8 articles

Developer guides

The formats, edge cases and gotchas behind the tools — Base64, timestamps, JSON escaping and getting data out of API responses.

Diagram contrasting a tool that uploads data to a server with one that processes it entirely in the browser
Start here

Browser-Based Developer Tools: Why Client-Side Beats Uploading

Why client-side developer tools are usually the right default, what actually happens to data you paste into an online utility, and how to tell the two kinds apart before you paste anything sensitive.

17 August 2026
A cURL command being converted into equivalent JavaScript fetch, Python requests and Go net/http code

From Copy as cURL to Production Code, Without the Copied Secrets

Turning a Copy as cURL command from DevTools into clean client code — how each flag maps onto fetch, Axios, requests, httpx and net/http, and how to avoid committing the credentials that came along for the ride.

22 August 2026
A JSON Web Token split into its header, payload and signature segments with the expiry claim highlighted

Debugging JWTs Client-Side: Header, Claims, Expiry and Privacy

What is actually inside a JSON Web Token, why pasting a live one into an online decoder hands over a working credential, and how to read the claims that explain most authentication failures.

22 August 2026
A large nested JSON payload on the left with escaped URLs, resolving into a clean filtered list on the right

Extracting and Cleaning URLs from Large API Responses, Safely

Pulling every link out of a large REST, GraphQL or Postman response without pasting proprietary data into a server-side parser — including the escaping, filtering and edge cases that make the job fiddly.

22 August 2026
Three bytes of binary data being regrouped into four Base64 characters

Base64 Encoding Explained (and the Mistake Everyone Makes)

What Base64 actually does, why it makes data roughly a third larger, the difference between standard and URL-safe alphabets, and the one mistake that causes most Base64 bugs in production.

17 August 2026
A timeline showing the Unix epoch at 1970 and the 32-bit signed integer overflow in 2038

Unix Timestamps: Seconds, Milliseconds and the 2038 Problem

How Unix time works, how to tell seconds from milliseconds at a glance, why leap seconds make it not-quite-elapsed-time, and what the year 2038 problem actually breaks.

17 August 2026
A nested JSON response on the left resolving into a flat deduplicated list of URLs on the right

How to Extract All URLs from an API Response

A no-code workflow to extract every image, video and link URL from REST, GraphQL, Postman and Insomnia responses, then filter, dedupe and export the list without writing a throwaway script.

15 June 2026
A JSON string showing an escaped URL with backslashes before each forward slash

Why JSON URLs Contain Backslashes (and How to Fix Them)

Learn why URLs in JSON and API responses show up as https:\/\/example.com, why the escaping is valid rather than a bug, and how to unescape them instantly without writing a regex.

15 June 2026