Weblog

IBM Container Registry is a private, secure and managed multi-tenant registry for container images. It includes automated image scanning, which checks uploaded images for vulnerabilities, and custom rate-limits for pull traffic. It is available for IBM Cloud users under both standard and lite pricing plans. To interact with IBM Container registry, you will need two command-line tools: the IBM Cloud CLI and the Docker CLI. If you don’t already have these, install them before proceeding, and also install the IBM Cloud Container Registry plugin. ...

IBM Cloudant is a managed database service on IBM Cloud. It is based on Apache CouchDB and is intended for JSON document storage. By default, IBM Cloud provides a Web-based dashboard to manage IBM Cloudant instances. However, if you prefer to use Fauxton, Apache CouchDB’s native Web dashboard, it’s actually quite easy to connect and use a locally-running Fauxton instance with an IBM Cloudant service. NOTE: Before proceeding, ensure that you have a recent version of Node.js installed. ...

I’ll be speaking at the Dagger Ahmedabad and GIFT City Meetup in a few days. Introduction to Dagger (Sat Aug 24 2024 at 10:30 AM IST) This session covers the basics of using Dagger. It will include a hands-on coding demonstration that you can follow along with on your laptop. If you’re in Ahmedabad over the weekend, please drop by, grab a cup of coffee and say hello! Update: The video is now available. ...

In previous posts, I demonstrated how to connect to an IBM Db2 database using PHP and Go. However, you can also connect to IBM Db2 from other languages. This post will walk you through an example using JavaScript. NOTE: Before proceeding, ensure that you have a recent version of Node.js installed. First, install the IBM Db2 package as below: bash npm install ibm_db Next, connect to the database and execute queries on it. Here’s an example: ...

I recently came across the IBM Watson Text to Speech service. This service, which is available under standard, premium and lite (restricted) plans on IBM Cloud, makes it quick and easy to transcribe speech from any application. It can be accessed using a standard HTTP REST API. With the IBM Cloud CLI, launching a new Text to Speech service on IBM Cloud is a simple two-step process: Create the service instance (read more about service instance creation). ...

In a previous post, I demonstrated how to connect to an IBM Db2 database using PHP. However, PHP isn’t the only language with a native driver for IBM Db2. Another popular language with an IBM Db2 driver is Go…and coincidentally, that’s also the topic of this post. Install the IBM Db2 driver in your Go module as below: bash go get github.com/ibmdb/go_ibm_db As with other databases, you use the IBM Db2 driver for Go via the Go sql package, which provides a generic abstraction layer for database operations. Here’s an example: ...

IBM Db2 is available as a fully-managed cloud RDBMS via IBM Cloud, or as a self-managed deployment via the IBM Db2 Community Edition. Regardless of how it’s deployed, you can access it either with a native-language driver or via its REST API. If you’re using PHP, a native driver is available as a PECL extension. Detailed installation instructions are available in the PHP IBM Db2 extension repository on GitHub. Once you have the extension installed, connecting to the database and executing queries is both fast and simple. Here’s an example: ...

Both IBM Cloud Foundry and IBM Cloud Code Engine use a JSON-encoded environment variable to expose service bindings: VCAP_SERVICES for IBM Cloud Foundry and CE_SERVICES for IBM Cloud Code Engine. These variables provide important information, such as access credentials, API endpoints, key names and identifiers, which your application will need to connect to the corresponding services. If you’re using PHP, you can access this variable using the getenv() function. You can then decode it into either an associative array or an object and use it to initialize the corresponding service client. ...

I recently discovered an interesting feature of the IBM Cloud CLI: plugins. These plugins, which are usually linked to specific IBM Cloud services, add new commands and functions to the IBM Cloud CLI. The IBM Cloud CLI provides a simple interface to install, uninstall, update and search for plugins via the ibmcloud plugin command. To use a plugin, you must first install it with the ibmcloud plugin install command. Here’s an example: ...

To access an IBM Cloud service instance, you must have an IAM access token. To obtain an IAM access token, you must have an API key for the service. Access tokens can be obtained directly from the IBM Cloud IAM service, by making an HTTP query to the API endpoint at https://iam.cloud.ibm.com/identity/token and including an API key in the request. Here’s an example: bash curl -X POST 'https://iam.cloud.ibm.com/identity/token' -H 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' -d 'grant_type=urn:ibm:params:oauth:grant-type:apikey&apikey=YOUR-API-KEY-HERE' However, these access tokens are short-lived - typically, they expire after 60 minutes and need to be renewed after that expiry period. ...