Cocos2d Cross-Platform Game Development Cookbook. Develop games for iOS and Android using Cocos2d with the aid of over 70 step-by-step recipes - Second Edition

Siddharth Shekar, Raydelto Hernandez

Cocos2d is the world’s leading game development framework for developing iOS games. With the introduction of Swift and Spritebuilder, it has become easier than ever to develop the games of your dreams without much effort. With Cocos2d, you can also deploy the game on Android, thereby maximizing profit and reducing development and porting costs.The book starts off with a detailed look at how to implement sprites and animations into your game to make it livelier. You will then learn to add scenes to the game such as the gameplay scene and options scene and create menus and buttons in these scenes, as well as creating transitions between them. From there on, you will get an understanding of how to program user interactions such as tapping, holding, and swiping. You’ll then add accelerometer inputs and physics to the scene, and make objects respond back to the inputs. A game is practically incomplete without audio being added, so this will be covered next. The next section will include ways to add Artificial Intelligence to enemies in the game, allowing them to patrol, chase, and shoot in a projectile manner. You will then learn to use NSUserDefault to save and load game progress, and create and access files using JSON, Plist, and XML files for custom storage and retrieval of data. Then you will learn to add dynamic lighting to your game and will use industry-wide tools such as Texture Packer, Glyph Designer, Physics Editor, Particle Designer, and Sprite Illuminator to create more visually appealing and performance-optimized games.Towards the end of the book, we dive into Apple’s latest programming language—Swift, highlighting the major differences between Objective C and Swift. The book culminates with taking your existing game developed for iOS and porting it to Android, showing you how to install the Android Xcode plugin as well.

PhpStorm Cookbook. Discover over 80 recipes to learn how to build and test PHP applications efficiently using the PhpStorm IDE

Mukund Chaudhary

Writing API Tests with Karate. Enhance your API testing for improved security and performance

Benjamin Bischoff, Peter Thomas

Software in recent years is moving away from centralized systems and monoliths to smaller, scalable components that communicate with each other through APIs. Testing these communication interfaces is becoming increasingly important to ensure the security, performance, and extensibility of the software. A powerful tool to achieve safe and robust applications is Karate, an easy-to-use, and powerful software testing framework.In this book, you’ll work with different modules of karate to get tailored solutions for modern test challenges. You’ll be exploring interface testing, UI testing as well as performance testing.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to use the Karate framework in your software development lifecycle to make your APIs and applications robust and trustworthy.

Enterprise GENERATIVE AI Well-Architected Framework & Patterns. An Architect's Real-life Guide to Adopting Generative AI in Enterprises at Scale

Suvoraj Biswas

The course begins with an insightful introduction to the burgeoning field of Generative AI, laying down a robust framework for understanding its applications within the AWS ecosystem.The course focuses on meticulously detailing the five pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework—Operational Excellence, Security, Compliance, Reliability, and Cost Optimization. Each module is crafted to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of these essential areas, integrating Generative AI technologies. You'll learn how to navigate the complexities of securing AI systems, ensuring they comply with legal and regulatory standards, and designing them for unparalleled reliability. Practical sessions on cost optimization strategies for AI projects will empower you to deliver value without compromising on performance or scalability. Furthermore, the course delves into System Architecture Excellence, emphasizing the importance of robust design principles in creating effective Generative AI solutions.The course wraps up by offering a forward-looking perspective on the Common Architectural Pattern for FM/LLM Integration & Adoption within the AWS framework. You'll gain hands-on experience with AWS solutions specifically tailored for Generative AI applications, including Lambda, API Gateway, and DynamoDB, among others.

Mastering Windows Security and Hardening. Secure and protect your Windows environment from intruders, malware attacks, and other cyber threats

Mark Dunkerley, Matt Tumbarello

Are you looking for effective ways to protect Windows-based systems from being compromised by unauthorized users?Mastering Windows Security and Hardening is a detailed guide that helps you gain expertise when implementing efficient security measures and creating robust defense solutions.We will begin with an introduction to Windows security fundamentals, baselining, and the importance of building a baseline for an organization. As you advance, you will learn how to effectively secure and harden your Windows-based system, protect identities, and even manage access. In the concluding chapters, the book will take you through testing, monitoring, and security operations. In addition to this, you’ll be equipped with the tools you need to ensure compliance and continuous monitoring through security operations.By the end of this book, you’ll have developed a full understanding of the processes and tools involved in securing and hardening your Windows environment.

