me a while to get all the references to run smoothly. At points, the css or the xpath directions would fail, but as I adjusted the sleep times, everything started running smoothly.
In this case, I selected “copy selector” and pasted it inside a find_element_ method (cell number 3). It will get you the first result it finds. If it was find_elements_, all elements would be retrieved and you could specify which to get.
Once you get that done, time for the loop. You can add more hashtags in the hashtag_list. If you run it for the first time, you still don’t have a file with the users you followed, so you can simply create prev_user_list as an empty list.
Once you run it once, it will save a csv file with a timestamp with the users it followed. That file will serve as the prev_user_list on your second run. Simple and easy to keep track of what the bot does.
Update with the latest timestamp on the following runs and you get yourself a series of csv backlogs for every run of the bot.
The code is really simple. If you have some basic notions of Python you can probably pick it up quickly. I’m no Python ninja and I was able to build it, so I guess that if you read this far, you are good to go!
hashtag_list = ['travelblog', 'travelblogger', 'traveler']
# prev_user_list = [] - if it's the first time you run it, use this line and comment the two below
prev_user_list = pd.read_csv('20181203-224633_users_followed_list.csv', delimiter=',').iloc[:,1:2] # useful to build a user log
prev_user_list = list(prev_user_list['0'])
new_followed = []
tag = -1
followed = 0
likes = 0
comments = 0
for hashtag in hashtag_list:
tag += 1
webdriver.get('https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/'+ hashtag_list[tag] + '/')
sleep(5)
first_thumbnail = webdriver.find_element_by_xpath('//*[@id="react-root"]/section/main/article/div[1]/div/div/div[1]/div[1]/a/div')
first_thumbnail.click()
sleep(randint(1,2))
try:
for x in range(1,200):
username = webdriver.find_element_by_xpath('/html/body/div[3]/div/div[2]/div/article/header/div[2]/div[1]/div[1]/h2/a').text
if username not in prev_user_list:
# If we already follow, do not unfollow
if webdriver.find_element_by_xpath('/html/body/div[3]/div/div[2]/div/article/header/div[2]/div[1]/div[2]/button').text == 'Follow':
webdriver.find_element_by_xpath('/html/body/div[3]/div/div[2]/div/article/header/div[2]/div[1]/div[2]/button').click()
new_followed.append(username)
followed += 1
# Liking the picture
button_like = webdriver.find_element_by_xpath('/html/body/div[3]/div/div[2]/div/article/div[2]/section[1]/span[1]/button/span')
button_like.click()
likes += 1
sleep(randint(18,25))
# Comments and tracker
comm_prob = randint(1,10)
print('{}_{}: {}'.format(hashtag, x,comm_prob))
if comm_prob > 7:
comments += 1
webdriver.find_element_by_xpath('/html/body/div[3]/div/div[2]/div/article/div[2]/section[1]/span[2]/button/span').click()
comment_box = webdriver.find_element_by_xpath('/html/body/div[3]/div/div[2]/div/article/div[2]/section[3]/div/form/textarea')
if (comm_prob < 7):
comment_box.send_keys('Really cool!')
sleep(1)
elif (comm_prob > 6) and (comm_prob < 9):
comment_box.send_keys('Nice work :)')
sleep(1)
elif comm_prob == 9:
comment_box.send_keys('Nice gallery!!')
sleep(1)
elif comm_prob == 10:
comment_box.send_keys('So cool! :)')
sleep(1)
# Enter to post comment
comment_box.send_keys(Keys.ENTER)
sleep(randint(22,28))
# Next picture
webdriver.find_element_by_link_text('Next').click()
sleep(randint(25,29))
else:
webdriver.find_element_by_link_text('Next').click()
sleep(randint(20,26))
# some hashtag stops refreshing photos (it may happen sometimes), it continues to the next
except:
continue
for n in range(0,len(new_followed)):
prev_user_list.append(new_followed[n])
updated_user_df = pd.DataFrame(prev_user_list)
updated_user_df.to_csv('{}_users_followed_list.csv'.format(strftime("%Y%m%d-%H%M%S")))
print('Liked {} photos.'.format(likes))
print('Commented {} photos.'.format(comments))
print('Followed {} new people.'.format(followed))
The print statement inside the loop is the way I found to be able to have a tracker that lets me know at what iteration the bot is all the time. It will print the hashtag it’s in, the number of the iteration, and the random number generated for the comment action. I decided not to post comments in every page, so I added three different comments and a random number between 1 and 10 that would define if there was any comment at all, or one of the three. The loop ends, we append the new_followed users to the previous users “database” and saves the new file with the timestamp. You should also get a small report.
And that’s it!
After a few hours without checking the phone, these were the numbers I was getting. I definitely did not expect it to do so well! In about 4 days since I’ve started testing it, I had around 500 new followers, which means I have doubled my audience in a matter of days. I’m curious to see how many of these new followers I will lose in the next days, to see if the growth can be sustainable. I also had a lot more “likes” in my latest photos, but I guess that’s even more expected than the follow backs.
It would be nice to get this bot running in a server, but I have other projects I want to explore, and configuring a server is not one of them! Feel free to leave a comment below, and I’ll do my best to answer your questions.
I’m actually curious to see how long will I keep posting regularly! If you feel like this article was helpful for you, consider thanking me by buying one of my photos.
How to Make an Instagram Bot With Python and InstaPy
What do SocialCaptain, Kicksta, Instavast, and many other companies have in common? They all help you reach a greater audience, gain more followers, and get more likes on Instagram while you hardly lift a finger. They do it all through automation, and people pay them a good deal of money for it. But you can do the same thing—for free—using InstaPy!
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to build a bot with Python and InstaPy, which automates your Instagram activities so that you gain more followers and likes with minimal manual input. Along the way, you’ll learn about browser automation with Selenium and the Page Object Pattern, which together serve as the basis for InstaPy.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn:
- How Instagram bots work
- How to automate a browser with Selenium
- How to use the Page Object Pattern for better readability and testability
- How to build an Instagram bot with InstaPy
You’ll begin by learning how Instagram bots work before you build one.
Table of Contents
- How Instagram Bots Work
- How to Automate a Browser
- How to Use the Page Object Pattern
- How to Build an Instagram Bot With InstaPy
- Essential Features
- Additional Features in InstaPy
- Conclusion
Important: Make sure you check Instagram’s Terms of Use before implementing any kind of automation or scraping techniques.
How Instagram Bots Work
How can an automation script gain you more followers and likes? Before answering this question, think about how an actual person gains more followers and likes.
They do it by being consistently active on the platform. They post often, follow other people, and like and leave comments on other people’s posts. Bots work exactly the same way: They follow, like, and comment on a consistent basis according to the criteria you set.
The better the criteria you set, the better your results will be. You want to make sure you’re targeting the right groups because the people your bot interacts with on Instagram will be more likely to interact with your content.
For example, if you’re selling women’s clothing on Instagram, then you can instruct your bot to like, comment on, and follow mostly women or profiles whose posts include hashtags such as #beauty, #fashion, or #clothes. This makes it more likely that your target audience will notice your profile, follow you back, and start interacting with your posts.
How does it work on the technical side, though? You can’t use the Instagram Developer API since it is fairly limited for this purpose. Enter browser automation. It works in the following way:
- You serve it your credentials.
- You set the criteria for who to follow, what comments to leave, and which type of posts to like.
- Your bot opens a browser, types in
https://instagram.comon the address bar, logs in with your credentials, and starts doing the things you instructed it to do.
Next, you’ll build the initial version of your Instagram bot, which will automatically log in to your profile. Note that you won’t use InstaPy just yet.
How to Automate a Browser
For this version of your Instagram bot, you’ll be using Selenium, which is the tool that InstaPy uses under the hood.
First, install Selenium. During installation, make sure you also install the Firefox WebDriver since the latest version of InstaPy dropped support for Chrome. This also means that you need the Firefox browser installed on your computer.
Now, create a Python file and write the following code in it:
from time import sleep
from selenium import webdriver
browser = webdriver.Firefox()
browser.get('https://www.instagram.com/')
sleep(5)
browser.close()
Run the code and you’ll see that a Firefox browser opens and directs you to the Instagram login page. Here’s a line-by-line breakdown of the code:
- Lines 1 and 2 import
sleepandwebdriver. - Line 4 initializes the Firefox driver and sets it to
browser. - Line 6 types
https://www.instagram.com/on the address bar and hits Enter. - Line 8 waits for five seconds so you can see the result. Otherwise, it would close the browser instantly.
- Line 10 closes the browser.
This is the Selenium version of Hello, World. Now you’re ready to add the code that logs in to your Instagram profile. But first, think about how you would log in to your profile manually. You would do the following:
- Go to
https://www.instagram.com/. - Click the login link.
- Enter your credentials.
- Hit the login button.
The first step is already done by the code above. Now change it so that it clicks on the login link on the Instagram home page:
from time import sleep
from selenium import webdriver
browser = webdriver.Firefox()
browser.implicitly_wait(5)
browser.get('https://www.instagram.com/')
login_link = browser.find_element_by_xpath("//a[text()='Log in']")
login_link.click()
sleep(5)
browser.close()
Note the highlighted lines:
- Line 5 sets five seconds of waiting time. If Selenium can’t find an element, then it waits for five seconds to allow everything to load and tries again.
- Line 9 finds the element
<a>whose text is equal toLog in. It does this using XPath, but there are a few other methods you could use. - Line 10 clicks on the found element
<a>for the login link.
Run the script and you’ll see your script in action. It will open the browser, go to Instagram, and click on the login link to go to the login page.
On the login page, there are three important elements:
- The username input
- The password input
- The login button
Next, change the script so that it finds those elements, enters your credentials, and clicks on the login button:
from time import sleep
from selenium import webdriver
browser = webdriver.Firefox()
browser.implicitly_wait(5)
browser.get('https://www.instagram.com/')
login_link = browser.find_element_by_xpath("//a[text()='Log in']")
login_link.click()
sleep(2)
username_input = browser.find_element_by_css_selector("input[name='username']")
password_input = browser.find_element_by_css_selector("input[name='password']")
username_input.send_keys("<your username>")
password_input.send_keys("<your password>")
login_button = browser.find_element_by_xpath("//button[@type='submit']")
login_button.click()
sleep(5)
browser.close()
Here’s a breakdown of the changes:
- Line 12 sleeps for two seconds to allow the page to load.
- Lines 14 and 15 find username and password inputs by CSS. You could use any other method that you prefer.
- Lines 17 and 18 type your username and password in their respective inputs. Don’t forget to fill in
<your username>and<your password>! - Line 20 finds the login button by XPath.
- Line 21 clicks on the login button.
Run the script and you’ll be automatically logged in to to your Instagram profile.
You’re off to a good start with your Instagram bot. If you were to continue writing this script, then the rest would look very similar. You would find the posts that you like by scrolling down your feed, find the like button by CSS, click on it, find the comments section, leave a comment, and continue.
The good news is that all of those steps can be handled by InstaPy. But before you jump into using Instapy, there is one other thing that you should know about to better understand how InstaPy works: the Page Object Pattern.
How to Use the Page Object Pattern
Now that you’ve written the login code, how would you write a test for it? It would look something like the following:
def test_login_page(browser):
browser.get('https://www.instagram.com/accounts/login/')
username_input = browser.find_element_by_css_selector("input[name='username']")
password_input = browser.find_element_by_css_selector("input[name='password']")
username_input.send_keys("<your username>")
password_input.send_keys("<your password>")
login_button = browser.find_element_by_xpath("//button[@type='submit']")
login_button.click()
errors = browser.find_elements_by_css_selector('#error_message')
assert len(errors) == 0
Can you see what’s wrong with this code? It doesn’t follow the DRY principle. That is, the code is duplicated in both the application and the test code.
Duplicating code is especially bad in this context because Selenium code is dependent on UI elements, and UI elements tend to change. When they do change, you want to update your code in one place. That’s where the Page Object Pattern comes in.
With this pattern, you create page object classes for the most important pages or fragments that provide interfaces that are straightforward to program to and that hide the underlying widgetry in the window. With this in mind, you can rewrite the code above and create a HomePage class and a LoginPage class:
from time import sleep
class LoginPage:
def __init__(self, browser):
self.browser = browser
def login(self, username, password):
username_input = self.browser.find_element_by_css_selector("input[name='username']")
password_input = self.browser.find_element_by_css_selector("input[name='password']")
username_input.send_keys(username)
password_input.send_keys(password)
login_button = browser.find_element_by_xpath("//button[@type='submit']")
login_button.click()
sleep(5)
class HomePage:
def __init__(self, browser):
self.browser = browser
self.browser.get('https://www.instagram.com/')
def go_to_login_page(self):
self.browser.find_element_by_xpath("//a[text()='Log in']").click()
sleep(2)
return LoginPage(self.browser)
The code is the same except that the home page and the login page are represented as classes. The classes encapsulate the mechanics required to find and manipulate the data in the UI. That is, there are methods and accessors that allow the software to do anything a human can.
One other thing to note is that when you navigate to another page using a page object, it returns a page object for the new page. Note the returned value of go_to_log_in_page(). If you had another class called FeedPage, then login() of the LoginPage class would return an instance of that: return FeedPage().
Here’s how you can put the Page Object Pattern to use:
from selenium import webdriver
browser = webdriver.Firefox()
browser.implicitly_wait(5)
home_page = HomePage(browser)
login_page = home_page.go_to_login_page()
login_page.login("<your username>", "<your password>")
browser.close()
It looks much better, and the test above can now be rewritten to look like this:
def test_login_page(browser):
home_page = HomePage(browser)
login_page = home_page.go_to_login_page()
login_page.login("<your username>", "<your password>")
errors = browser.find_elements_by_css_selector('#error_message')
assert len(errors) == 0
With these changes, you won’t have to touch your tests if something changes in the UI.
For more information on the Page Object Pattern, refer to the official documentation and to Martin Fowler’s article.
Now that you’re familiar with both Selenium and the Page Object Pattern, you’ll feel right at home with InstaPy. You’ll build a basic bot with it next.
Note: Both Selenium and the Page Object Pattern are widely used for other websites, not just for Instagram.
How to Build an Instagram Bot With InstaPy
In this section, you’ll use InstaPy to build an Instagram bot that will automatically like, follow, and comment on different posts. First, you’ll need to install InstaPy:
$ python3 -m pip install instapy
This will install instapy in your system.
Essential Features
Now you can rewrite the code above with InstaPy so that you can compare the two options. First, create another Python file and put the following code in it:
from instapy import InstaPy
InstaPy(username="<your_username>", password="<your_password>").login()
Replace the username and password with yours, run the script, and voilà! With just one line of code, you achieved the same result.
