Phil Reynolds
Personal website, blog and portfolio
I'm a software developer and team leader.
I build engaging tools which aim to
add value to the world.
I currently work for Ryalto as a Lead Software Developer
Before this, I led the software development team for the Legal Innovation Lab Wales from 2020 through 2022. You can find out more about the lab at LegalTech.Wales and find out more about my team's work on our dev page. A lot of things have been cross posted here for posterity.
If you want to get in touch, there's some links at the top of the page, or you can check out the projects I've worked on or read some of the things I've written.
Blog
Hotwire Handbook Part 3
April 11 2023
Part 3 of the Hotwire Handbook looks at broadcasting updates with Turbo Streams, Inline Editing and more magic with Turbo Frames
Hotwire Handbook
Part 2 - Redux
March 27 2023
Pagination with Hotwire. Redux!
Things changed with Turbo 7.2.0 and Turbo getting support for GET requests.
This highlights the changes you'll need to make if you're migrating to Turbo 7.2.0 and includes pagination with filters.
Search and Select Multiple with Rails and Hotwire
March 22 2023
Selecting multiple users from a search and adding them to a form to create another model with Ruby on Rails 7 and Hotwire.
Saying bye to Hey
February 14 2023
My Hey renewal is coming up next week and I'm moving back to Gmail because Hey lost a lot of my emails and blamed me.
Migrating to GitHub Actions for Rails CI
October 13 2022
RubyCI is tragically shutting down, so I'm migrating to GitHub Actions for Rails CI
Originally posted at Ryalto
Our Engineering Principles
September 8 2022
The principles that we follow as we build high quality software at Ryalto.
Originally posted at Ryalto
Getting into Ruby on Rails
August 18 2022
A friend asked me out of the blue how to get into programming. It's not an easy question with no single answer, but these are my thoughts.
Originally posted at Ryalto
Hotwire Handbook
Part 2
June 27 2022
Pagination with Hotwire. Based on a fantastic guide by David Colby.
With a few extra bits including multiple paginated sections on one page and reverse pagination.
Note: This is now outdated and has been replaced by the Redux version.
Upgrade or Rebuild?
June 25 2022
It’s a question that many developers face. Maintenance takes a back seat to "urgent" new features, and before you know it your dependencies are way out of date.
Originally posted at Ryalto
Admin Authorisation at Ryalto
June 14 2022
We're working on a better way to manage the relationship between users and organisations. This post it about our simple approach to admin users.
Originally posted at Ryalto
Eilean Shona Adventures
Friday - Our Final Day
March 31 2022
Our final day of a perfect week on the incredible Shona Island.
Eilean Shona Adventures
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
March 31 2022
The middle of our week spent exploring the island.
Eilean Shona Adventures
Monday - Written by Shona
March 28 2022
Day Three of our Island Adventure on Shona Island. Shona's Birthday! Shona has taken the reigns and written about today. (Also includes the story)
Eilean Shona Adventures
Sunday
March 27 2022
Day Two of our Island Adventure on Shona Island.
Eilean Shona Adventures
Introduction and Saturday
March 26 2022
Shona and I went away for a week to Eilean Shona. A small island on the West Coast of Scotland. There was a lovely guest book in our cottage which encouraged users to share their vists, as well as writing in there I thought I would preseve them in a slightly more accessible location, here!
Hotwire Handbook
Part 1
March 22 2022
Part 1 of the Hotwire Handbook, a series of guides and examples of using Hotwire with Rails 7. This part looks at toggle buttons, content updates and live counters. I also link to Parts 2 and 3.
Originally posted at LILW
Extending the Theme Switch
August 2 2021
Why should users be limited to just a light mode or dark mode? Why not give them some more choice? This is a follow on from my previous article about building a vanilla JavaScript dark mode toggle.
Originally posted at LILW
Technical Challenge
(and updating the process)
June 3 2021
The interview processes for this role involved a fairly intense 3 hour challenge. This post talks about how I completed that and how I updated the process to be a bit more representative of the way that we work in the lab.
Originally posted at LILW
Javascript Dark Mode Toggle
May 20 2021
Dark mode is becoming more and more common, this post is going to talk through setting up a simple theme toggle using plain JavaScript.
Originally posted at LILW
Tools We Use
May 18 2021
This aims to give an overview of the tools we use and the way we use them to build software in the Legal Innovation Lab Wales.
Originally posted at LILW
How To Build a Feature
May 11 2021
A brief best-practice guide for how we build features at the Legal Innovation Lab Wales.
Originally posted at LILW
Directory of Expertise
January 3 2021
Short blog detailing the development of the web-scraping script and infrastructure around the School of Law’s staff directory of expertise.
Originally posted at LILW
Welcome to the Blog
May 20 2021
A welcome post to the Legal Innovation Lab Wales' Developer Blog
Originally posted at LILW
Building the Summoner on AWS
Nov 20 2018
The original guide for building "The Summoner", a web page that can be used to share you location with someone via SMS. The Summoner has since been rebuilt froms scratch and a new guide will be coming soon.
Originally posted at Mobilise
Projects I've worked on
2022
Daily Brew
A web app which lets speciality coffee lovers track their home brews.
Tech: Ruby on Rails with Hotwire
2022
Dragon Shield
Bespoke online training tool to educate professions about online grooming
Tech: Ruby on Rails with Vue JS
Project no longer available
Code is not open source.
2021
The Summoner
Serverless web app that sends a text summoning someone to users location
Tech: HTML, CSS, JS and Twilio
2021
LILW Dev Page
Developer page for Legal Innovation Lab Wales
Tech: Jekyll
2021
Include Journey
A tool to help people on their journey towards desitance from offending.
Tech: Full stack ruby on rails app
2020
Scenario Platform
A tool to create and attempt branching non-linear scenarios with background variables.
Tech: Full stack ruby on rails app
2020
Directory of Expertise
Project to collate areas of expertise from staff profiles.
Tech: Python for web scraping.
2020
Postcards
Completed in 3 hours for interview for current role.
Tech: Full stack Ruby on Rails app
2020
Jade Gould Portfolio
Simple portfolio site for a friend
Tech: HTML + CSS
2020
Dashboard
Simple serverless dashboard Note: Data is not live
Tech: Chart.JS
2019
Savage Adventures
Serverless, zero-cost marketing website for an adventure company.
Tech: Previously HTML + CSS, now Jekyll
2019
Mobilise Digital
Web app for managing a network of contractors.
Tech: Full stack Ruby on Rails app.
Project no longer available
View Code2018
Van Spots
Database of wild camping spots for campervans.
Tech: Full stack Ruby on Rails app.
2017
Veeqo Developers
Developer portal, providing easy access to resources
Tech: Ruby on Rails app.
2017
Rock Advisor
University dissertation project, a Digital Rock Climbing Guide Book.
Tech: Full stack web app build with Laravel and AngularJS
Project no longer available
View Code