Full Stack Development with Spring Boot 3 and React. Build modern web applications using the power of Java, React, and TypeScript - Fourth Edition

Juha Hinkula

If you’re an existing Java developer who wants to go full stack or pick up another frontend framework, this book is your concise introduction to React. In this three-part build-along, you’ll create a robust Spring Boot backend, a React frontend, and then deploy them together.This new edition is updated to Spring Boot 3 and includes expanded content on security and testing. For the first time ever, it also covers React development with the in-demand TypeScript.You’ll explore the elements that go into creating a REST API and testing, securing, and deploying your applications. You’ll learn about custom Hooks, third-party components, and MUI.By the end of this book, you'll be able to build a full stack application using the latest tools and modern best practices.

3D Printing Designs: The Sun Puzzle. Bringing puzzles in 3 dimensions for 3D printing with Blender

Joe Larson

Jigsaw puzzles derive their name from when they were cut from wood sheets using a hand-woodworking tool called a jig saw back in the 1760s. Have you ever wondered how a model idea for a jigsaw puzzle is articulated, and how it was made with these traditional tools? Through this book, you will master the techniques of designing simple to complex puzzles models for 3D printing. We will quickly introduce you to some simple and effective principles of designing 3D printed objects using Blender. Through the course of the book, you'll explore various robust sculpting methods supported by Blender that allow you to edit objects with actions such as bends or curves, similar to drawing or building up a clay structure of different shapes and sizes. Finally, when the model is sculpted, you'll learn some methods to cut the model and carve out multiple pieces of perfectly-fitting edges of different geometries to complete the puzzle.-------------------------------------------Note from CM - [Page count: 60][Price: $9.99 eBook | $19.99 print]

PostgreSQL 16 Administration Cookbook. Solve real-world Database Administration challenges with 180+ practical recipes and best practices

Gianni Ciolli, Boriss Mejías, Jimmy Angelakos, Vibhor Kumar, ...

PostgreSQL has seen a huge increase in its customer base in the past few years and is becoming one of the go-to solutions for anyone who has a database-specific challenge. This PostgreSQL book touches on all the fundamentals of Database Administration in a problem-solution format. It is intended to be the perfect desk reference guide.This new edition focuses on recipes based on the new PostgreSQL 16 release. The additions include handling complex batch loading scenarios with the SQL MERGE statement, security improvements, running Postgres on Kubernetes or with TPA and Ansible, and more. This edition also focuses on certain performance gains, such as query optimization, and the acceleration of specific operations, such as sort. It will help you understand roles, ensuring high availability, concurrency, and replication. It also draws your attention to aspects like validating backups, recovery, monitoring, and scaling aspects. This book will act as a one-stop solution to all your real-world database administration challenges.By the end of this book, you will be able to manage, monitor, and replicate your PostgreSQL 16 database for efficient administration and maintenance with the best practices from experts.

AWS Cloud Computing Concepts and Tech Analogies. A guide to understand AWS services using easy-to-follow analogies from real life

Ashish Prajapati, Juan Carlos Ruiz, Marco Tamassia

This book makes understanding cloud computing easy by providing relatable examples that simplify the complex technology. By drawing parallels between cloud concepts and everyday scenarios, we will demystify cloud tech, and once you start to understand it, learning cloud computing will be more enjoyable.This book will help you learn about cloud computing in general and AWS specifically, as you follow the journey of TrendyCorp—a fictitious company gearing up to move from traditional IT to cloud computing. You’ll shape your understanding of the cloud through scenarios of interactions between TrendyCorp’s new hires, seasoned IT professionals, external consultants, and the board of directors engaged in modernizing their applications. These characters’ discussions and actions are focused on learning about cloud services by drawing comparisons between the technology and examples taken from real life. Through this book, you’ll realize that cloud computing concepts have more in common with your day-to-day scenarios and situations than you’ve ever imagined.This book offers a conversational and entertaining narrative that anyone working in IT and looking to understand how the cloud works will be able to follow. By the end of it, you’ll have developed a clear and simplified perspective of cloud technologies.