Even though your results are the same, you can see that the behavior isn’t exactly the same. In addition to simply logging in to your profile, InstaPy does some other things, such as checking your internet connection and the status of the Instagram servers. This can be observed directly on the browser or in the logs:
INFO [2019-12-17 22:03:19] [username] -- Connection Checklist [1/3] (Internet Connection Status)
INFO [2019-12-17 22:03:20] [username] - Internet Connection Status: ok
INFO [2019-12-17 22:03:20] [username] - Current IP is "17.283.46.379" and it's from "Germany/DE"
INFO [2019-12-17 22:03:20] [username] -- Connection Checklist [2/3] (Instagram Server Status)
INFO [2019-12-17 22:03:26] [username] - Instagram WebSite Status: Currently Up
Pretty good for one line of code, isn’t it? Now it’s time to make the script do more interesting things than just logging in.
For the purpose of this example, assume that your profile is all about cars, and that your bot is intended to interact with the profiles of people who are also interested in cars.
First, you can like some posts that are tagged #bmw or #mercedes using like_by_tags():
from instapy import InstaPy
session = InstaPy(username="<your_username>", password="<your_password>")
session.login()
session.like_by_tags(["bmw", "mercedes"], amount=5)
Here, you gave the method a list of tags to like and the number of posts to like for each given tag. In this case, you instructed it to like ten posts, five for each of the two tags. But take a look at what happens after you run the script:
INFO [2019-12-17 22:15:58] [username] Tag [1/2]
INFO [2019-12-17 22:15:58] [username] --> b'bmw'
INFO [2019-12-17 22:16:07] [username] desired amount: 14 | top posts [disabled]: 9 | possible posts: 43726739
INFO [2019-12-17 22:16:13] [username] Like# [1/14]
INFO [2019-12-17 22:16:13] [username] https://www.instagram.com/p/B6MCcGcC3tU/
INFO [2019-12-17 22:16:15] [username] Image from: b'mattyproduction'
INFO [2019-12-17 22:16:15] [username] Link: b'https://www.instagram.com/p/B6MCcGcC3tU/'
INFO [2019-12-17 22:16:15] [username] Description: b'Mal etwas anderes \xf0\x9f\x91\x80\xe2\x98\xba\xef\xb8\x8f Bald ist das komplette Video auf YouTube zu finden (n\xc3\xa4here Infos werden folgen). Vielen Dank an @patrick_jwki @thehuthlife und @christic_ f\xc3\xbcr das bereitstellen der Autos \xf0\x9f\x94\xa5\xf0\x9f\x98\x8d#carporn#cars#tuning#bagged#bmw#m2#m2competition#focusrs#ford#mk3#e92#m3#panasonic#cinematic#gh5s#dji#roninm#adobe#videography#music#bimmer#fordperformance#night#shooting#'
INFO [2019-12-17 22:16:15] [username] Location: b'K\xc3\xb6ln, Germany'
INFO [2019-12-17 22:16:51] [username] --> Image Liked!
INFO [2019-12-17 22:16:56] [username] --> Not commented
INFO [2019-12-17 22:16:57] [username] --> Not following
INFO [2019-12-17 22:16:58] [username] Like# [2/14]
INFO [2019-12-17 22:16:58] [username] https://www.instagram.com/p/B6MDK1wJ-Kb/
INFO [2019-12-17 22:17:01] [username] Image from: b'davs0'
INFO [2019-12-17 22:17:01] [username] Link: b'https://www.instagram.com/p/B6MDK1wJ-Kb/'
INFO [2019-12-17 22:17:01] [username] Description: b'Someone said cloud? \xf0\x9f\xa4\x94\xf0\x9f\xa4\xad\xf0\x9f\x98\x88 \xe2\x80\xa2\n\xe2\x80\xa2\n\xe2\x80\xa2\n\xe2\x80\xa2\n#bmw #bmwrepost #bmwm4 #bmwm4gts #f82 #bmwmrepost #bmwmsport #bmwmperformance #bmwmpower #bmwm4cs #austinyellow #davs0 #mpower_official #bmw_world_ua #bimmerworld #bmwfans #bmwfamily #bimmers #bmwpost #ultimatedrivingmachine #bmwgang #m3f80 #m5f90 #m4f82 #bmwmafia #bmwcrew #bmwlifestyle'
INFO [2019-12-17 22:17:34] [username] --> Image Liked!
INFO [2019-12-17 22:17:37] [username] --> Not commented
INFO [2019-12-17 22:17:38] [username] --> Not following
By default, InstaPy will like the first nine top posts in addition to your amount value. In this case, that brings the total number of likes per tag to fourteen (nine top posts plus the five you specified in amount).
Also note that InstaPy logs every action it takes. As you can see above, it mentions which post it liked as well as its link, description, location, and whether the bot commented on the post or followed the author.
You may have noticed that there are delays after almost every action. That’s by design. It prevents your profile from getting banned on Instagram.
Now, you probably don’t want your bot liking inappropriate posts. To prevent that from happening, you can use set_dont_like():
from instapy import InstaPy
session = InstaPy(username="<your_username>", password="<your_password>")
session.login()
session.like_by_tags(["bmw", "mercedes"], amount=5)
session.set_dont_like(["naked", "nsfw"])
With this change, posts that have the words naked or nsfw in their descriptions won’t be liked. You can flag any other words that you want your bot to avoid.
Next, you can tell the bot to not only like the posts but also to follow some of the authors of those posts. You can do that with set_do_follow():
from instapy import InstaPy
session = InstaPy(username="<your_username>", password="<your_password>")
session.login()
session.like_by_tags(["bmw", "mercedes"], amount=5)
session.set_dont_like(["naked", "nsfw"])
session.set_do_follow(True, percentage=50)
If you run the script now, then the bot will follow fifty percent of the users whose posts it liked. As usual, every action will be logged.
You can also leave some comments on the posts. There are two things that you need to do. First, enable commenting with set_do_comment():
from instapy import InstaPy
session = InstaPy(username="<your_username>", password="<your_password>")
session.login()
session.like_by_tags(["bmw", "mercedes"], amount=5)
session.set_dont_like(["naked", "nsfw"])
session.set_do_follow(True, percentage=50)
session.set_do_comment(True, percentage=50)
Next, tell the bot what comments to leave with set_comments():
from instapy import InstaPy
session = InstaPy(username="<your_username>", password="<your_password>")
session.login()
session.like_by_tags(["bmw", "mercedes"], amount=5)
session.set_dont_like(["naked", "nsfw"])
session.set_do_follow(True, percentage=50)
session.set_do_comment(True, percentage=50)
session.set_comments(["Nice!", "Sweet!", "Beautiful :heart_eyes:"])
Run the script and the bot will leave one of those three comments on half the posts that it interacts with.
Now that you’re done with the basic settings, it’s a good idea to end the session with end():
from instapy import InstaPy
session = InstaPy(username="<your_username>", password="<your_password>")
session.login()
session.like_by_tags(["bmw", "mercedes"], amount=5)
session.set_dont_like(["naked", "nsfw"])
session.set_do_follow(True, percentage=50)
session.set_do_comment(True, percentage=50)
session.set_comments(["Nice!", "Sweet!", "Beautiful :heart_eyes:"])
session.end()
This will close the browser, save the logs, and prepare a report that you can see in the console output.
Additional Features in InstaPy
InstaPy is a sizable project that has a lot of thoroughly documented features. The good news is that if you’re feeling comfortable with the features you used above, then the rest should feel pretty similar. This section will outline some of the more useful features of InstaPy.
Quota Supervisor
You can’t scrape Instagram all day, every day. The service will quickly notice that you’re running a bot and will ban some of its actions. That’s why it’s a good idea to set quotas on some of your bot’s actions. Take the following for example:
session.set_quota_supervisor(enabled=True, peak_comments_daily=240, peak_comments_hourly=21)
The bot will keep commenting until it reaches its hourly and daily limits. It will resume commenting after the quota period has passed.
Headless Browser
This feature allows you to run your bot without the GUI of the browser. This is super useful if you want to deploy your bot to a server where you may not have or need the graphical interface. It’s also less CPU intensive, so it improves performance. You can use it like so:
session = InstaPy(username='test', password='test', headless_browser=True)
Note that you set this flag when you initialize the InstaPy object.
Using AI to Analyze Posts
Earlier you saw how to ignore posts that contain inappropriate words in their descriptions. What if the description is good but the image itself is inappropriate? You can integrate your InstaPy bot with ClarifAI, which offers image and video recognition services:
session.set_use_clarifai(enabled=True, api_key='<your_api_key>')
session.clarifai_check_img_for(['nsfw'])
Now your bot won’t like or comment on any image that ClarifAI considers NSFW. You get 5,000 free API-calls per month.
Relationship Bounds
It’s often a waste of time to interact with posts by people who have a lot of followers. In such cases, it’s a good idea to set some relationship bounds so that your bot doesn’t waste your precious computing resources:
session.set_relationship_bounds(enabled=True, max_followers=8500)
With this, your bot won’t interact with posts by users who have more than 8,500 followers.
For many more features and configurations in InstaPy, check out the documentation.
Conclusion
InstaPy allows you to automate your Instagram activities with minimal fuss and effort. It’s a very flexible tool with a lot of useful features.
In this tutorial, you learned:
- How Instagram bots work
- How to automate a browser with Selenium
- How to use the Page Object Pattern to make your code more maintainable and testable
- How to use InstaPy to build a basic Instagram bot
Read the InstaPy documentation and experiment with your bot a little bit. Soon you’ll start getting new followers and likes with a minimal amount of effort. I gained a few new followers myself while writing this tutorial.
Automating Instagram API with Python
Gain active followers - Algorithm
Maybe some of you do not agree it is a good way to grow your IG page by using follow for follow method but after a lot of researching I found the proper way to use this method.
I have done and used this strategy for a while and my page visits also followers started growing.
The majority of people failing because they randomly targeting the followers and as a result, they are not coming back to your page. So, the key is to find people those have same interests with you.
If you have a programming page go and search for IG pages which have big programming community and once you find one, don’t send follow requests to followers of this page. Because some of them are not active even maybe fake accounts. So, in order to gain active followers, go the last post of this page and find people who liked the post.
Unofficial Instagram API
In order to query data from Instagram I am going to use the very cool, yet unofficial, Instagram API written by Pasha Lev.
**Note:**Before you test it make sure you verified your phone number in your IG account.
The program works pretty well so far but in case of any problems I have to put disclaimer statement here:
Disclaimer: This post published educational purposes only as well as to give general information about Instagram API. I am not responsible for any actions and you are taking your own risk.
Let’s start by installing and then logging in with API.
pip install InstagramApi
from InstagramAPI import InstagramAPI
api = InstagramAPI("username", "password")
api.login()
Once you run the program you will see “Login success!” in your console.
Get users from liked list
We are going to search for some username (your target page) then get most recent post from this user. Then, get users who liked this post. Unfortunately, I can’t find solution how to paginate users so right now it gets about last 500 user.
users_list = []
def get_likes_list(username):
api.login()
api.searchUsername(username)
result = api.LastJson
username_id = result['user']['pk'] # Get user ID
user_posts = api.getUserFeed(username_id) # Get user feed
result = api.LastJson
media_id = result['items'][0]['id'] # Get most recent post
api.getMediaLikers(media_id) # Get users who liked
users = api.LastJson['users']
for user in users: # Push users to list
users_list.append({'pk':user['pk'], 'username':user['username']})
Follow Users
Once we get the users list, it is time to follow these users.
IMPORTANT NOTE: set time limit as much as you can to avoid automation detection.
from time import sleep
following_users = []
def follow_users(users_list):
api.login()
api.getSelfUsersFollowing() # Get users which you are following
result = api.LastJson
for user in result['users']:
following_users.append(user['pk'])
for user in users_list:
if not user['pk'] in following_users: # if new user is not in your following users
print('Following @' + user['username'])
api.follow(user['pk'])
# after first test set this really long to avoid from suspension
sleep(20)
else:
print('Already following @' + user['username'])
sleep(10)
Unfollow Users
This function will look users which you are following then it will check if this user follows you as well. If user not following you then you are unfollowing as well.
follower_users = []
def unfollow_users():
api.login()
api.getSelfUserFollowers() # Get your followers
result = api.LastJson
for user in result['users']:
follower_users.append({'pk':user['pk'], 'username':user['username']})
api.getSelfUsersFollowing() # Get users which you are following
result = api.LastJson
for user in result['users']:
following_users.append({'pk':user['pk'],'username':user['username']})
for user in following_users:
if not user['pk'] in follower_users: # if the user not follows you
print('Unfollowing @' + user['username'])
api.unfollow(user['pk'])
# set this really long to avoid from suspension
sleep(20)
Full Code with extra functions
Here is the full code of this automation
import pprint
from time import sleep
from InstagramAPI import InstagramAPI
import pandas as pd
users_list = []
following_users = []
follower_users = []
class InstaBot:
def __init__(self):
self.api = InstagramAPI("your_username", "your_password")
def get_likes_list(self,username):
api = self.api
api.login()
api.searchUsername(username) #Gets most recent post from user
result = api.LastJson
username_id = result['user']['pk']
user_posts = api.getUserFeed(username_id)
result = api.LastJson
media_id = result['items'][0]['id']
api.getMediaLikers(media_id)
users = api.LastJson['users']
for user in users:
users_list.append({'pk':user['pk'], 'username':user['username']})
bot.follow_users(users_list)
def follow_users(self,users_list):
api = self.api
api.login()
api.getSelfUsersFollowing()
result = api.LastJson
for user in result['users']:
following_users.append(user['pk'])
for user in users_list:
if not user['pk'] in following_users:
print('Following @' + user['username'])
api.follow(user['pk'])
# set this really long to avoid from suspension
sleep(20)
else:
print('Already following @' + user['username'])
sleep(10)
def unfollow_users(self):
api = self.api
api.login()
api.getSelfUserFollowers()
result = api.LastJson
for user in result['users']:
follower_users.append({'pk':user['pk'], 'username':user['username']})
api.getSelfUsersFollowing()
result = api.LastJson
for user in result['users']:
following_users.append({'pk':user['pk'],'username':user['username']})
for user in following_users:
if not user['pk'] in [user['pk'] for user in follower_users]:
print('Unfollowing @' + user['username'])
api.unfollow(user['pk'])
# set this really long to avoid from suspension
sleep(20)
bot = InstaBot()
# To follow users run the function below
# change the username ('instagram') to your target username
bot.get_likes_list('instagram')
# To unfollow users uncomment and run the function below
# bot.unfollow_users()
it will look like this:
some extra functions to play with API:
def get_my_profile_details():
api.login()
api.getSelfUsernameInfo()
result = api.LastJson
username = result['user']['username']
full_name = result['user']['full_name']
profile_pic_url = result['user']['profile_pic_url']
followers = result['user']['follower_count']
following = result['user']['following_count']
media_count = result['user']['media_count']
df_profile = pd.DataFrame(
{'username':username,
'full name': full_name,
'profile picture URL':profile_pic_url,
'followers':followers,
'following':following,
'media count': media_count,
}, index=[0])
df_profile.to_csv('profile.csv', sep='\t', encoding='utf-8')
def get_my_feed():
image_urls = []
api.login()
api.getSelfUserFeed()
result = api.LastJson
# formatted_json_str = pprint.pformat(result)
# print(formatted_json_str)
if 'items' in result.keys():
for item in result['items'][0:5]:
if 'image_versions2' in item.keys():
image_url = item['image_versions2']['candidates'][1]['url']
image_urls.append(image_url)
df_feed = pd.DataFrame({
'image URL':image_urls
})
df_feed.to_csv('feed.csv', sep='\t', encoding='utf-8')
Building an Instagram Bot with Python and Selenium to Gain More Followers
Let’s build an Instagram bot to gain more followers! — I know, I know. That doesn’t sound very ethical, does it? But it’s all justified for educational purposes.
