Visually Showing Atlas Search Highlights with JavaScript and HTML

When it comes to finding specific words or phrases within text, you’re probably going to want to use a natural language search option like full-text search (FTS). Sure, you could probably create a complicated and difficult-to-maintain set of regular ... more

Creating a User Profile Store for a Game With Node.js and MongoDB

When it comes to game development, or at least game development that has an online component to it, you’re going to stumble into the territory of user profile stores. These are essentially records for each of your players and these records contain everything ... more

Maintaining a Geolocation Specific Game Leaderboard with Phaser and MongoDB

When it comes to game development, an often forgotten component comes in the form of a database for storing gameplay information. The database can contribute to numerous roles, such as storing user profile information, game state, and so much more. In ... more

Add Music, Sounds, and Other Audio to a Phaser Game

If you’re building a game, you’re probably going to need audio such as sound effects and background music at some point in time. Without audio, the gameplay experience can feel quite boring, which no one wants their game to be labeled as. I’ve recently ... more

Object Pooling Sprites in a Phaser Game for Performance Gains

Performance is everything when it comes to video games. Lag and stutter due to dropped frames can easily ruin your game. This means that you have to be considerate of how you manage your game resources to prevent unnecessary operations and stress on ... more

Accept Text Input from Users in a Phaser Game

When you create a game, you may find yourself needing to accept keyboard input from the user. I’m not talking about using the keyboard to control your player, but instead to accept text from the keyboard to be used as a username or for the in-game chat. ... more

Switch Between Scenes in a Phaser Game

When you’re building a game, you’re probably going to have more than one screen. For example, you might have an initial menu screen, a main gameplay screen, and a game over screen. These screens can be thought of as scenes in a game, the same way you ... more

Include Touch, Cursor, and Gesture Events in a Phaser Game

So you’re at a point in your game where you need to allow the player to interact with the game. While keyboard events are common in a lot of games, they aren’t the only way to interact, and they may not even be the best way to interact if you’re planning ... more

Use Matter.js Physics for Sprite Collisions in a Phaser Game

I recently wrote about handling collisions in a Phaser 3.x game. In this previous tutorial titled, Handle Collisions Between Sprites in Phaser with Arcade Physics, the focus was around the arcade physics engine that Phaser integrates with. While you ... more

Continuous Side Scrolling in a Phaser Game with Tile Sprites

In 2D games, it is not uncommon to want animated backgrounds. Having static images in your levels doesn’t necessarily add to the game-play experience, so a little bit of motion can go a long way. So how can you do this without having to manage these ... more

Handle Collisions Between Sprites in Phaser with Arcade Physics

When it comes to game development, a lot of games will require interaction between the player and the environment or the player and another player. For example, you’d probably want to prevent your player from falling through floors or make them lose ... more

Building an Autocomplete Form Element with Atlas Search and JavaScript

When you’re developing a web application, a quality user experience can make or break your application. A common application feature is to allow users to enter text into a search bar to find a specific piece of information. Rather than having the user ... more

Animate a Compressed Sprite Atlas in a Phaser Game

You might recall that I recently wrote a tutorial titled Animate Spritesheets in a Phaser Game where I created two different sprite animations from a single spritesheet. The process was quite simple, but not very optimized. In this previous tutorial, ... more

Creating a Multiplayer Drawing Game with Phaser and MongoDB

When it comes to MongoDB, an often overlooked industry that it works amazingly well in is gaming. It works great in gaming because of its performance, but more importantly its ability to store whatever complex data the game throws at it. Let’s say you ... more

Animate Spritesheets in a Phaser Game

When it comes to 2D game development, sprite animations are going to be a critical part of the game experience. No one wants to play a game with a static unappealing image that moves around on the screen. They are going to want vibrant animations that ... more

Create a Stream Deck Plugin to Interact with Webhooks

I recently jumped on the hype train when it comes to streaming and picked up an Elgato Stream Deck. If you’re unfamiliar, these devices are essentially hotkey peripherals with LCD adjustable keys that allow you to quickly perform certain tasks. Could ... more

Searching for Nearby Points of Interest with MongoDB and Mapbox

When it comes to location data, MongoDB’s ability to work with GeoJSON through geospatial queries is often under-appreciated. Being able to query for intersecting or nearby coordinates while maintaining performance is functionality a lot of organizations ... more

Real-Time Location Changes with MongoDB Realm, Change Streams, and Mapbox

When it comes to modern web applications, interactions often need to be done in real-time. This means that instead of periodically checking in for changes, watching or listening for changes often makes more sense. Take the example of tracking something ... more

Scan for Broken Links on a Website with JavaScript

Building a website isn’t a difficult task in a lot of circumstances, but maintaining a website is a totally different story. When it comes to larger scale websites or blogs such as The Polyglot Developer, content can become out of date at any time, and ... more

TPDP E37: Writing Tests in a Development Project

I’m pleased to announce that the latest episode of The Polyglot Developer Podcast has been published! In Writing Tests in a Development Project , the topic is testing and it features repeat guest Corbin Crutchley, author and co-founder at Unicorn Utterances. ... more

Location Geofencing with MongoDB, Stitch, and Mapbox

For a lot of organizations, when it comes to location, geofencing is often a very desirable or required feature. In case you’re unfamiliar, a geofence can be thought of as a virtual perimeter for a geographic area. Often, you’ll want to know when something ... more

Static Website Deployments to MongoDB Stitch with Hugo, Git, and Travis CI

MongoDB Stitch can do quite a few things, some of which include GraphQL, functions as a service, and triggers. However, another awesome feature is in its ability to host static HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, the core components to any static website. Static ... more

Create a Stream Countdown Timer for Twitch with JavaScript

As you’ve probably seen, I’ve been ramping up The Polyglot Developer on Twitch, when it comes to live streaming developer content. What might not be obvious to the viewer of the live streams is the technical effort that’s involved in making the stream ... more

Querying a GraphQL API in a React Web Application

GraphQL is becoming all the rage, what with being able to query an API like you can query a database. There are two aspects when it comes to GraphQL development, the first being around creating GraphQL APIs and the other around creating applications ... more

Scale, Crop, and Zoom Images in a React Web Application

If you’ve been keeping up with the blog, you might remember a few tutorials I wrote around the Cropper.js library for JavaScript applications. In these tutorials I demonstrated how to manipulate images in Angular as well as Vue.js web applications. While ... more

Make HTTP Requests with Axios or Fetch in a React Web Application

In most client facing applications there’s a need to consume data from remote web services, also referred to as APIs. This is because there is a separation of backend and frontend logic in modern applications, not specific to the web. With JavaScript, ... more

Test Password Strength with RegEx in a React Application

While some organizations think it is up to the user to protect themselves by choosing strong usernames and passwords, the developer can help influence good password choices by including it in the design of the application. For example, the developer ... more

Generate Images from HTML with Gulp and Puppeteer

Have you ever needed to generate an image from your HTML? Whether it be for design purposes or for marketing purposes with social media, knowing how to get a screenshot of your HTML design without manually taking the screenshot can be a great thing. ... more

Maps and Location Services with HERE by Example, Released

I’m pleased to announce that a new course has been published, this time on the subject of maps and various location services. This course titled, Maps and Location Services with HERE by Example, focuses on building web applications using JavaScript and ... more

Creating an eBook with Pandoc and Markdown

You might already be aware of this, but I’ve accomplished a life achievement of writing and self-publishing two technical eBooks. I published Web Services for the JavaScript Developer, followed by Web Services for the Go Developer, which contain the ... more