new post - I release my first app

metadata.js

@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ function parse_dir(dir, folder_name = null){
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         if(stats.isDirectory()){
             parse_dir(dir + post + '/', post);
-        } else if(folder_name !== null && dir !== './posts/extras/'){
+        } else if(folder_name !== null && folder_name !== 'images' && dir !== './posts/extras/'){
             const file = fs.readFileSync(dir+post, 'utf8');
             const tokens = marked.lexer(file, null);
             const temp = {

package.json

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     "html-webpack-plugin": "^2.22.0",
     "marked": "^0.3.6",
     "ncp": "^2.0.0",
-    "node-sass": "^3.8.0",
+    "node-sass": "^3.13.1",
     "postcss-loader": "^0.13.0",
     "react": "^15.3.0",
     "react-addons-transition-group": "^15.3.1",

posts/Projects/2017-11-18-my-first-app.md

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+# I released my first app
+I released my first app on the app store. This had been a goal of mine since I started my first full time job
+as a software engineer. The app was on the app store exactly one year after I started my job, June 1st, 2017.
+
+***
+
+Everyone dreams of making the next big "Unicorn App" and I'd be lying if this wasn't in
+the back of my mind every now and then. There's always the thought of, "What if this thing
+really takes off?". I knew this wasn't very realistic, and my main reason for building an
+app was for the experience. I just wanted to know what it takes and how it's done.
+
+## App information
+As of 11/18/17 the app is still on the app store, but I may take it down in the future.
+https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/where-bar-you/id1238017914?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4
+
+I've open sourced both the front and back end to this project. Check them out here:
+
+[Front End](https://github.com/mgerb/wbuRewrite)
+
+[Back End](https://github.com/mgerb/wbu-server)
+
+![Where Bar You](/public/posts/images/wherebaryou.png)  
+
+## The Idea
+People like to say that the idea of an app is one of the hardest parts. After going through the entire process
+of building an app I now strongly disagree with this. There is so much more to app development than the idea.
+It's tough coming up with something to make, but carrying it out is much more difficult in my opinion.
+
+The idea for this app came to me when I was in college. During the later years I was out with my friends at the bars
+quite a bit, often times with many people that I didn't even know, or had just met. Sometimes it was difficult
+keeping tracking of where my friends were at certain times. I thought that an app could solve this problem.
+It wasn't until after college I had the time actually implement something.
+
+## Where Bar You
+I like to browse the [App Ideas](https://www.reddit.com/r/AppIdeas/) subreddit every now and then to explore new ideas.
+I saw someone else had a similar idea and that is where I got the name. I still cannot find the original post.
+
+## The server
+To make this app work, I needed to provide functionality for account creation,
+authentication, instant messaging, and push notifications. This sounds like a fairly simple task,
+but to make something that is scalable and maintains 100% uptime can be difficult.
+
+### Go
+I chose [Go](https://golang.org/) for the back end language. This has been one of my favorite languages
+to work with as of late. It's very simplistic, fast, compiled, and has strong typing. All of which,
+makes development fun and an enjoyable process.
+
+#### First iteration
+I made some mistakes the first time around. Although I later refactored the majority of the code, I'm
+glad I went this route because it was a great learning experience. I thought it was a good idea
+to use [Redis](https://redis.io/) as my primary data store. I was very interested in this because Redis is FAST.
+It's an in memory key/data structure store. It was fun to work with right away, but once my data model grew
+it started to become very hard keeping track of everything. Working with denormalized data requires a lot of planning
+if done right. Realistically I wasn't going to have enough users to need the speed of Redis anyway.
+
+#### Second iteration
+There is a reason relational databases are still the primary data store for the vast majority of applications.
+I decided to go with SQLite, because it was embedded and I didn't have to spin up another database server. I wanted to
+keep things simple. Working with relational data was much more intuitive and didn't hold me back.
+I had to refactor a lot of the code, but it was worth it. I still use Redis, but it's only used
+for rate limiting. I wanted to limit the amount of requests a user could send, just in case of an attack.
+I spent a lot of time taking security precautions throughout back end development.
+
+## The Client
+Primarily being a front end web developer during the day job, I got pretty good at working with Javascript.
+I gained experience with Angular and played around with React on the side. I then heard about [React Native](https://facebook.github.io/react-native/), a platform for creating mobile apps with the React API.
+This was the perfect opportunity for me to get started on my app!
+
+React Native was really fun and easy to work with, due to my background in Javascript. It was also
+great being able to develop an app with live reloading. This meant that the app would update any time I
+would save a file, which made development much quicker!
+
+#### First iteration
+Just like the server, I refactored a lot of the UI code when I revisited this project. Working
+with Javascript can be nice, but this was around the time I started using [Typescript](https://www.typescriptlang.org/).
+As my app grew in size, having no types began to be really difficult to work with, especially if
+I need to do any refactoring. It became really frustrating and I started to lose interest.
+
+#### Second iteration
+I decided to start over with Typescript this time. It's pretty crazy how much Typescript provides
+over Javascript. The fact that I can catch 90% of my errors at compile time rather than runtime
+is extremely helpful. The autofill and code snippets that VS Code provides with Typescript are also
+very nice. I don't know if I would have finished this app if it weren't for me switching to Typescript.
+
+## Hosting
+I'm hosting the back end for this app on a small VPS from [Vultr](https://www.vultr.com/). I've
+had good luck with Vultr and they offer really cheap VPS's to choose from. I've got one CentOS
+VPS, which is the primary server. I've also got another, which pulls backups of the database
+every day.
+
+## After release
+I'm writing this about 5 months after I released the app. Since then I think I've had about 5
+accounts created, all of which are my friends except one. The one other account is
+a testing account Apple created I'm assuming. I find this quite funny! It's hard to
+stay motivated after releasing something that nobody uses. I've lost interest in this app,
+but I still consider it a success. The goal was to release a working app, and that's what I did.
+It was a great learning experience and I proved to myself that it was possible!
+
+### Future plans
+In the future I plan to work on more apps. I'd like to release another app at some point next year.
+Although React Native was great to work with, I've been interested in creating a true native app for iOS
+with Swift. I enjoy learning new things and I think it would be a great experience considering
+how little I have worked with Swift in the past.

server/route/route.go

@@ -12,6 +12,8 @@ import (
 func NonTLSRoutes() *httprouter.Router {
 
 	r := httprouter.New()
+
+	// need to keep this http end point open for devices
 	r.GET("/api/storedata", api.HandleSensorRequest)
 
 	// redirect to tls on not found