Getting Started with Magento Extension Development. This practical guide to building Magento modules from scratch takes you step-by-step through the whole process, from first principles to practical development. At the end of it you'll have acquired expertise based on thorough understanding

Branko Ajzele

Modules, are a group of php and xml files meant to extend the system with new functionality, or override core system behavior. Most of the base Magento system is built using the module system, so you can see why they are an important feature for this rich open-source e-commerce solutions. This book explores key module development techniques and teaches you to modify, understand and structure your modules making it easy for you to get a strong foundation for clean and unobtrusive Magento module development.Getting Started with Magento Extension Development is a practical, hands-on guide to building Magento modules from scratch. This book provides an in depth introduction and helps you discover features such as; blocks, controllers, models, configuration files, and other crucial elements which contribute to the Magento architecture. This book introduces the you to real-world modules and helps provide a strong foundation which you need to become a professional Magento module developer. The book further explores best practices and tips and tricks offering you the ultimate go to guide.Getting Started with Magento Extension Development focuses on three areas. First you are guided through the entire Magento structure, where each important directory or file is explored in detail. Then the essence of the module structure and development is explained through the detailed coverage of models, blocks, controllers, configuration, and other files that manifest a single module. Finally, a detailed set of instructions is given for building four real-world modules, including a payment and shipping module.

Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager Cookbook. Learn how to deploy, configure, and maintain System Center Operations Manager with 50 recipes designed to help you meet the challenges of managing a complex IT system

Steve Beaumont, David Allen, Robert Ryan, Jonathan Horner, ...

Alfresco CMIS. Learn how to build applications that talk to content management servers in a standardized way using this superb course on getting the best from Alfresco CMIS. This is a highly practical, step-by-step guide

Martin Bergljung

Magento 2 Theme Design. Create stunning and responsive Magento 2 themes for your business - Second Edition

Fernando J Miguel, Richard Carter

Magento is the e-commerce software and platform trusted by the world’s leading brands. Using Magento’s powerful theming engine, you can control the look, content, and functionality, and easily launch a flexible e-commerce website. However, because of its powerful features, developing Magento themes is easier said than done.This book aims to leverage the enhancements to theme designing in Magento 2 to the fullest. It will show you how to gear up the performance of your e-commerce website.We begin by introducing Magento 2 and its features along with implementing a local development Magento environment. We then move on to discuss the concepts of the Magento theme structure such as templates, inheritance, customization, and override. Further on, we explore the Magento UI Library, which is a new feature available in Magento 2.0. We will create a new Magento 2.0 theme named MyCake Store using Magento Bootstrap from Maven E-commerce and also create print strategies for the Magento 2.0 theme. We will also create and customize a new theme proposal for the Magento admin panel. At the end, we will integrate Magento 2.0 to Twitter and integrate it with social bookmarking and finally deploy our new Magento 2.0 theme.

Docker Certified Associate (DCA): Exam Guide. Enhance and validate your Docker skills by gaining Docker certification

Francisco Javier Ramírez Urea

Developers have changed their deployment artifacts from application binaries to container images, and they now need to build container-based applications as containers are part of their new development workflow. This Docker book is designed to help you learn about the management and administrative tasks of the Containers as a Service (CaaS) platform.The book starts by getting you up and running with the key concepts of containers and microservices. You'll then cover different orchestration strategies and environments, along with exploring the Docker Enterprise platform. As you advance, the book will show you how to deploy secure, production-ready, container-based applications in Docker Enterprise environments. Later, you'll delve into each Docker Enterprise component and learn all about CaaS management. Throughout the book, you'll encounter important exam-specific topics, along with sample questions and detailed answers that will help you prepare effectively for the exam.By the end of this Docker containers book, you'll have learned how to efficiently deploy and manage container-based environments in production, and you will have the skills and knowledge you need to pass the DCA exam.