Coding is a super power — we can all agree. That’s why I’ll leave it up to you to not abuse this power. And I trust you’re here to learn how it works. Otherwise, you’d be on GitHub cloning one of the countless Instagram bots there, right?
You’re convinced? — Alright, now let’s go back to unethical practices.
The Plan
So here’s the deal, we want to build a bot in Python and Selenium that goes on the hashtags we specify, likes random posts, then follows the posters. It does that enough — we get follow backs. Simple as that.
Here’s a pretty twisted detail though: we want to keep track of the users we follow so the bot can unfollow them after the number of days we specify.
Setup
So first things first, I want to use a database to keep track of the username and the date added. You might as well save/load from/to a file, but we want this to be ready for more features in case we felt inspired in the future.
So make sure you create a database (I named mine instabot — but you can name it anything you like) and create a table called followed_users within the database with two fields (username, date_added)
Remember the installation path. You’ll need it.
You’ll also need the following python packages:
- selenium
- mysql-connector
Getting down to it
Alright, so first thing we’ll be doing is creating settings.json. Simply a .json file that will hold all of our settings so we don’t have to dive into the code every time we want to change something.
Settings
settings.json:
{
"db": {
"host": "localhost",
"user": "root",
"pass": "",
"database": "instabot"
},
"instagram": {
"user": "",
"pass": ""
},
"config": {
"days_to_unfollow": 1,
"likes_over": 150,
"check_followers_every": 3600,
"hashtags": []
}
}
As you can see, under “db”, we specify the database information. As I mentioned, I used “instabot”, but feel free to use whatever name you want.
You’ll also need to fill Instagram info under “instagram” so the bot can login into your account.
“config” is for our bot’s settings. Here’s what the fields mean:
days_to_unfollow: number of days before unfollowing users
likes_over: ignore posts if the number of likes is above this number
check_followers_every: number of seconds before checking if it’s time to unfollow any of the users
hashtags: a list of strings with the hashtag names the bot should be active on
Constants
Now, we want to take these settings and have them inside our code as constants.
Create Constants.py:
import json
INST_USER= INST_PASS= USER= PASS= HOST= DATABASE= POST_COMMENTS= ''
LIKES_LIMIT= DAYS_TO_UNFOLLOW= CHECK_FOLLOWERS_EVERY= 0
HASHTAGS= []
def init():
global INST_USER, INST_PASS, USER, PASS, HOST, DATABASE, LIKES_LIMIT, DAYS_TO_UNFOLLOW, CHECK_FOLLOWERS_EVERY, HASHTAGS
# read file
data = None
with open('settings.json', 'r') as myfile:
data = myfile.read()
obj = json.loads(data)
INST_USER = obj['instagram']['user']
INST_PASS = obj['instagram']['pass']
USER = obj['db']['user']
HOST = obj['db']['host']
PASS = obj['db']['pass']
DATABASE = obj['db']['database']
LIKES_LIMIT = obj['config']['likes_over']
CHECK_FOLLOWERS_EVERY = obj['config']['check_followers_every']
HASHTAGS = obj['config']['hashtags']
DAYS_TO_UNFOLLOW = obj['config']['days_to_unfollow']
the init() function we created reads the data from settings.json and feeds them into the constants we declared.
Engine
Alright, time for some architecture. Our bot will mainly operate from a python script with an init and update methods. Create BotEngine.py:
import Constants
def init(webdriver):
return
def update(webdriver):
return
We’ll be back later to put the logic here, but for now, we need an entry point.
Entry Point
Create our entry point, InstaBot.py:
from selenium import webdriver
import BotEngine
chromedriver_path = 'YOUR CHROMEDRIVER PATH'
webdriver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=chromedriver_path)
BotEngine.init(webdriver)
BotEngine.update(webdriver)
webdriver.close()
chromedriver_path = ‘YOUR CHROMEDRIVER PATH’ webdriver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=chromedriver_path)
BotEngine.init(webdriver)
BotEngine.update(webdriver)
webdriver.close()
Of course, you’ll need to swap “YOUR CHROMEDRIVER PATH” with your actual ChromeDriver path.
Time Helper
We need to create a helper script that will help us calculate elapsed days since a certain date (so we know if we should unfollow user)
Create TimeHelper.py:
import datetime
def days_since_date(n):
diff = datetime.datetime.now().date() - n
return diff.days
Database
Create DBHandler.py. It’ll contain a class that handles connecting to the Database for us.
import mysql.connector
import Constants
class DBHandler:
def __init__(self):
DBHandler.HOST = Constants.HOST
DBHandler.USER = Constants.USER
DBHandler.DBNAME = Constants.DATABASE
DBHandler.PASSWORD = Constants.PASS
HOST = Constants.HOST
USER = Constants.USER
DBNAME = Constants.DATABASE
PASSWORD = Constants.PASS
@staticmethod
def get_mydb():
if DBHandler.DBNAME == '':
Constants.init()
db = DBHandler()
mydb = db.connect()
return mydb
def connect(self):
mydb = mysql.connector.connect(
host=DBHandler.HOST,
user=DBHandler.USER,
passwd=DBHandler.PASSWORD,
database = DBHandler.DBNAME
)
return mydb
As you can see, we’re using the constants we defined.
The class contains a static method get_mydb() that returns a database connection we can use.
Now, let’s define a DB user script that contains the DB operations we need to perform on the user.
Create DBUsers.py:
import datetime, TimeHelper
from DBHandler import *
import Constants
#delete user by username
def delete_user(username):
mydb = DBHandler.get_mydb()
cursor = mydb.cursor()
sql = "DELETE FROM followed_users WHERE username = '{0}'".format(username)
cursor.execute(sql)
mydb.commit()
#add new username
def add_user(username):
mydb = DBHandler.get_mydb()
cursor = mydb.cursor()
now = datetime.datetime.now().date()
cursor.execute("INSERT INTO followed_users(username, date_added) VALUES(%s,%s)",(username, now))
mydb.commit()
#check if any user qualifies to be unfollowed
def check_unfollow_list():
mydb = DBHandler.get_mydb()
cursor = mydb.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT * FROM followed_users")
results = cursor.fetchall()
users_to_unfollow = []
for r in results:
d = TimeHelper.days_since_date(r[1])
if d > Constants.DAYS_TO_UNFOLLOW:
users_to_unfollow.append(r[0])
return users_to_unfollow
#get all followed users
def get_followed_users():
users = []
mydb = DBHandler.get_mydb()
cursor = mydb.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT * FROM followed_users")
results = cursor.fetchall()
for r in results:
users.append(r[0])
return users
Account Agent
Alright, we’re about to start our bot. We’re creating a script called AccountAgent.py that will contain the agent behavior.
Import some modules, some of which we need for later and write a login function that will make use of our webdriver.
Notice that we have to keep calling the sleep function between actions. If we send too many requests quickly, the Instagram servers will be alarmed and will deny any requests you send.
from time import sleep
import datetime
import DBUsers, Constants
import traceback
import random
def login(webdriver):
#Open the instagram login page
webdriver.get('https://www.instagram.com/accounts/login/?source=auth_switcher')
#sleep for 3 seconds to prevent issues with the server
sleep(3)
#Find username and password fields and set their input using our constants
username = webdriver.find_element_by_name('username')
username.send_keys(Constants.INST_USER)
password = webdriver.find_element_by_name('password')
password.send_keys(Constants.INST_PASS)
#Get the login button
try:
button_login = webdriver.find_element_by_xpath(
'//*[@id="react-root"]/section/main/div/article/div/div[1]/div/form/div[4]/button')
except:
button_login = webdriver.find_element_by_xpath(
'//*[@id="react-root"]/section/main/div/article/div/div[1]/div/form/div[6]/button/div')
#sleep again
sleep(2)
#click login
button_login.click()
sleep(3)
#In case you get a popup after logging in, press not now.
#If not, then just return
try:
notnow = webdriver.find_element_by_css_selector(
'body > div.RnEpo.Yx5HN > div > div > div.mt3GC > button.aOOlW.HoLwm')
notnow.click()
except:
return
Also note how we’re getting elements with their xpath. To do so, right click on the element, click “Inspect”, then right click on the element again inside the inspector, and choose Copy->Copy XPath.
Another important thing to be aware of is that element hierarchy change with the page’s layout when you resize or stretch the window. That’s why we’re checking for two different xpaths for the login button.
Now go back to BotEngine.py, we’re ready to login.
Add more imports that we’ll need later and fill in the init function
import AccountAgent, DBUsers
import Constants
import datetime
def init(webdriver):
Constants.init()
AccountAgent.login(webdriver)
def update(webdriver):
return
If you run our entry script now (InstaBot.py) you’ll see the bot logging in.
Perfect, now let’s add a method that will allow us to follow people to AccountAgent.py:
def follow_people(webdriver):
#all the followed user
prev_user_list = DBUsers.get_followed_users()
#a list to store newly followed users
new_followed = []
#counters
followed = 0
likes = 0
#Iterate theough all the hashtags from the constants
for hashtag in Constants.HASHTAGS:
#Visit the hashtag
webdriver.get('https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/' + hashtag+ '/')
sleep(5)
#Get the first post thumbnail and click on it
first_thumbnail = webdriver.find_element_by_xpath(
'//*[@id="react-root"]/section/main/article/div[1]/div/div/div[1]/div[1]/a/div')
first_thumbnail.click()
sleep(random.randint(1,3))
try:
#iterate over the first 200 posts in the hashtag
for x in range(1,200):
t_start = datetime.datetime.now()
#Get the poster's username
username = webdriver.find_element_by_xpath('/html/body/div[3]/div[2]/div/article/header/div[2]/div[1]/div[1]/h2/a').text
likes_over_limit = False
try:
#get number of likes and compare it to the maximum number of likes to ignore post
likes = int(webdriver.find_element_by_xpath(
'/html/body/div[3]/div[2]/div/article/div[2]/section[2]/div/div/button/span').text)
if likes > Constants.LIKES_LIMIT:
print("likes over {0}".format(Constants.LIKES_LIMIT))
likes_over_limit = True
print("Detected: {0}".format(username))
#If username isn't stored in the database and the likes are in the acceptable range
if username not in prev_user_list and not likes_over_limit:
#Don't press the button if the text doesn't say follow
if webdriver.find_element_by_xpath('/html/body/div[3]/div[2]/div/article/header/div[2]/div[1]/div[2]/button').text == 'Follow':
#Use DBUsers to add the new user to the database
DBUsers.add_user(username)
#Click follow
webdriver.find_element_by_xpath('/html/body/div[3]/div[2]/div/article/header/div[2]/div[1]/div[2]/button').click()
followed += 1
print("Followed: {0}, #{1}".format(username, followed))
new_followed.append(username)
# Liking the picture
button_like = webdriver.find_element_by_xpath(
'/html/body/div[3]/div[2]/div/article/div[2]/section[1]/span[1]/button')
button_like.click()
likes += 1
print("Liked {0}'s post, #{1}".format(username, likes))
sleep(random.randint(5, 18))
# Next picture
webdriver.find_element_by_link_text('Next').click()
sleep(random.randint(20, 30))
except:
traceback.print_exc()
continue
t_end = datetime.datetime.now()
#calculate elapsed time
t_elapsed = t_end - t_start
print("This post took {0} seconds".format(t_elapsed.total_seconds()))
except:
traceback.print_exc()
continue
#add new list to old list
for n in range(0, len(new_followed)):
prev_user_list.append(new_followed[n])
print('Liked {} photos.'.format(likes))
print('Followed {} new people.'.format(followed))
It’s pretty long, but generally here’s the steps of the algorithm:
For every hashtag in the hashtag constant list:
- Visit the hashtag link
- Open the first thumbnail
- Now, execute the following code 200 times (first 200 posts in the hashtag)
- Get poster’s username, check if not already following, follow, like the post, then click next
- If already following just click next quickly
Now we might as well implement the unfollow method, hopefully the engine will be feeding us the usernames to unfollow in a list:
def unfollow_people(webdriver, people):
#if only one user, append in a list
if not isinstance(people, (list,)):
p = people
people = []
people.append(p)
for user in people:
try:
webdriver.get('https://www.instagram.com/' + user + '/')
sleep(5)
unfollow_xpath = '//*[@id="react-root"]/section/main/div/header/section/div[1]/div[1]/span/span[1]/button'
unfollow_confirm_xpath = '/html/body/div[3]/div/div/div[3]/button[1]'
if webdriver.find_element_by_xpath(unfollow_xpath).text == "Following":
sleep(random.randint(4, 15))
webdriver.find_element_by_xpath(unfollow_xpath).click()
sleep(2)
webdriver.find_element_by_xpath(unfollow_confirm_xpath).click()
sleep(4)
DBUsers.delete_user(user)
except Exception:
traceback.print_exc()
continue
Now we can finally go back and finish the bot by implementing the rest of BotEngine.py:
import AccountAgent, DBUsers
import Constants
import datetime
def init(webdriver):
Constants.init()
AccountAgent.login(webdriver)
def update(webdriver):
#Get start of time to calculate elapsed time later
start = datetime.datetime.now()
#Before the loop, check if should unfollow anyone
_check_follow_list(webdriver)
while True:
#Start following operation
AccountAgent.follow_people(webdriver)
#Get the time at the end
end = datetime.datetime.now()
#How much time has passed?
elapsed = end - start
#If greater than our constant to check on
#followers, check on followers
if elapsed.total_seconds() >= Constants.CHECK_FOLLOWERS_EVERY:
#reset the start variable to now
start = datetime.datetime.now()
#check on followers
_check_follow_list(webdriver)
def _check_follow_list(webdriver):
print("Checking for users to unfollow")
#get the unfollow list
users = DBUsers.check_unfollow_list()
#if there's anyone in the list, start unfollowing operation
if len(users) > 0:
AccountAgent.unfollow_people(webdriver, users)
Conclusion
And that’s it — now you have yourself a fully functional Instagram bot built with Python and Selenium. There are many possibilities for you to explore now, so make sure you’re using this newly gained skill to solve real life problems!
