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Note: This is now outdated and has been replaced by the Redux version.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 Maintenance takes a back seat to "urgent" new features, and before you know it your dependencies are way out of date.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

Original Portfolio


The old version of this website

Tech: HTML + CSS

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 Code

2018

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