#100DaysOfCode - Week08

For the eighth week of the #100DaysOfCode Challenge, and to celebrate the halfway point, I deployed an open-source blockchain to the cloud and continued developing a web application with automated testing.

The Blockchain

The blockchain that I deployed was a simple, open-source, functioning blockchain project built for exploring the logic and functionality of distributed ledger technologies. The blockchain project that I forked from the original developer on Github is available in both the C# and Python programming languages. After I deployed the blockchain to AWS's Lightsail cloud platform I was able to get it working on a few web servers so that I could submit transactions to the blocks and mine them using a tool called Postman, which is like a web browser but with more functionality.

The project was great practice for deploying someone else's code base, gaining an understanding of it and getting it running. Also, this coming week, I'll be presenting at South Florida Code Camp about blockchain and its impacts on cyber crime, so now I will be able to have a simple blockchain for running a demo in the presentation and explaining some of the concepts by using the code directly!

The Web Application

The web application project that I continued from last week was a To-do List using a Django web application framework. I expanded the project with additional automated unit tests, functional tests, and regression tests.

Below is a video that shows me running the new unit tests in the command line and functional tests with a Selenium bot. In the demonstration below, the bot is automatically writing a "to-do" list because that's the model of the web application that I'm building. But a bot such as this could be used just as easily for all kinds of data entry, such as filling in new customer information, onboarding new employees, or updating user and transactions info.

As of today, it's been 55 days of coding, and I can say that this 100-day approach results in surprisingly effective results in skills advancement. If anyone wants to discuss further, I'll be at South Florida Code Camp this weekend--hope to see you there!

Rob Valdez, CPA, CISA, CISM, is a risk advisory services manager in Kaufman Rossin’s Boca Raton, Florida, office and provides technology consulting services, including PhishNet by Kaufman Rossin, a security awareness training service. Rob can be reached at rvaldez@kaufmanrossin.com.