You can get the source code for the whole project from this GitHub repository.
Building a simple Instagram bot with Python tutorial
Here we build a simple bot using some simple Python which beginner to intermediate coders can follow.
Here’s the code on GitHub
https://github.com/aj-4/ig-followers
Build A (Full-Featured) Instagram Bot With Python
Source Code: https://github.com/jg-fisher/instagram-bot
How to Get Instagram Followers/Likes Using Python
In this video I show you how to program your own Instagram Bot using Python and Selenium.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGU2X5lrz9M
Code Link:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
import time
import random
import sys
def print_same_line(text):
sys.stdout.write('\r')
sys.stdout.flush()
sys.stdout.write(text)
sys.stdout.flush()
class InstagramBot:
def __init__(self, username, password):
self.username = username
self.password = password
self.driver = webdriver.Chrome()
def closeBrowser(self):
self.driver.close()
def login(self):
driver = self.driver
driver.get("https://www.instagram.com/")
time.sleep(2)
login_button = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//a[@href='/accounts/login/?source=auth_switcher']")
login_button.click()
time.sleep(2)
user_name_elem = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//input[@name='username']")
user_name_elem.clear()
user_name_elem.send_keys(self.username)
passworword_elem = driver.find_element_by_xpath("//input[@name='password']")
passworword_elem.clear()
passworword_elem.send_keys(self.password)
passworword_elem.send_keys(Keys.RETURN)
time.sleep(2)
def like_photo(self, hashtag):
driver = self.driver
driver.get("https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/" + hashtag + "/")
time.sleep(2)
# gathering photos
pic_hrefs = []
for i in range(1, 7):
try:
driver.execute_script("window.scrollTo(0, document.body.scrollHeight);")
time.sleep(2)
# get tags
hrefs_in_view = driver.find_elements_by_tag_name('a')
# finding relevant hrefs
hrefs_in_view = [elem.get_attribute('href') for elem in hrefs_in_view
if '.com/p/' in elem.get_attribute('href')]
# building list of unique photos
[pic_hrefs.append(href) for href in hrefs_in_view if href not in pic_hrefs]
# print("Check: pic href length " + str(len(pic_hrefs)))
except Exception:
continue
# Liking photos
unique_photos = len(pic_hrefs)
for pic_href in pic_hrefs:
driver.get(pic_href)
time.sleep(2)
driver.execute_script("window.scrollTo(0, document.body.scrollHeight);")
try:
time.sleep(random.randint(2, 4))
like_button = lambda: driver.find_element_by_xpath('//span[@aria-label="Like"]').click()
like_button().click()
for second in reversed(range(0, random.randint(18, 28))):
print_same_line("#" + hashtag + ': unique photos left: ' + str(unique_photos)
+ " | Sleeping " + str(second))
time.sleep(1)
except Exception as e:
time.sleep(2)
unique_photos -= 1
if __name__ == "__main__":
username = "USERNAME"
password = "PASSWORD"
ig = InstagramBot(username, password)
ig.login()
hashtags = ['amazing', 'beautiful', 'adventure', 'photography', 'nofilter',
'newyork', 'artsy', 'alumni', 'lion', 'best', 'fun', 'happy',
'art', 'funny', 'me', 'followme', 'follow', 'cinematography', 'cinema',
'love', 'instagood', 'instagood', 'followme', 'fashion', 'sun', 'scruffy',
'street', 'canon', 'beauty', 'studio', 'pretty', 'vintage', 'fierce']
while True:
try:
# Choose a random tag from the list of tags
tag = random.choice(hashtags)
ig.like_photo(tag)
except Exception:
ig.closeBrowser()
time.sleep(60)
ig = InstagramBot(username, password)
ig.login()
Build An INSTAGRAM Bot With Python That Gets You Followers
Instagram Automation Using Python
How to Create an Instagram Bot | Get More Followers
Building a simple Instagram Influencer Bot with Python tutorial
#python #chatbot #web-development
1657081614
How to Automate Excel with Python | Python Excel Tutorial (OpenPyXL)
How to Automate Excel with Python
In this article, We will show how we can use python to automate Excel . A useful Python library is Openpyxl which we will learn to do Excel Automation
What is OPENPYXL
Openpyxl is a Python library that is used to read from an Excel file or write to an Excel file. Data scientists use Openpyxl for data analysis, data copying, data mining, drawing charts, styling sheets, adding formulas, and more.
Workbook: A spreadsheet is represented as a workbook in openpyxl. A workbook consists of one or more sheets.
Sheet: A sheet is a single page composed of cells for organizing data.
Cell: The intersection of a row and a column is called a cell. Usually represented by A1, B5, etc.
Row: A row is a horizontal line represented by a number (1,2, etc.).
Column: A column is a vertical line represented by a capital letter (A, B, etc.).
Openpyxl can be installed using the pip command and it is recommended to install it in a virtual environment.
pip install openpyxl
CREATE A NEW WORKBOOK
We start by creating a new spreadsheet, which is called a workbook in Openpyxl. We import the workbook module from Openpyxl and use the function Workbook() which creates a new workbook.
from openpyxl
import Workbook
#creates a new workbook
wb = Workbook()
#Gets the first active worksheet
ws = wb.active
#creating new worksheets by using the create_sheet method
ws1 = wb.create_sheet("sheet1", 0) #inserts at first position
ws2 = wb.create_sheet("sheet2") #inserts at last position
ws3 = wb.create_sheet("sheet3", -1) #inserts at penultimate position
#Renaming the sheet
ws.title = "Example"
#save the workbook
wb.save(filename = "example.xlsx")READING DATA FROM WORKBOOK
We load the file using the function load_Workbook() which takes the filename as an argument. The file must be saved in the same working directory.
#loading a workbook
wb = openpyxl.load_workbook("example.xlsx")GETTING SHEETS FROM THE LOADED WORKBOOK
#getting sheet names
wb.sheetnames
result = ['sheet1', 'Sheet', 'sheet3', 'sheet2']
#getting a particular sheet
sheet1 = wb["sheet2"]
#getting sheet title
sheet1.title
result = 'sheet2'
#Getting the active sheet
sheetactive = wb.active
result = 'sheet1'ACCESSING CELLS AND CELL VALUES
#get a cell from the sheet
sheet1["A1"] <
Cell 'Sheet1'.A1 >
#get the cell value
ws["A1"].value 'Segment'
#accessing cell using row and column and assigning a value
d = ws.cell(row = 4, column = 2, value = 10)
d.value
10ITERATING THROUGH ROWS AND COLUMNS
#looping through each row and column
for x in range(1, 5):
for y in range(1, 5):
print(x, y, ws.cell(row = x, column = y)
.value)
#getting the highest row number
ws.max_row
701
#getting the highest column number
ws.max_column
19There are two functions for iterating through rows and columns.
Iter_rows() => returns the rows
Iter_cols() => returns the columns {
min_row = 4, max_row = 5, min_col = 2, max_col = 5
} => This can be used to set the boundaries
for any iteration.Example:
#iterating rows
for row in ws.iter_rows(min_row = 2, max_col = 3, max_row = 3):
for cell in row:
print(cell) <
Cell 'Sheet1'.A2 >
<
Cell 'Sheet1'.B2 >
<
Cell 'Sheet1'.C2 >
<
Cell 'Sheet1'.A3 >
<
Cell 'Sheet1'.B3 >
<
Cell 'Sheet1'.C3 >
#iterating columns
for col in ws.iter_cols(min_row = 2, max_col = 3, max_row = 3):
for cell in col:
print(cell) <
Cell 'Sheet1'.A2 >
<
Cell 'Sheet1'.A3 >
<
Cell 'Sheet1'.B2 >
<
Cell 'Sheet1'.B3 >
<
Cell 'Sheet1'.C2 >
<
Cell 'Sheet1'.C3 >To get all the rows of the worksheet we use the method worksheet.rows and to get all the columns of the worksheet we use the method worksheet.columns. Similarly, to iterate only through the values we use the method worksheet.values.
Example:
for row in ws.values:
for value in row:
print(value)WRITING DATA TO AN EXCEL FILE
Writing to a workbook can be done in many ways such as adding a formula, adding charts, images, updating cell values, inserting rows and columns, etc… We will discuss each of these with an example.
CREATING AND SAVING A NEW WORKBOOK
#creates a new workbook
wb = openpyxl.Workbook()
#saving the workbook
wb.save("new.xlsx")ADDING AND REMOVING SHEETS
#creating a new sheet
ws1 = wb.create_sheet(title = "sheet 2")
#creating a new sheet at index 0
ws2 = wb.create_sheet(index = 0, title = "sheet 0")
#checking the sheet names
wb.sheetnames['sheet 0', 'Sheet', 'sheet 2']
#deleting a sheet
del wb['sheet 0']
#checking sheetnames
wb.sheetnames['Sheet', 'sheet 2']ADDING CELL VALUES
#checking the sheet value
ws['B2'].value
null
#adding value to cell
ws['B2'] = 367
#checking value
ws['B2'].value
367ADDING FORMULAS
We often require formulas to be included in our Excel datasheet. We can easily add formulas using the Openpyxl module just like you add values to a cell.
For example:
import openpyxl
from openpyxl
import Workbook
wb = openpyxl.load_workbook("new1.xlsx")
ws = wb['Sheet']
ws['A9'] = '=SUM(A2:A8)'
wb.save("new2.xlsx")The above program will add the formula (=SUM(A2:A8)) in cell A9. The result will be as below.
MERGE/UNMERGE CELLS
Two or more cells can be merged to a rectangular area using the method merge_cells(), and similarly, they can be unmerged using the method unmerge_cells().
For example:
Merge cells
#merge cells B2 to C9
ws.merge_cells('B2:C9')
ws['B2'] = "Merged cells"Adding the above code to the previous example will merge cells as below.
UNMERGE CELLS
#unmerge cells B2 to C9
ws.unmerge_cells('B2:C9')The above code will unmerge cells from B2 to C9.
INSERTING AN IMAGE
To insert an image we import the image function from the module openpyxl.drawing.image. We then load our image and add it to the cell as shown in the below example.
Example:
import openpyxl
from openpyxl
import Workbook
from openpyxl.drawing.image
import Image
wb = openpyxl.load_workbook("new1.xlsx")
ws = wb['Sheet']
#loading the image(should be in same folder)
img = Image('logo.png')
ws['A1'] = "Adding image"
#adjusting size
img.height = 130
img.width = 200
#adding img to cell A3
ws.add_image(img, 'A3')
wb.save("new2.xlsx")Result:
CREATING CHARTS
Charts are essential to show a visualization of data. We can create charts from Excel data using the Openpyxl module chart. Different forms of charts such as line charts, bar charts, 3D line charts, etc., can be created. We need to create a reference that contains the data to be used for the chart, which is nothing but a selection of cells (rows and columns). I am using sample data to create a 3D bar chart in the below example:
Example
import openpyxl
from openpyxl
import Workbook
from openpyxl.chart
import BarChart3D, Reference, series
wb = openpyxl.load_workbook("example.xlsx")
ws = wb.active
values = Reference(ws, min_col = 3, min_row = 2, max_col = 3, max_row = 40)
chart = BarChart3D()
chart.add_data(values)
ws.add_chart(chart, "E3")
wb.save("MyChart.xlsx")Result
How to Automate Excel with Python with Video Tutorial
Welcome to another video! In this video, We will cover how we can use python to automate Excel. I'll be going over everything from creating workbooks to accessing individual cells and stylizing cells. There is a ton of things that you can do with Excel but I'll just be covering the core/base things in OpenPyXl.
⭐️ Timestamps ⭐️
00:00 | Introduction
02:14 | Installing openpyxl
03:19 | Testing Installation
04:25 | Loading an Existing Workbook
06:46 | Accessing Worksheets
07:37 | Accessing Cell Values
08:58 | Saving Workbooks
09:52 | Creating, Listing and Changing Sheets
11:50 | Creating a New Workbook
12:39 | Adding/Appending Rows
14:26 | Accessing Multiple Cells
20:46 | Merging Cells
22:27 | Inserting and Deleting Rows
23:35 | Inserting and Deleting Columns
24:48 | Copying and Moving Cells
26:06 | Practical Example, Formulas & Cell Styling
📄 Resources 📄
OpenPyXL Docs: https://openpyxl.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
Code Written in This Tutorial: https://github.com/techwithtim/ExcelPythonTutorial
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/c/TechWithTim/featured
1652837384
Build a Single Page App with Laravel 9, Jetstream, Vuejs, Inertiajs, MySQL, Tailwind CSS and Docker
In this tutorial, you will learn how to build a single page application. I'll take you through the process step by step, using cutting edge technologies like Laravel 9, Jetstream, Vuejs, Inertiajs, MySQL, Tailwind CSS, and Docker.
Let's get started.
What you need to follow this guide:
To follow along you will need:
- a computer
- to know how to install software
- a basic understanding of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP
- knowledge of at least one JavaScript framework and an understanding of the MVC design pattern.
This guide is organized into 10 chapters and is based off a live coding series that I record. The live coding series is completely unscripted, so there will be bugs and gotchas there that you won't find in this guide.
You can find the complete playlist at the end of this article.
Everything here should just work, but if it doesn't feel free to ask for help by joining my community on Slack. There you can share code snippets and chat with me directly.
Table of Contents
- What Tech Are We Using?
- How to Setup Your Machine
- How to build the app with Laravel 9, Laravel Sail, Jetstram, Inertia and Vue3
- How to Refactor the Admin Dashboard and Create New Admin Pages
- How to Submit Forms with Files
- How to Add the Form to the Component
- How to Store Data
- How to Update Operations
- How to Delete a Resourse
- Wrap up and what's next
- Conclusion
Original article source at https://www.freecodecamp.org
What Tech Are We Using?
First, let's go over the different tools we'll be using in this project.
Docker
Docker is a set of platform as a service products that use OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers.
To simplify this concept, Docker lets you package applications and dependencies in a container.
