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Recently I was faced with a situation where I needed to get the value of an HTML5 date input field when it was changed by the user.  My first reaction was to setup a JavaScript listener that listens for a change or a click on the input element and then grab the value of the date accordingly.  So I setup my listener with jQuery and with vanilla JavaScript but I was unsuccessful in getting consistent result values no matter how I setup the listener.

I have always been on the lookout for a tool that I can use to synchronize files between two Rackspace Cloud Containers.  I have looked high and low for a suitable tool that syncs files from an origin container to a destination container whether that destination container exists or not.  Finally, I decided that if I want something like this then I was just going to have to roll up my sleeves and create the tool myself.

One of the major parts of any software development cycle is testing.  Whether that testing is performed on just one feature or an entire product I think that any developer can agree that code and product functionality needs to be tested before it is deployed.  As a developer, one thing that I continuously find myself wondering is when is it an appropriate time to test my code?  I wonder if it cost effective and productive to perform testing on a feature by feature basis?

Today I regret to inform you if you have not already heard that the Parse service is no longer going to be available as of January 28, 2017.  Parse did, in effort to smoothly transition their customers onto their own services, open source a couple of very nice internal tools that they use as Parse.  For example, the first tool they are open sourcing is a database migration tool that allows you to move data from your core data structures on Parse to a MongoDB instance on a separate server that Parse is open sourcing called Parse Server.  Parse Server is built out of Node.js and Express and can be retro-fitted into existing applications to support and maintain existing Parse applications for years to come.

I am proud to announce that the latest version of Agnostic Dev has been redeveloped and is now up and running on top of Drupal 8.  I am very happy that the entire development process went very smoothly and from start to finish only took me about two weeks.  This is a significant improvement over what it took to develop the Drupal 7 version of Agnostic Dev as it took me close to a month and I did not have any content to port.