Codewars - Decode the Morse Code


The last few days I've been working through some Open ID Connect authentication layers in Django.  I'm not too familiar with Django just yet but have learned alot and still in the process of figuring out whether I like it better than Rails or not.  Annnnd that's not what this post is about.  I decided to take a break from that and try out a Codewar challenge called Decode the Morse code.  Here's what was going through my brain while I was working through it.

![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/1Bbfb35.gif?noredirect)


***

- ##### - Here's the link to the details: 
    [Codewars - Decode the Morse Code Details](https://www.codewars.com/kata/54b724efac3d5402db00065e)

***

- ##### - Now, I'll summarize  

The objective is to be able to accept some Morse code as a string and decode it back in a human-readable string.  The code for translating the letters is already set up so it's just a matter of manipulating the string the look for spaces in the string input.

***

- ##### - I started by splitting the string into an array

        messageArray = morseCode.split(" ")

All I really wanted to do here was get the string into an array to use array methods and loop through the letters.

***

- ##### - Then, I mapped through the array

        messageArray.map((item, index)=> {
            item ? finalArray.push(MORSE_CODE[item]) : finalArray.push(' ')
        })  
  
In every iteration of this loop, I am checking to see if item is defined.  If item is defined, then I am pushing the translated Morse code into a new array which I called finalArray.  If the item is not defined, I am pushing a space to the array.  I got to this result with some trial and error.  I realized that with the 3 space set up in between words, I was going to have to do something about those spaces instead of running it through the MORSE_CODE function.  A few console.logs later and I got what I was expecting.

![Imgur](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/31/76/02/3176028b92c680e1b07a159db36cc3a8.gif)

***

- ##### - Now, I have to bring it all back together:

        return finalArray.join('').replace(/  +/g, ' ')

In this code block I'm returning my finalArray once it is joined and the double space is replaced by just a single space.  So my final code block looks like:

        decodeMorse = function(morseCode){
            finalArray = []
            messageArray = morseCode.split(" ")
                messageArray.map((item, index)=> {
                    item ? finalArray.push(MORSE_CODE[item]) : finalArray.push(' ')
                })
  
            return finalArray.join('').replace(/  +/g, ' ')
        }

- ##### That was easy right?

![Imgur](https://media4.giphy.com/media/dAoaCkGkLe4ABsQrpV/giphy.gif)

***

- ##### - Something we are all taught in grade school is to READ THE DIRECTIONS!

I completely missed an important step, I need to account for any unnecessary spacing in the beginning or end of the string.  This should've be an easy fix but I could not remember what function existed to do such a thing.  I'll never forget now. (I said this when I used it for one of my projects a few months back)

***

### TRIM
### TRIM
### TRIM

.trim - a method that gets rid of all whitespace in the beginning and end of a string...literally the exact thing I needed (goodbye 30 minutes to an hour of my life)

***

- ##### SOLUTION

So now my final code block (and for real this time) looks like this:


        decodeMorse = function(morseCode){
            finalArray = []
            morseCode = morseCode.trim()
            messageArray = morseCode.split(" ")
        
            messageArray.map((item, index)=> {
                item ? finalArray.push(MORSE_CODE[item]) : finalArray.push(' ')
            })
            
        return finalArray.join('').replace(/  +/g, ' ')
        }


Wooooooo!!  Challenge Completed!!



Codewars - Beginner Series #3 Sum of Numbers


I'll start off by saying I'm not very proud of this one.  It didn't take long but I definitely over thought it.  Should've been A => B but I took a wandering path instead.

![Imgur](https://www.cbc.ca/kidsnews/content/RaptorsWin.gif)


***

- ##### - Details  

Given two integers a and b, which can be positive or negative, find the sum of all the integers between including them too and return it. If the two numbers are equal return a or b.

Note: a and b are not ordered!

***

- ##### - First, I defined the length of the array I wanted to build

        const length = Math.abs(b - a)

The Math.abs came after I realized that I would need the absolute value of these numbers since there could be some negatives involved.

***

- ##### - Then, I used a method I wasn't too familiar with and glad I came across it.

        const numberArr = Array.from({length: length+1}, (_, i) => i + c)
  
All this is doing is accepting the length of my array as an object (I had to add 1 since my previous logic wasn't correct) then taking in a map function to start at a constant I've defined as `c`.

***

- ##### - Here's my logic on my `c` constant

        let c = null
        a < b ? c = a : c = b

I'm first declaring `c` as a variable then running a ternary operator to define `c` as my array starting point depending on which value is smaller between a and b.