A containerized application allows you to have a flexible development environment so that you can run different applications without worrying about dependencies, their requirements, and conflicts between different versions. You can easily run applications that, for instance, require two different versions of PHP and MySQL.
Each team member can quickly reproduce the same environment of your application by simply running the same container's configuration.
If you want to learn more about Docker, its Documentation is a great place to start.
Here's a Handbook on Docker essentials, as well, so you can practice your skills.
Mysql
MySQL is an open-source relational database management system. You can use it to organize data into one or more tables with data that may be related to each other.
We need to store data somewhere and here is where MySQL comes into play.
Here are the Docs if you want to read up more. Here's a full free course on MySQL if you want to dive deeper.
Laravel
Laravel is a free, open-source PHP web framework that helps you develop web applications following the model–view–controller architectural pattern.
Laravel is an amazing PHP framework that you can use to create bespoke web applications.
Here's the Laravel Documentation for more info, and here's a full project-based course to help you learn Laravel.
Laravel Sail
Laravel Sail is a lightweight command-line interface for interacting with Laravel's default Docker development environment.
Sail provides a great starting point for building a Laravel application using PHP, MySQL, and Redis without requiring prior Docker experience.
Usually, creating a development environment to build such applications means you have to install software, languages, and frameworks on your local machine – and that is time-consuming. Thanks to Docker and Laravel Sail we will be up and running in no time!
Laravel Sail is supported on macOS, Linux, and Windows via WSL2.
Here's the Documentation if you want to read up on it.
Laravel Jetstream
When building web applications, you likely want to let users register and log in to use your app. That is why we will use Jetstream.
Laravel Jetstream is a beautifully designed application starter kit for Laravel and provides the perfect starting point for your next Laravel application.
It uses Laravel Fortify to implement all the back end authentication logic.
Here are the Docs.
Vuejs
Vue.js is an open-source model–view–ViewModel front end JavaScript framework for building user interfaces and single-page applications.
Vue is a fantastic framework that you can use as a stand-alone to build single-page applications, but you can also use it with Laravel to build something amazing.
Here's the Vue Documentation if you want to read up. And here's a great Vue course to get you started.
Inertia JS
Inertia is the glue between Laravel and Vuejs that we will use to build modern single-page applications using classic server-side routing.
You can learn more about it in the Documentation here.
Tailwind
Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework packed with classes like flex, pt-4, text-center, and rotate-90 that you can use to build any design, directly in your markup
We'll use it in this project to build our design. Here's a quick guide to get you up and running if you aren't familiar with Tailwind.
How to Set Up Your Machine
To follow along with my live coding (and this tutorial), you will need to install Docker desktop on your machine. If you are using Windows, you will also need to enable WSL in your system settings.
Visit the Docker getting started page to install Docker Desktop.
If you are on Windows, enable WSL2 by following the steps here.
If you have any trouble, feel free to reach out or join my community on Slack to get help.
Laravel Installation with Sail
If you have successfully installed Docker Desktop on your machine, we can open the terminal and install Laravel 9.
Open a terminal window and browse to a folder where you want to keep your project. Then run the command below to download the latest Laravel files. The command will put all files inside a folder called my-example-app, which you can tweak as you like.
# Download laravel
curl -s "https://laravel.build/my-example-app" | bash
# Enter the laravel folder
cd my-example-app
Deploy Laravel on Docker using the sail up command
With Docker Desktop up and running, the next step is to start Laravel sail to build all the containers required to run our application locally.
Run the following command from the folder where all Laravel files have been downloaded:
vendor/bin/sail up
It will take a minute. Then visit http://localhost and you should see your Laravel application.
If you run sail up and you get the following error, it is likely that you need to update Docker Desktop:
ERROR: Service 'laravel.test' failed to build:
How to Build the App with Laravel 9, Laravel Sail, Jetstram, Inertia and Vue3
In this section, we will define a basic roadmap, install Laravel 9 with Laravel Sail, Run sail, and build the containers.
I will also take you on a tour of Laravel Sail and the sail commands.
Then we will install Jetstream and scaffold Vue and Inertia files and have a look at the files and available features.
Next, we will populate our database and add the front end provided by Jetstream to register an account and log into a fresh Laravel application.
Finally, we will have a look at the Jetstream dashboard, and the Inertia/Vue Components and then start playing around.
Along the way, we'll disable the registration, enable the Jetstream user profile picture feature, and then add our first Inertia page where we'll render some data taken from the database.
Here's the live coding video if you want to follow along that way:
And if you prefer following along in this written tutorial, here are all the steps.
Just a reminder – you should have Laravel installed with Sail and have Docker set up on your machine. You can follow the steps above to do so if you haven't already.
Laravel Sail Overview – Sail Commands
With Laravel Sail installed, our usual Laravel commands have sligtly changed.
For instance, instead of running the Laravel artisan command using PHP like php artisan, we now have to use Sail, like so: sail artisan.
The sail artisan command will return a list of all available Laravel commands.
Usually, when we work with Laravel, we also have to run the npm and composer commands.
Again, we need to prefix our commands with sail to make them run inside the container.
Below you'll find a list of some commands you will likely have to run:
# Interact with the database - run the migrations
sail artisan migrate # It was: php artisan migrate
# Use composer commands
sail composer require <packageName> # it was: composer require <packageName>
# Use npm commands
sail npm run dev # it was: npm run dev
You can read more in the Sail documentation.
Install Jetstream and Scaffold Vue and Inertia
Let's now install the Laravel Jetstream authentication package and use the Inertia scaffolding with Vue3.
cd my-example-app
sail composer require laravel/jetstream
Remember to prefix the composer command with sail.
The command above has added a new command to Laravel. Now we need to run it to install all the Jetstream components:
sail artisan jetstream:install inertia
Next we need to compile all static assets with npm:
sail npm install
sail npm run dev
Before we can actually see our application, we will need to run the database migrations so that the session table, required by Jetstream, is present.
sail artisan migrate
Done! Jetstream is now installed in our application. If you visit http://localhost in your browser you should see the Laravel application with two links at the top to register and log in.
Populate the Database and Create a User Account
Before creating a new user, let's have a quick look at the database configuration that Laravel Sail has created for us in the .env file.
DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=mysql
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=my-example-app
DB_USERNAME=sail
DB_PASSWORD=password
As you can see, Laravel Sail configures everything we need to access the database container that is running on Docker. The DB_DATABASE is the name of the database and it is the same as the project folder. This is why in the previous step we were able to run the migrate command without issues.
Since we already migrated all database tables, we can now use the Laravel built-in user factory to create a new user then use its details to log in our user dashboard.
Let's open artisan tinker to interact with our application.
sail artisan tinker
The command above will open a command line interface that we can use to interact with our application. Let's create a new user.
User::factory()->create()
The command above will create a new user and save its data in our database. Then it will render the user data onto the screen. Make sure to copy the user email so we can use it later to log in. Then exit by typing exit;.
The default password for every user created with a factory is password.
Let's visit the login page and access our application dashboard.
Jetstream Dashboard
After login you are redirected to the Jetstream dashboard, which looks amazing by default. We can customize it as we like, but it is just a starting point.
Jetstream/Vue Components and Inertia Overview
The first thing you may notice after installing Jetstram is that there are a number of Vue components registered in our application. Not only that, also Inertia brings in Vue components.
To use Inertia, we need to get familiar with it when defining routes.
When we installed Jetstream, it created inside the resources/js directory a number of subfolders where all our Vue components live. There are not just simple components but also Pages components rendered by inertia as our Views.
The Jetstream inertia scaffolding created:
resources/js/JetstreamHere we have 27 components used by Jetstream, but we can use them in our application too if we want.resources/js/LayoutsIn this folder there is the layout component used by inertia to render the dashboard pageresources/js/PagesThis is where we will place all our Pages (views) components. You will find the Dashboard page as well as the Laravel Welcome page components here.
The power of Inertia mostly comes from how it connects Vue and Laravel, letting us pass data (Database Models and more) as props to our Vue Pages components.
When you open the routes/web.php file you will notice that we no longer return a view but instead we use Inertia to render a Page component.
Let's examine the / homepage route that renders the Welcome component.
Route::get('/', function () {
return Inertia::render('Welcome', [
'canLogin' => Route::has('login'),
'canRegister' => Route::has('register'),
'laravelVersion' => Application::VERSION,
'phpVersion' => PHP_VERSION,
]);
});
It looks like our usual Route definition, exept that in the closure we are returning an \Inertia\Response by calling the render method of the Inertia class Inertia::render().
This method accepts two parameters. The first is a component name. Here we passed the Welcome Page component, while the second parameter is an associative array that will turn into a list of props to pass to the component. Here is where the magic happens.
Looking inside the Welcome component, you will notice that in its script section, we simply define four props matching with the keys of our associative array. Then inertia will do the rest.
<script>
import { defineComponent } from 'vue'
import { Head, Link } from '@inertiajs/inertia-vue3';
export default defineComponent({
components: {
Head,
Link,
},
// 👇 Define the props
props: {
canLogin: Boolean,
canRegister: Boolean,
laravelVersion: String,
phpVersion: String,
}
})
</script>
We can then just call the props inside the template. If you look at the template section you will notice that laravelVersion and phpVersion are referenced in the code as you normally would do with props in Vuejs.
<div class="ml-4 text-center text-sm text-gray-500 sm:text-right sm:ml-0">
Laravel v{{ laravelVersion }} (PHP v{{ phpVersion }})
</div>
The dashboard component is a little different. In fact it uses the Layout defined under Layouts/AppLayout.vue and uses the Welcome component to render the Dashboard page content, which is the same as the laravel Welcome page.
<template>
<app-layout title="Dashboard">
<template #header>
<h2 class="font-semibold text-xl text-gray-800 leading-tight">
Dashboard
</h2>
</template>
<div class="py-12">
<div class="max-w-7xl mx-auto sm:px-6 lg:px-8">
<div class="bg-white overflow-hidden shadow-xl sm:rounded-lg">
<welcome />
</div>
</div>
</div>
</app-layout>
</template>
Inside the layout component you will notice the two inertia components Head and Link.
We can use the Head component to add head elements to our page, like meta tags, page title, and so on. The Link component is a wrapper aroud a standard anchor tag that incercepts click events and prevents full page reload as you can read in the Inertia documentation.
Disable the Registration Feature
If you are following along, the next step I'll take is to disable one on the features Jetstream provides – register an account.
To do that, we can navigate to config/fortify.php and comment out line 135 Features::registration() from the features array.
'features' => [
//Features::registration(),
Features::resetPasswords(),
// Features::emailVerification(),
Features::updateProfileInformation(),
Features::updatePasswords(),
Features::twoFactorAuthentication([
'confirmPassword' => true,
]),
],
If we visit the welcome page we will notice that the register link is gone. Also, the route is no longer listed when we run sail artisan route:list.
Enable Jetstream User Profile Picture
Now let's try to enable the Jetstream feature called ProfilePhotos. As you can guess, this will allow the user to add a profile picture.
To do that we need to visit config/jetstream.php and uncomment line 59 Features::profilePhoto.
'features' => [
// Features::termsAndPrivacyPolicy(),
Features::profilePhotos(), // 👈
// Features::api(),
// Features::teams(['invitations' => true]),
Features::accountDeletion(),
],
If you log in you will see that in the user profile, a new section is available to upload a profile picture.
But before doing anything else we need to run sail artisan storage:link so that Laravel creates a symlink to the storage/app/public folder where we will save all user profile images.
Now try to visit the user profile and update the profile picture. If you get a 404 on the image this is because by default Laravel sail assumes we are using Laravel valet and sets the app URL like so APP_URL=http://my-example-app.test in the .env file. Let's change it and use localhost instead.
APP_URL=http://localhost
Now we should be good to go and be able to see and change our profile image!🥳
How to Add our First Inertia Page and Render Records from the DB
Since we are rendering Vue components instead of blade views, it is wise to start sail npm run watch to watch and recompile our Vue components as we create or edit them. Next let's add a new Photos page.
I will start by creating a new Route inside web.php:
Route::get('photos', function () {
//dd(Photo::all());
return Inertia::render('Guest/Photos');
});
In the code above I defined a new GET route and then rendered a component that I will place inside the resources/js/Pages/Guest and call Photos. Let's create it.
Create a Guest folder:
cd resources/js/Pages
mkdir Guest
cd Guest
touch Photos.vue
Then let's define a basic component:
<template>
<h1>Photos Page</h1>
</template>
If we visit http://localhost/photos/ we will see our new page, cool! Let's copy over the page structure from the Welcome page so that we get the login and dashboard links as well.
The component will change to this:
<template>
<Head title="Phots" />
<div class="relative flex items-top justify-center min-h-screen bg-gray-100 dark:bg-gray-900 sm:items-center sm:pt-0">
<div v-if="canLogin" class="hidden fixed top-0 right-0 px-6 py-4 sm:block">
<Link v-if="$page.props.user" :href="route('admin.dashboard')" class="text-sm text-gray-700 underline">
Dashboard
</Link>
<template v-else>
<Link :href="route('login')" class="text-sm text-gray-700 underline">
Log in
</Link>
<Link v-if="canRegister" :href="route('register')" class="ml-4 text-sm text-gray-700 underline">
Register
</Link>
</template>
</div>
<div class="max-w-6xl mx-auto sm:px-6 lg:px-8">
<h1>Photos</h1>
</div>
</div>
</template>
<script>
import { defineComponent } from 'vue'
import { Head, Link } from '@inertiajs/inertia-vue3';
export default defineComponent({
components: {
Head,
Link,
},
props: {
canLogin: Boolean,
canRegister: Boolean,
}
})
</script>
The next step is to render a bunch of data onto this new page. For that we will build a Model and add some records to the database.
saild artisan make:model Photo -mfcr
This command creates a Model called Photo, plus a database migration table class, a factory, and a resource controller.
Now let's define the database table inside the migration we just creted. Visit the database/migrations folder and you should see a file with a name similar to this: 2022_02_13_215119_create_photos_table (yours will be sligly different).
Inside the migration file we can define a basic table like the following:
public function up()
{
Schema::create('photos', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->id();
$table->string('path');
$table->text('description');
$table->timestamps();
});
}
For our table we defined just two new columns, path and description, plus the id, created_at and updated_at that will be created by the $table->id() and by the $table->timestamps() methods.
After the migration we will define a seeder and then run the migrations and seed the database.
At the top of the database/seeders/PhotoSeeder.php file we will import our Model and Faker:
use App\Models\Photo;
use Faker\Generator as Faker;
Next we will implement the run method using a for loop to create 10 records in the database.
public function run(Faker $faker)
{
for ($i = 0; $i < 10; $i++) {
$photo = new Photo();
$photo->path = $faker->imageUrl();
$photo->description = $faker->paragraphs(2, true);
$photo->save();
}
}
We are ready to run the migrations and seed the database.
sail artisan migrate
sail artisan db:seed --class PhotoSeeder
We are now ready to show the data on the Guest/Photos page component.
First update the route and pass a collection of Photos as props to the rendered component:
Route::get('photos', function () {
//dd(Photo::all());
return Inertia::render('Guest/Photos', [
'photos' => Photo::all(), ## 👈 Pass a collection of photos, the key will become our prop in the component
'canLogin' => Route::has('login'),
'canRegister' => Route::has('register'),
]);
});
Second, pass the prop to the props in the script section of the Guest/Photos component:
props: {
canLogin: Boolean,
canRegister: Boolean,
photos: Array // 👈 Here
}
Finally loop over the array and render all photos in the template section, just under the h1:
<section class="photos">
<div v-for="photo in photos" :key="photo.id" class="card" >
<img :src="photo.path" alt="">
</div>
</section>
Done! if you visit the /photos page you should see ten photos. 🥳
How to Refactor the Admin Dashboard and Create New Admin Pages
In this chapter we will Re-route the Jetstream dashboard and make a route group for all admin pages.
Then we will see how to add a new link to the dashboard and add a new admin page.
Finally we will take a collection of data from the db and render them in a basic table. The default table isn't cool enough, so for those reading this article, I decided to add a Tailwind table component.
Re-route the Jetstream Dashboard
If we look at the config/fortify.php file we can see that around line 64 there is a key called home. It is calling the Home constant of the Route service provider.
This means that we can tweek the constant and redirect the authenticated user to a different route.
Lets go through it step-by-step:
- update the HOME Constant
- make a route group and redirect logged in users to
admin/instead of '/dashboard'
Our application will have only a single user, so once they're logged in it is clearly the site admin – so makes sense to redirect to an admin URI.
Change the HOME constant in app/Providers/RouteServiceProvider.php around line 20 to match the following:
public const HOME = '/admin';
How to Add an Admin Pages Route Group
Next let's update our route inside web.php. We will change the route registered by Jetstream from this:
Route::middleware(['auth:sanctum', 'verified'])->get('/', function () {
return Inertia::render('Dashboard');
})->name('dashboard');
To this:
Route::middleware(['auth:sanctum', 'verified'])->prefix('admin')->name('admin.')->group(function () {
Route::get('/', function () {
return Inertia::render('Dashboard');
})->name('dashboard');
// other admin routes here
});
The route above is a route group that uses the auth:sanctum middleware for all routes within the group, a prefix of admin, and adds a admin suffix to each route name.
The end result is that we will be able to refer to the dashboard route by name, which now will be admin.dashboard. When we log in, we will be redirected to the admin route. Our dashboard route will respond since it's URI is just / but the goup prefix will prefix every route in the group and make their URI start with admin.
If you now run sail artisan route:list you will notice that the dashboard route has changed as we expected.
Before moving to the next step we need to update both the /layouts/AppLayout.vue and /Pages/Welcome.vue components.
Do you remeber that the dashboard route name is now admin.dashboard and not just dashboard?
Let's inspect the two components and update every reference of route('dahsboard') to this:
route('admin.dahsboard')
and also every reference of route().current('dashboard') to this:
route().current('admin.dashboard')
After all the changes, make sure to recompile the Vue components and watch changes by running sail npm run watch. Then visit the home page to check if everything is working.
How to Add a New Link to the Dashboard
Now, to add a new admin page where we can list all photos stored in the database, we need to add a new route to the group we created earlier. Let's hit the web.php file and make our changes.
In the Route group we will add a new route:
Route::middleware(['auth:sanctum', 'verified'])->prefix('admin')->name('admin.')->group(function () {
Route::get('/', function () {
return Inertia::render('Dashboard');
})->name('dashboard');
// 👇 other admin routes here 👇
Route::get('/photos', function () {
return inertia('Admin/Photos');
})->name('photos'); // This will respond to requests for admin/photos and have a name of admin.photos
});
In the new route above we used the inertia() helper function that does the same exact thing – returns an Inertia/Response and renders our Page component. We placed the component under an Admin folder inside Pages and we will call it Photos.vue.
Before we create the component, let's add a new link to the dashboard that points to our new route.
Inside AppLayout.vue, find the Navigation Links comment and copy/paste the jet-nav-link component that is actually displaing a link to the dashboard and make it point to our new route.
You will end up having something like this:
<!-- Navigation Links -->
<div class="hidden space-x-8 sm:-my-px sm:ml-10 sm:flex">
<jet-nav-link :href="route('admin.dashboard')" :active="route().current('admin.dashboard')">
Dashboard
</jet-nav-link>
<!-- 👇 here it is our new link -->
<jet-nav-link :href="route('admin.photos')" :active="route().current('admin.photos')">
Photos
</jet-nav-link>
</div>
Our link above uses route('admin.photos') to point to the correct route in the admin group.
If you visit localhost/dashboard and open the inspector, you should see an error:
Error: Cannot find module `./Photos.vue`
It is fine – we haven't created the Photos page component yet. So let's do it now!
How to Add a New Admin Page Component
Make a file named Photos.vue inside the Pages/Admin folder. Below are the bash commands to create the folder and the file via terminal, but you can do the same using your IDE's graphical interface.
cd resources/js/Pages
mkdir Admin
touch Admin/Photos.vue
To make this new page look like the Dashboard page, we will copy over its content. You should end up having something like this:
<template>
<app-layout title="Dashboard"> <!-- 👈 if you want you can update the page title -->
<template #header>
<h2 class="font-semibold text-xl text-gray-800 leading-tight">Photos</h2>
</template>
<div class="py-12">
<div class="max-w-7xl mx-auto sm:px-6 lg:px-8">
<div class="bg-white overflow-hidden shadow-xl sm:rounded-lg">
<!-- 👇 All photos for the Admin page down here -->
<h1 class="text-2xl">Photos</h1>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</app-layout>
</template>
<script>
import { defineComponent } from "vue";
import AppLayout from "@/Layouts/AppLayout.vue";
export default defineComponent({
components: {
AppLayout,
},
});
</script>
I removed a few pieces from the Dashboard template so make sure to double check the code above. The welcome component was removed from the template as it is not required in this page, and also its reference in the script section. The rest is identical.
Feel free to update the page title referenced as prop on the <app-layout title="Dashboard">.
Now when you visit localhost/admin you can click on the Photos menu item and see our Photos page component content. It's not much for now, just an h1.
How to Render Records in the Admin Page as a Table
Now it's time to render the data onto a table. To make things work let's first add our markup and fake that we already have access to as an array of objects and loop over them inside our table. Than we will figure out how to make things work for real.
<table class="table-auto w-full text-left">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>ID</th>
<th>Photo</th>
<th>Desciption</th>
<th>Actions</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr v-for="photo in photos">
<td>{{ photo.id }}</td>
<td><img width="60" :src="photo.path" alt="" /></td>
<td>{{photo.description}}</td>
<td>View - Edit - Delete</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Ok, since we assumed that our component has access to a list of Photos, let's pass a new prop to the component from the Route.
Update the route in web.php and pass to the inertia() function a second argument that will be an associative array. It will have its keys passed as props to the Vue Page component.
In it we will call Photo::all() to have a collection to assign to a photos key, but you can use other eloquent methods if you want to paginate the results, for example.
Route::get('/photos', function () {
return inertia('Admin/Photos', [
'photos' => Photo::all()
]);
})->name('photos');
To connect the prop to our Page component we need to define the prop also inside the component.
<script>
import { defineComponent } from "vue";
import AppLayout from "@/Layouts/AppLayout.vue";
export default defineComponent({
components: {
AppLayout,
},
/* 👇 Pass the photos array as a props 👇 */
props: {
photos: Array,
},
});
</script>
Extra: How to use a Tailwind table component
Tailwind is a CSS framework similar to Bootstrap. There are a number of free to use components that we can grab from the documentation, tweak, and use.
This table component is free and looks nice:https://tailwindui.com/components/application-ui/lists/tables.
We can tweek the Photos page template and use the Tailwind table component to get a nice looking table like so:
<template>
<app-layout title="Dashboard">
<template #header>
<h2 class="font-semibold text-xl text-gray-800 leading-tight">Photos</h2>
</template>
<div class="py-12">
<div class="max-w-7xl mx-auto sm:px-6 lg:px-8">
<!-- All posts goes here -->
<h1 class="text-2xl">Photos</h1>
<a class="px-4 bg-sky-900 text-white rounded-md" href>Create</a>
<div class="flex flex-col">
<div class="-my-2 overflow-x-auto sm:-mx-6 lg:-mx-8">
<div class="py-2 align-middle inline-block min-w-full sm:px-6 lg:px-8">
<div class="shadow overflow-hidden border-b border-gray-200 sm:rounded-lg">
<table class="min-w-full divide-y divide-gray-200">
<thead class="bg-gray-50">
<tr>
<th
scope="col"
class="px-6 py-3 text-left text-xs font-medium text-gray-500 uppercase tracking-wider"
>ID</th>
<th
scope="col"
class="px-6 py-3 text-left text-xs font-medium text-gray-500 uppercase tracking-wider"
>Photos</th>
<th
scope="col"
class="px-6 py-3 text-left text-xs font-medium text-gray-500 uppercase tracking-wider"
>Description</th>
<th scope="col" class="relative px-6 py-3">
<span class="sr-only">Edit</span>
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody class="bg-white divide-y divide-gray-200">
<tr v-for="photo in photos" :key="photo.id">
<td class="px-6 py-4 whitespace-nowrap">
<div
class="text-sm text-gray-900"
>{{ photo.id }}</div>
</td>
<td class="px-6 py-4 whitespace-nowrap">
<div class="flex items-center">
<div class="flex-shrink-0 h-10 w-10">
<img
class="h-10 w-10 rounded-full"
:src="photo.path"
alt
/>
</div>
</div>
</td>
<td class="px-6 py-4 whitespace-nowrap">
<div class="text-sm text-gray-900">
{{ photo.description.slice(0, 100) + '...' }}
</div>
</td>
<!-- ACTIONS -->
<td class="px-6 py-4 whitespace-nowrap text-right text-sm font-medium">
<a href="#" class="text-indigo-600 hover:text-indigo-900">
View - Edit - Delete
</a>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</app-layout>
</template>
How to Submit Forms with Files
For the next section we will look into how to submit a form so that we can add a new photo to the database.
- Add a create button
- Add a create route
- Define the PhotosCreate component
- Add a form
- Validate data
- Show validation errors
- Save the file to the filesystem
- Save the model
How to Create a New Photo
Add a link that points to a create route:
<a class="px-4 bg-sky-900 text-white rounded-md" :href="route('admin.photos.create')">Create</a>
Create the route within the admin group:
Route::get('/photos/create', function () {
return inertia('Admin/PhotosCreate');
})->name('photos.create');
Let's add also the route that will handle the form submission for later:
Route::post('/photos', function () {
dd('I will handle the form submission')
})->name('photos.store');
Create the Admin/PhotosCreate.vue component:
<template>
<app-layout title="Dashboard">
<template #header>
<h2 class="font-semibold text-xl text-gray-800 leading-tight">Photos</h2>
</template>
<div class="py-12">
<div class="max-w-7xl mx-auto sm:px-6 lg:px-8">
<h1 class="text-2xl">Add a new Photo</h1>
<!-- 👇 Photo creation form goes here -->
</div>
</div>
</app-layout>
</template>
<script>
import { defineComponent } from "vue";
import AppLayout from "@/Layouts/AppLayout.vue";
export default defineComponent({
components: {
AppLayout,
},
});
</script>
How to Add the Form to the Component
The next step is to add the form to the page and figure out how to submit it.
If you hit the Inertia documentation you will find out that there is a useForm class that we can use to simplify the process.
First, import the module inside the script tag of the Admin/PhotosCreate.vue component:
import { useForm } from '@inertiajs/inertia-vue3';
Next we can use it in the setup function (Vue 3 composition API):
setup () {
const form = useForm({
path: null,
description: null,
})
return { form }
}
In the code above we defined the function called setup() then a constant called form to have the useForm() class assigned to it.
Inside its parentheses we defined two properties, path and description which are the column names of our photos model.
Finally we returned the form variable for the setup function. This is to make the variable available inside our template.
Next we can add the form markup:
<form @submit.prevent="form.post(route('admin.photos.store'))">
<div>
<label for="description" class="block text-sm font-medium text-gray-700"> Description </label>
<div class="mt-1">
<textarea id="description" name="description" rows="3" class="shadow-sm focus:ring-indigo-500 focus:border-indigo-500 mt-1 block w-full sm:text-sm border border-gray-300 rounded-md" placeholder="lorem ipsum" v-model="form.description"/>
</div>
<p class="mt-2 text-sm text-gray-500">Brief description for your photo</p>
<div class="text-red-500" v-if="form.errors.description">{{form.errors.description}}</div>
</div>
<div>
<label class="block text-sm font-medium text-gray-700"> Photo </label>
<div class="mt-1 flex justify-center px-6 pt-5 pb-6 border-2 border-gray-300 border-dashed rounded-md">
<div class="space-y-1 text-center">
<svg class="mx-auto h-12 w-12 text-gray-400" stroke="currentColor" fill="none" viewBox="0 0 48 48" aria-hidden="true">
<path d="M28 8H12a4 4 0 00-4 4v20m32-12v8m0 0v8a4 4 0 01-4 4H12a4 4 0 01-4-4v-4m32-4l-3.172-3.172a4 4 0 00-5.656 0L28 28M8 32l9.172-9.172a4 4 0 015.656 0L28 28m0 0l4 4m4-24h8m-4-4v8m-12 4h.02" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" />
</svg>
<div class="flex text-sm text-gray-600">
<label for="path" class="relative cursor-pointer bg-white rounded-md font-medium text-indigo-600 hover:text-indigo-500 focus-within:outline-none focus-within:ring-2 focus-within:ring-offset-2 focus-within:ring-indigo-500">
<span>Upload a file</span>
<input id="path" name="path" type="file" class="sr-only" @input="form.path = $event.target.files[0]" />
</label>
<p class="pl-1">or drag and drop</p>
</div>
<p class="text-xs text-gray-500">PNG, JPG, GIF up to 10MB</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="text-red-500" v-if="form.errors.path">{{form.errors.path}}</div>
<button type="submit" :disabled="form.processing" class="inline-flex justify-center py-2 px-4 border border-transparent shadow-sm text-sm font-medium rounded-md text-white bg-indigo-600 hover:bg-indigo-700 focus:outline-none focus:ring-2 focus:ring-offset-2 focus:ring-indigo-500">Save</button>
</form>
The code above uses the Vue v-on directive short end syntax @submit.prevent="form.post(route('admin.photos.store'))" on the form tag, and the dom event submit with the prevent modifier.