***

- ##### - Time to sum them up

        const total = numberArr.reduce((total, item) => {
            return total += item}, 0)

I used the array method .reduce() to sum up the array since I was familiar with this method and it happens to be one of my faves.

***

- ##### SOLUTION

Here's the final code block:


        function getSum( a,b ) {
            let c = null
            const length = Math.abs(b - a)

            a < b ? c = a : c = b
  
            const numberArr = Array.from({length: length+1}, (_, i) => i + c)
  
            const total = numberArr.reduce((total, item) => {
                return total += item}, 0)
  
            return total
        }

![Imgur](https://adamsarson.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/01-25-14-ilonen-regulation-putt.gif)

Codewars - Credit Card/Jaden Case/Digital Root


Late post but knocked out 4 challenges a few days ago in Ruby and JavaScript.  I'm still working on cleaning up my code and keeping it DRY, however, I feel like these weren't too bad.


***

- ##### - Getting Right Into It 

Some of these were quite simple but it was cool to take a look at some of the other solutions once I was done to see how I could improve.  I won't go step by step as I have in some of my other posts but I'll just walk through the highlights of the challenges.

***

- ##### - Multiples of 3 or 5 (JavaScript)

        function solution(number){
            let num = 0
            if (number < 0) {
                return num = 0
            } else {
  
            for (let i=0; i<number; i++){
            if (i%3 === 0 && i%5 === 0) {
                num = num + i
            } else if (i % 3 === 0 || i % 5 === 0) {
                num = num + i
      
            } else {
      
            }
            }
            return num
            }
  
        }       

I added a step in this code with the else if which was not necessary but you live and you learn.  I created a top level conditional to make sure to return 0 if the number was less than 0 but that was also unnecessary.  Either way the code works but needed some cleaning up.

***

- ##### - Credit Card Mask (JavaScript)

        function maskify(cc) {
            newArr = cc.split('')
            finalArr = []
            newArr.map((letter,index)=> {
                if (index < newArr.length-4){
                finalArr.push('#')
                } else {
                finalArr.push(letter)
                }
            })
            return finalArr.join('')
            
        }
  
This code is written to replace all the characters with a `#` except the last 4 characters.  I learned that I could have just chained some methods and achieved the same result in less code but this made the most sense to me at the time.

***

- ##### - Jaden Casing Strings (Ruby)

        class String
            def toJadenCase
                self.split.map(&:capitalize).join(' ')
            end
        end

Apparently Jaden Smith has an interesting way of typing out his tweets where he capitalizes every first letter as if it's a title.  The capitalize function in Ruby allows you to do this exact operation so I'm using it in a map to adjust every words accordingly.  Proud of this one because of how clean it is.

***

- ##### - Sum of Digits/Digital Root (Ruby)

        def digital_root(n)
            sum = nil
            newArr = n.to_s.split(//).map{|num| num.to_i}
            length = newArr.length
            if length <= 1
                sum = newArr[0]
            else
            while length > 1 
                sum = newArr.reduce(:+)
                newArr = sum.to_s.split(//).map{|num| num.to_i}
                length = newArr.length
            end
            return sum
            end
        end

I had fun with this one because it felt more like a puzzle than the others.  This function accepts any number, returns the sum of all the numbers, then continues to loop until that summation is a single digit -- it then returns that single digit.  I'm not a big while loop fan but it was the perfect application for it.


I'm going to keep at it on the challenges.  See ya!

Deploying Next.js to Netlify


Why not let my first software development related blog post be about my struggle to get this site deployed?  I had become accustomed to create-react-apps built-in scripts and tried deploying to Netlify as I usually would but ran into some issues.  Let me quickly walk through the changes I made to make this work:

***

- ##### Add `"export": "next export"` to your package.json

![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/K7aypWu.png)

This is particularly for situations where you are not using any server-side data.  So, specifically for static HTML.

***

- ##### Create a netlify.toml as a direct child in your project's folder.  The file should look like the code block and picture below:

`[build]`   
  `command = "npm run build && npm run export"`   
  `publish = "out"`


![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/Tfz1s93.png)

***

- ##### Configure your deployment settings in Netlify:

![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/eT86gtE.png)

- ##### Click deploy and you should be up and running.  Thanks for reading!



This is a simple blog built with Next, easily deployable to Netlify!

My Blog

Codewars - Decode the Morse Code

Codewars - Beginner Series #3 Sum of Numbers

Codewars - Credit Card/Jaden Case/Digital Root

Deploying Next.js to Netlify