Then it uses the form variable that we created earlier and a post method. This is available because we are using the useForm class.
Next we point the form to the route named admin.photos.store that we created earlier.
Inside the form we have two groups of inputs. First, we have the textarea that uses the v-model to bind it to the property form.description that we declared before.
The second group uses the form.path in a Tailwind component (showing the markup for a drop file area).
Right now we are allowing users to upload only a single photo using the v-on directive on the input DOM event @input="form.path = $event.target.files[0]".
The last two things to notice are the error handling done via <div class="text-red-500" v-if="form.errors.path">{{form.errors.path}}</div> for the path and also for the description.
Finally we use form.processing to disable the submit button while the form is processing.
The next step is to define the logic to save the data inside the database.
How to Store Data
To store the data, we can edit the route we defined earlier like so:
Route::post('/photos', function (Request $request) {
//dd('I will handle the form submission')
//dd(Request::all());
$validated_data = $request->validate([
'path' => ['required', 'image', 'max:2500'],
'description' => ['required']
]);
//dd($validated_data);
$path = Storage::disk('public')->put('photos', $request->file('path'));
$validated_data['path'] = $path;
//dd($validated_data);
Photo::create($validated_data);
return to_route('admin.photos');
})->name('photos.store');
The code above uses dependency injection to allow us to use the parameter $request inside the callback function.
We first validate the request and save the resulting array inside the variable $validated_data. Then we use the Storage facades to save the file in the filesystem and obtain the file path that we store inside the $path variable.
Finally we add a path key to the associative array and pass to it the $path variable. Next we create the resource in the database using the Photo::create method and redirect the user to the admin.photos page using the new to_route() helper function.
Make sure to import the Request class and the Storage facades at the top of the web.php file like so:
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage;
Now we can add a new photo in the database and show a list of photos for both the admin and standard visitors.
Next we need to complete the CRUD operations and allow the user to edit/update a photo and delete it.
How to Update Operations
Let's start by adding the routes responsible for showing the forms used to edit the resource and update its values onto the database.
Just under the other routes in the Admin group, let's add the following code:
Route::get('/photos/{photo}/edit', function(Photo $photo){
return inertia('Admin/PhotosEdit', [
'photo' => $photo
]);
})->name('photos.edit');
The route above uses dependency injection to inject inside the function the current post, selected by the URI /photos/{photo}/edit.
Next it returns the Inertia response via the inertia() function that accepts the Component name 'Admin/PhotosEdit' as its first parameter and an associative array as its second.
Doing ['photo' => $photo] will allow us to pass the $photo model as a prop to the component later.
Next let's add the new Page component under resources/js/Pages/Admin/PhotosEdit.vue
This will be its template:
<template>
<app-layout title="Edit Photo">
<template #header>
<h2 class="font-semibold text-xl text-gray-800 leading-tight">Edit Photo</h2>
</template>
<div class="py-12">
<div class="max-w-7xl mx-auto sm:px-6 lg:px-8">
<form @submit.prevent="form.post(route('admin.photos.update', photo.id))">
<div>
<label
for="description"
class="block text-sm font-medium text-gray-700"
>Description</label>
<div class="mt-1">
<textarea
id="description"
name="description"
rows="3"
class="shadow-sm focus:ring-indigo-500 focus:border-indigo-500 mt-1 block w-full sm:text-sm border border-gray-300 rounded-md"
placeholder="lorem ipsum"
v-model="form.description"
/>
</div>
<p class="mt-2 text-sm text-gray-500">Brief description for your photo</p>
<div
class="text-red-500"
v-if="form.errors.description"
>{{ form.errors.description }}</div>
</div>
<div class="grid grid-cols-2">
<div class="preview p-4">
<img :src="'/storage/' + photo.path" alt />
</div>
<div>
<label class="block text-sm font-medium text-gray-700">Photo</label>
<div
class="mt-1 flex justify-center px-6 pt-5 pb-6 border-2 border-gray-300 border-dashed rounded-md"
>
<div class="space-y-1 text-center">
<svg
class="mx-auto h-12 w-12 text-gray-400"
stroke="currentColor"
fill="none"
viewBox="0 0 48 48"
aria-hidden="true"
>
<path
d="M28 8H12a4 4 0 00-4 4v20m32-12v8m0 0v8a4 4 0 01-4 4H12a4 4 0 01-4-4v-4m32-4l-3.172-3.172a4 4 0 00-5.656 0L28 28M8 32l9.172-9.172a4 4 0 015.656 0L28 28m0 0l4 4m4-24h8m-4-4v8m-12 4h.02"
stroke-width="2"
stroke-linecap="round"
stroke-linejoin="round"
/>
</svg>
<div class="flex text-sm text-gray-600">
<label
for="path"
class="relative cursor-pointer bg-white rounded-md font-medium text-indigo-600 hover:text-indigo-500 focus-within:outline-none focus-within:ring-2 focus-within:ring-offset-2 focus-within:ring-indigo-500"
>
<span>Upload a file</span>
<input
id="path"
name="path"
type="file"
class="sr-only"
@input="form.path = $event.target.files[0]"
/>
</label>
<p class="pl-1">or drag and drop</p>
</div>
<p class="text-xs text-gray-500">PNG, JPG, GIF up to 10MB</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="text-red-500" v-if="form.errors.path">{{ form.errors.path }}</div>
</div>
</div>
<button
type="submit"
:disabled="form.processing"
class="inline-flex justify-center py-2 px-4 border border-transparent shadow-sm text-sm font-medium rounded-md text-white bg-indigo-600 hover:bg-indigo-700 focus:outline-none focus:ring-2 focus:ring-offset-2 focus:ring-indigo-500"
>Update</button>
</form>
</div>
</div>
</app-layout>
</template>
The template is actually identical to the Create component, except for a few things. The form points to a route that expects a paramenter that we pass as the second argument to the funtion route. It looks like this: <form @submit.prevent="form.post(route('admin.photos.update', photo.id))">.
There is a section where we can see the original photo next to the upload form group:
<div class="preview p-4">
<img :src="'/storage/' + photo.path" alt />
</div>
The rest is identical, and here we have the script section:
import { defineComponent } from "vue";
import AppLayout from "@/Layouts/AppLayout.vue";
import { useForm } from '@inertiajs/inertia-vue3';
export default defineComponent({
components: {
AppLayout,
},
props: {
photo: Object
},
setup(props) {
const form = useForm({
_method: "PUT",
path: null,
description: props.photo.description,
})
return { form }
},
});
Notice that we are passing a props object with the photo key, which allows us to reference the model in the template.
Next, this _method: "PUT", line of code is required to be able to submit a PUT request instead of the POST request called on the form tag.
Now let's implement the logic to handle the form submission inside the Route below.
In web.php just under the previous route, let's add one that responds to the PUT request submitted by our form.
Route::put('/photos/{photo}', function (Request $request, Photo $photo)
{
//dd(Request::all());
$validated_data = $request->validate([
'description' => ['required']
]);
if ($request->hasFile('path')) {
$validated_data['path'] = $request->validate([
'path' => ['required', 'image', 'max:1500'],
]);
// Grab the old image and delete it
// dd($validated_data, $photo->path);
$oldImage = $photo->path;
Storage::delete($oldImage);
$path = Storage::disk('public')->put('photos', $request->file('path'));
$validated_data['path'] = $path;
}
//dd($validated_data);
$photo->update($validated_data);
return to_route('admin.photos');
})->name('photos.update');
The route logic is straigthforward. First we validate the description, next we check if a file was uploaded and if so we validate it.
Then we delete the previously uploaded image Storage::delete($oldImage); before storing the new image onto the datadabse and update the resource using $photo->update($validated_data);.
As before with the store route, we redirect to the admin.photos route using return to_route('admin.photos');.
How to Delete a Resource
The last step we need to take is to write the logic to delete the photo. Let's start by adding the route.
Right below the previous route we can write:
Route::delete('/photos/{photo}', function (Photo $photo)
{
Storage::delete($photo->path);
$photo->delete();
return to_route('admin.photos');
})->name('photos.delete');
This route is also using a wildcard in its URI to identify the resource. Next, its second paramenter is the callback that uses the dependency injection as before. Inside the callback we first delete the image from the filesystem using Storage::delete($photo->path);.
Then we remove the resource from the database $photo->delete(); and redirect the user back return to_route('admin.photos'); like we did in the previous reoute.
Now we need to add a delete button to the table we created in one of the previous steps to show all photos.
Inside the template section of the component Admin/Photos.vue within the v-for, we can add this Jetstream button:
<jet-danger-button @click="delete_photo(photo)">
Delete
</jet-danger-button>
Find the table cell that has the ACTIONS comment and replace the DELETE text with the button above.
So the final code will be:
<td class="px-6 py-4 whitespace-nowrap text-right text-sm font-medium">
<a href="#" class="text-indigo-600 hover:text-indigo-900">
View - Edit -
<jet-danger-button @click="delete_photo(photo)">
Delete
</jet-danger-button>
</a>
</td>
As you can see there is a @click event listener on the button. It calls a method delete_photo(photo) that we need to define along with a bunch of other methods to have a nice modal opening to ask for confirmation from the user.
First import the Inertia helper function useForm:
// 0. Import the useForm class at the top of the script section along with all required components
import { useForm } from '@inertiajs/inertia-vue3';
import JetDangerButton from '@/Jetstream/DangerButton.vue'
import { ref } from "vue";
Remember to register the component JetDangerButton inside the components object before moving forward.
Next add the setup() function in the script section and implement the logic required to submit the form and show a modal. The comments in the code will guide you thorought all the steps.
// 1. add the setup function
setup() {
// 2. declare a form variable and assign to it the Inertia useForm() helper function
const form = useForm({
// 3. override the form method to make a DELETE request
_method: "DELETE",
});
// 4. define a reactive object with show_modal and photo property
// this will be used to figure out when to show the modal and the selected post values
const data = ref({
show_modal: false,
photo: {
id: null,
path: null,
description: null,
}
})
// 5. define the delete_photo function and update the values of the show_modal and photo properties
// of the reactive object defined above. This method is called by the delete button and will record the details
// of the selected post
const delete_photo = (photo) => {
//console.log(photo);
//console.log(photo.id, photo.path, photo.description);
data.value = {
photo: {
id: photo.id,
path: photo.path,
description: photo.description
},
show_modal: true
};
}
// 6. define the method that will be called when our delete form is submitted
// the form will be created next
const deleting_photo = (id) => {
form.post(route('admin.photos.delete', id))
closeModal();
}
// 7. delare a method to close the modal by setting the show_modal to false
const closeModal = () => {
data.value.show_modal = false;
}
// 8. remember to return from the setup function the all variables and methods that you want to expose
// to the template.
return { form, data, closeModal, delete_photo, deleting_photo }
}
Finally outside the v-for loop add the modal using the following code. You can place this where you want but not inside the loop.
<JetDialogModal :show="data.show_modal">
<template #title>
Photo {{ data.photo.description.slice(0, 20) + '...' }}
</template>
<template #content>
Are you sure you want to delete this photo?
</template>
<template #footer>
<button @click="closeModal" class="px-4 py-2">Close</button>
<form @submit.prevent="deleting_photo(data.photo.id)">
<jet-danger-button type="submit">Yes, I am sure!</jet-danger-button>
</form>
</template>
</JetDialogModal>
This is our final JavaScript code:
import { defineComponent } from "vue";
import AppLayout from "@/Layouts/AppLayout.vue";
import TableComponent from "@/Components/TableComponent.vue";
import { Link } from '@inertiajs/inertia-vue3';
import { useForm } from '@inertiajs/inertia-vue3';
import JetDialogModal from '@/Jetstream/DialogModal.vue';
import JetDangerButton from '@/Jetstream/DangerButton.vue'
import { ref } from "vue";
export default defineComponent({
components: {
AppLayout,
Link,
TableComponent,
JetDialogModal,
JetDangerButton
},
props: {
photos: Array,
},
setup() {
const form = useForm({
_method: "DELETE",
});
const data = ref({
show_modal: false,
photo: {
id: null,
path: null,
description: null,
}
})
const delete_photo = (photo) => {
//console.log(photo);
console.log(photo.id, photo.path, photo.description);
data.value = {
photo: {
id: photo.id,
path: photo.path,
description: photo.description
},
show_modal: true
};
}
const deleting_photo = (id) => {
form.post(route('admin.photos.delete', id))
closeModal();
}
const closeModal = () => {
data.value.show_modal = false;
}
return { form, data, closeModal, delete_photo, deleting_photo }
}
});
</script>
And here we have the HTML:
<template>
<app-layout title="Dashboard">
<template #header>
<h2 class="font-semibold text-xl text-gray-800 leading-tight">Photos</h2>
</template>
<div class="py-12">
<div class="max-w-7xl mx-auto sm:px-6 lg:px-8">
<!-- All posts goes here -->
<h1 class="text-2xl">Photos</h1>
<a class="px-4 bg-sky-900 text-white rounded-md" href>Create</a>
<div class="flex flex-col">
<div class="-my-2 overflow-x-auto sm:-mx-6 lg:-mx-8">
<div class="py-2 align-middle inline-block min-w-full sm:px-6 lg:px-8">
<div class="shadow overflow-hidden border-b border-gray-200 sm:rounded-lg">
<table class="min-w-full divide-y divide-gray-200">
<thead class="bg-gray-50">
<tr>
<th
scope="col"
class="px-6 py-3 text-left text-xs font-medium text-gray-500 uppercase tracking-wider"
>ID</th>
<th
scope="col"
class="px-6 py-3 text-left text-xs font-medium text-gray-500 uppercase tracking-wider"
>Photos</th>
<th
scope="col"
class="px-6 py-3 text-left text-xs font-medium text-gray-500 uppercase tracking-wider"
>Description</th>
<th scope="col" class="relative px-6 py-3">
<span class="sr-only">Edit</span>
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody class="bg-white divide-y divide-gray-200">
<tr v-for="photo in photos" :key="photo.id">
<td class="px-6 py-4 whitespace-nowrap">
<div
class="text-sm text-gray-900"
>{{ photo.id }}</div>
</td>
<td class="px-6 py-4 whitespace-nowrap">
<div class="flex items-center">
<div class="flex-shrink-0 h-10 w-10">
<img
class="h-10 w-10 rounded-full"
:src="photo.path"
alt
/>
</div>
</div>
</td>
<td class="px-6 py-4 whitespace-nowrap">
<div class="text-sm text-gray-900">
{{ photo.description.slice(0, 100) + '...' }}
</div>
</td>
<!-- ACTIONS -->
<td class="px-6 py-4 whitespace-nowrap text-right text-sm font-medium">
<a href="#" class="text-indigo-600 hover:text-indigo-900">
View - Edit -
<jet-danger-button @click="delete_photo(photo)">
Delete
</jet-danger-button>
</a>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<JetDialogModal :show="data.show_modal">
<template #title>
Photo {{ data.photo.description.slice(0, 20) + '...' }}
</template>
<template #content>
Are you sure you want to delete this photo?
</template>
<template #footer>
<button @click="closeModal" class="px-4 py-2">Close</button>
<form @submit.prevent="deleting_photo(data.photo.id)">
<jet-danger-button type="submit">Yes, I am sure!</jet-danger-button>
</form>
</template>
</JetDialogModal>
</app-layout>
</template>
That's it. If you did everything correctly you should be able to see all photos, create new photos as well as edit and delete them.
I will leave you some home work. Can you figure out how to implement the view and edit links before the delete button in the section below?
<!-- ACTIONS -->
<td class="px-6 py-4 whitespace-nowrap text-right text-sm font-medium">
<a href="#" class="text-indigo-600 hover:text-indigo-900">
View - Edit -
<jet-danger-button @click="delete_photo(photo)">
Delete
</jet-danger-button>
</a>
</td>
Wrapup and What's next
During this guide we took our first steps and learned how to build a single page application using Laravel as our backend framework and Vue3 for the front end. We glued them together with Inertia js and built a simple photo application that lets a user manage photos.
We are just at the beginning of a fantastic journey. Learning new technologies isn't easy, but thanks to their exaustive documentations we can keep up and build awesome applications.
Your next step to master Laravel, Vue3, Inertia and all the tech we have been using so far is to hit their documentation and keep learning. Use the app we have build if you want, and improve it or start over from scratch.
Conclusion
This is just an overview of how I'd build a single page application using these technologies.
If you are familiar with server-side routing and Vuejs then you will enjoy bulding a single page application with Laravel, Inertia, and Vuejs. The learning curve isn't that steep plus you have great documentation to help you out.
You can find the source code for this guide here.
#laravel #laravel9 #jetstream #vuejs #inertiajs #mysql #tailwindcss #docker
1649473200
Understanding CSS's !important declaration
!important in CSS is a special notation that we can apply to a CSS declaration to override other conflicting rules for the matching selector.
When we work on web projects, it is natural that we have some style declarations that other styles overrule.
This is not an issue for an experienced developer who understands the core mechanism of CSS. However, it can be difficult for beginners to understand why the style declarations they expect are not applied by the browser.
So, instead of them focusing on resolving the issue naturally, they tend to go for the quick fix by adding the !important declaration to enforce the style they expect. While this approach might work for that moment, it can also initiate another complex problem.
In this guide, we will review the following, including how to use !important and when we should use it:
- The CSS core mechanism
- Understanding the
!importantdeclaration before we use it :is()and other related pseudo-class functions- When exactly can we use
!importantdeclaration?- Utility classes
- The style rules we cannot override
Enough said, let’s dive in.
The CSS core mechanism
Understanding the core principles of CSS will naturally enable us to know when it’s obvious to use the !important declaration. In this section, we will walk through some of these mechanisms.
Consider the HTML and CSS code below, what color do you think the heading text will be?
First, the HTML:
<h2 class="mytitle">This is heading text</h2>Then, the CSS:
h2 {
color: blue;
}
h2 {
color: green;
}The text will render green! This is basic CSS fundamental. With the CSS cascade algorithm, the ordering of CSS rules matters. In this case, the declaration that comes last in the source code wins.
Normally, this is logical. In the first place, we should not repeat the same selector as we did above. CSS does not want repetition, so it uses the last declaration rule.
However, there are cases whereby we create generic styles for the root elements, like the h2, and then add classes to style specific elements. Let’s consider the following example as well, starting with the HTML:
<h2>This is heading text</h2>
<h2 class="mytitle">This is heading text</h2>Then, let’s see the CSS:
.mytitle {
color: blue;
}
h2 {
color: green;
}In the above code, the first h2 element has no class applied, so it is obvious that it gets the green color of the h2 selector.
However, the second h2 element uses the rule for the class selector, .mytitle, even when the element selector rule comes last in the CSS code. The reason for that is that the class selector has a higher specificity when compared to the element selector.
In other words, the weight applied to the declaration in a class selector is more than element selector’s weight.
Similarly, the declaration in an ID selector is more than that of the class selector. In this case, the red color in the code below takes precedence:
<h2 id="maintitle" class="mytitle">This is heading text</h2> Followed by the CSS:
.mytitle {
color: blue;
}
#maintitle {
color: red;
}
h2 {
color: green;
}Furthermore, an inline style attribute takes precedence over the ID selector, starting with the HTML:
<h2 id="maintitle" style="color: black;" class="mytitle">This is heading text</h2>
Then followed by the CSS:
.mytitle {/*...*/}
#maintitle {/*...*/}
h2 {/*...*/}This is the ideal priority flow in CSS and must be maintained to avoid anomalies. The !important declaration most of the time comes when we are oblivious of these basic rules.
The inline style attribute and each of the selectors have values that browsers assign to them. That way, it knows which one has higher or lower priority. Think of this value as a number of four single digits with the style attribute assigned the strongest weight value of 1000.
This follows the ID with a value of 0100, then class with 0010, and finally the element selector with 0001.
Sometimes we can combine selectors targeting specific elements, as seen in the example below:
<h2 id="maintitle" class="mytitle">This is heading text</h2>
Followed by the CSS:
h2.mytitle {
color: blue;
}
#maintitle {
color: red;
}
h2 {
color: green;
}The specificity of the h2.mytitle selector in the CSS above is the addition of h2 and .mytitle. That is, 0001 + 0010 = 0011. This total value, however, is less than that of the #maintitle ID that is 0100.
So, the browser uses the declaration in the ID selector to override other conflicting rules. In a case of equal weight, the last rule declaration wins.
Now that we know which rules are most relevant and why the browser applies them, it will become naturally obvious whether or not to use this !important declaration.
Understanding the !important declaration before we use it
Before we consider using the !important notation, we must ensure that we follow the specificity rule and use the CSS cascade.
In the code below, we have the h2 and h3 elements styled to be a red color:
<h2 class="mytitle">This is heading II text</h2>
<h3 class="mytitle">This is heading III text</h3>Then, .mytitle in CSS:
.mytitle {
color: red;
}But, let’s say at some point, we want to give the h3 element a blue color. Adding a style rule like the one below would not change the color because the class has more weight and it’s more specific than the element selector, as we’ve learned:
.mytitle {...}
h3 {
color: blue;
}However, using the !important on the lesser weight makes the browser enforce that declaration over other conflicting rules:
.mytitle {...}
h3 {
color: blue !important;
}This is because the !important notation increases the weight of the declaration in the cascade order of precedence. What this means is that we’ve disrupted the normal priority flow. Hence, bad practice, and can lead to difficulties in code maintenance and debugging.
If at some other point, we want to override the above important rule, we can apply another !important notation on a declaration with higher specificity (or the same if it is lower down in the source). It can then lead to something like this:
h3 {
color: blue !important;
}
/* several lines of rules */
.mytitle {
color: green !important;
}This is bad and should be avoided. Instead, we should check if:
- Rearranging the rule or rewriting the selectors can solve the cascading issue
- Increasing the specificity of the target element can solve the issue
Well, let’s find out. Back to our style rules, we can enforce a blue color on the h3 element by increasing the specificity score.
As seen below, we can combine selectors until their specificity score supersedes the conflicting rule. The h3.mytitle selector gives a specificity score of 0011, which is more than the .mytitle of 0010 score:
.mytitle {...}
h3.mytitle {
color: blue;
}As we can see, instead of using the !important declaration to enforce a rule, we focus on increasing the specificity score.
:is() and other related pseudo-class functions
Sometimes, we may trace issues to a pseudo-class function. So, knowing how it works can save us a lot of stress. Let’s see another example.
Imagine we are working on a project and see the following code:
<h1 id="header">
heading <span>span it</span>
<a href="#">link it</a>
</h1>
<p class="paragraph">
paragraph <span>span it</span>
<a href="">link it</a>
</p>Using the following CSS rules gives us the output after:
:is(#header, p) span,
:is(#header, p) a {
color: red;
}
Now, let’s say we want to give the span and the link text in the paragraph another color of blue. We can do this by adding the following rule:
.paragraph span,
.paragraph a {
color: blue;
}The earlier rule will override the blue color despite being further down the line:
As a quick fix, we can enforce our blue color by using the !important notation like so:
:is(#header, p) span,
:is(#header, p) a {...}
.paragraph span,
.paragraph a {
color: blue !important;
}But, as you may guess, that is bad practice, so we must not be quick to use the !important notation. Instead, we can start by analyzing how every selector works. The :is() is used in the code is a pseudo-class function for writing mega selectors in a more compressed form.
So, here is the following rule in the above code:
:is(#header, p) span,
:is(#header, p) a {
color: red;
}Which is equivalent to the following:
#header span,
p span,
#header a,
p a {
color: red;
}So, why is .paragraph span and .paragraph a not overriding the color despite having a specificity score of 0011, which is higher than 0002 of the p span and p a.
Well, every selector in the :is() uses the highest specificity in the list of arguments. In that case, both the #header and the p in the :is(#header, p) uses the specificity score of the #header, which is 0100. Thus, the browser sticks to its value because it has a higher specificity.
Thus, anytime we see this type of conflict, we are better off not using the pseudo-class function and sticking to its equivalent like the following:
#header span,
p span,
#header a,
p a {
color: red;
}Now, we should be able to see the expected result without using the !important notation that disrupts cascade order.
You can see for yourself on CodeSandbox.
When exactly can we use !important declaration?
Below are a few occasions where using the !important notation is recommended.
Utility classes
Assuming we want to style all buttons on a page to look the same, we can write a CSS rule that can be reused across a page. Let’s take a look at the following markup and style below:
<p>Subscribe button : <a class="btn" href="#">Subscribe</a></p>
<section class="content">
<p>
This <a href="#" class="btn">button</a> style is affected by a higher
specificity value .
</p>
A link here: <a href="#">Dont click</a>
</section>Followed by the CSS:
.btn {
display: inline-block;
background: #99f2f5;
padding: 8px 10px;
border: 1px solid #99f2f5;
border-radius: 4px;
color: black;
font-weight: normal;
text-decoration: none;
}
.content a {
color: blue;
font-weight: bold;
text-decoration: underline;
}In the above code, we can see that the button link within the section element is targeted by both selectors in the CSS. And, we learned that for conflicting rules, the browser will use the most specific rule. As we expect, .content a has a score of 0011 while .btn has a score of 0010.
The page will look like this:
In this case, we can enforce the .btn rule by adding the !important notation to the conflicting declarations like this:
.btn {
/* ... */
color: black !important;
font-weight: normal !important;
text-decoration: none !important;
}The page now looks as we expect:
See for yourself on CodeSandbox.
The style rules we cannot override
This mostly happens when we don’t have total control over the working code. Sometimes, when we work with a content management system like WordPress, we may find that an inline CSS style in our WordPress theme is overruling our custom style.
In this case, the !important declaration is handy to override the theme inline style.
Conclusion
The !important declaration is never meant to be used as we desire. We must only use it if absolutely necessary, such as a situation where we have less control over the code or very extreme cases in our own code.
Whether or not we use it depends on how we understand the core CSS mechanism, and in this tutorial, we covered that as well.
I hope you enjoyed reading this post. If you have questions or contributions, share your thought in the comment section and remember to share this tutorial around the web.
Source: https://blog.logrocket.com/understanding-css-important-declaration/
1670346000
How to Create & Add Content - Images, Text To Modern SharePoint Pages
Description
Requirement is to create Modern pages with content, which includes images and text.
The Content is in SharePoint List. The pages are created from a Page Template.
To get Text part from Page template, use below PowerShell,
#get page textpart instance id
$parts=Get-PnPPageComponent -Page <pagename.aspx>Execute the below PowerShell to create pages with HTML content from SharePoint List.
$logFile = "Logs\LogFile.log"
Start - Transcript - Path $logFile - Append
#Variables
$libName = "Site Pages"
$siteURL = "https://tenant.sharepoint.com/"
$contentType = "Group and Division Page"
$listname = "Content"
$sectionCategoy = "Our organisation"
#End
Try {
#Connect to PnP Online
$connection = Connect - PnPOnline - Url $siteURL - UseWebLogin - ReturnConnection - WarningAction Ignore
#Get items from Content list
$items = Get - PnPListItem - List $listName - PageSize 100
foreach($item in $items) {
if ($null - ne $item["Title"] - and $null - ne $item["Content"]) {
#Get Page webparts instance Id
#$parts = Get - PnPPageComponent - Page PageTemplate.aspx
# load the page template
$template = Get - PnPClientSidePage - Identity "Templates/Division-page-template"
#Get page name
$fullFileName = $item["Title"].Replace(" ", "_") + ".aspx"
#Create fileURL
$fileURL = $siteURL + $libName + "/" + $fullFileName
# save a new SharePoint Page based on the Page Template
$template.Save($fullFileName)
$page = Get - PnPPage - Identity $fullFileName
$htmlToInject = $item["Content"]
$htmlToInject = $htmlToInject.TrimStart('{"Html":"').TrimEnd('"}') - replace([regex]::Escape('\n')), '' - replace([regex]::Escape('<a href=\')),' < a href = ' -replace ([regex]:: Escape('\
">')),'" > ' -replace ([regex]::Escape(' & bull; % 09 ')),'
' -replace '
https:
/*','https://'
#Set PnP Page Text
Set-PnPPageTextPart -Page $page -InstanceId "9fab3ce6-0638-4008-a9b9-cf2b784245b5" -Text $htmlToInject
#publish page
Set-PnPPage -Identity $fullFileName -Title $item["Title"] -ContentType $contentType -Publish
#get site pages library
$sitepagelist= Get-PnPList -Identity 'Site Pages'
#get page Id and page Item to update section category
$pageItem=Get-PnPListItem -List $sitepagelist -Id $page.PageId
Set-PnPListItem -Values @{"SectionCategory" = $sectionCategoy} -List $sitepagelist -Identity $pageItem
}
else
{
Write-Host "Title or Content has no value"
}
}
}
Catch {
Write-Host "Error: $($_.Exception.Message)" -Foregroundcolor Red
}
Stop-TranscriptOriginal article source at: https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/