Instant Social Media Marketing with HootSuite. Manage and enhance your social media marketing with HootSuite

Kunal Mathur

Social media enables people to interact, share content, collaborate, and participate in user generated content. There are websites and applications dedicated to social networking, bookmarking, microblogging, and social curation; generating a lot of information in a very engaging manner. If it is not done correctly, then it can present real problems for a brand or company's image and reputation.Instant Social Media Marketing with HootSuite is a practical guide that provides marketers with explanatory, step-by-step exercises to search, comment, track, and analyse conversations over the Web about their topics of interest or brands.This fast-paced guide on the HootSuite social marketing tool breaks down the confusion that surrounds learning and managing social profiles. It will provide you with a number of clear, practical recipes that will help you understand and benefit from regular reporting.You will also learn about posting, replying, scheduling, and managing various social media profiles directly from HootSuite. Step-by-step instructions will show you how to check user profiles, conversations, create and assign tasks to teams, and generate reports using HootSuite Analytics.If you have multiple social profiles such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others, and want to simplify your life by managing all of them from same the tool and generate reports, then this is the book for you.

Instant Moodle Quiz Module How-to. Create Moodle quizzes to enhance learning using practical, hands-on recipes

Joan Coy, Moodle Trust

Enhancing learning experience and improving student success has many instructors searching for effective tools. Moodle Quiz is just such a tool to aid instructors in creating powerful assessment experiences for their learners. Instant Moodle Quiz Module How-to is a practical, hands-on guide that provides you with a number of clear step-by-step procedures, which will help you take advantage of the real power that is behind Moodle Quiz, and give you a good grounding in using it to achieve effective assessment in your courses.This book covers how Moodle Quiz module can be used to create effective assessment FOR and OF learning in your courses. It will take you through a number of clear, practical recipes that will help you harness the power of Moodle Quiz quickly and painlessly.You will begin by learning to set up clear categories, carefully designed questions and helpful feedback to create the question bank that is the foundation of Moodle Quiz. Once you have configured the quiz and specified your security requirements, you can select questions by hand or randomly. Once learners have completed the quiz you can interact one-on-one or examine statistical data for large groups using the easily generated reports.Using Instant Moodle Quiz Module How-to you will learn how to create effective quizzes and how to provide meaningful feedback and evaluate results.

Ubuntu Server Cookbook. Arm yourself to make the most of the versatile, powerful Ubuntu Server with over 100 hands-on recipes

Uday Sawant

Ubuntu is one of the most secure operating systems and defines the highest level of security as compared other operating system. Ubuntu server is a popular Linux distribution and the first choice when deploying a Linux server. It can be used with a $35 Raspberry Pi to top-notch, thousand-dollar-per-month cloud hardware. Built with lists that there are 4 million + websites built using Ubuntu. With its easy-to-use package management tools and availability of well-known packages, we can quickly set up our own services such as web servers and database servers using Ubuntu.This book will help you develop the skills required to set up high performance and secure services with open source tools. Starting from user management and an in-depth look at networking, we then move on to cover the installation and management of web servers and database servers, as well as load balancing various services. You will quickly learn to set up your own cloud and minimize costs and efforts with application containers. Next, you will get to grips with setting up a secure real-time communication system. Finally, we’ll explore source code hosting and various collaboration tools. By the end of this book, you will be able to make the most of Ubuntu’s advanced functionalities.

Blender 3D Incredible Machines. Design, model, and texture complex mechanical objects in Blender

Christopher Kuhn, Allan Brito

Blender 3D is one of the top pieces of 3D animation software. Machine modeling is an essential aspect of war games, space games, racing games, and animated action films. As the Blender software grows more powerful and popular, there is a demand to take your modeling skills to the next level. This book will cover all the topics you need to create professional models and renders. This book will help you develop a comprehensive skill set that covers the key aspects of mechanical modeling. Through this book, you will create many types of projects, including a pistol, spacecraft, robot, and a racer. We start by making a Sci-fi pistol, creating its basic shape and adding details to it. Moving on, you’ll discover modeling techniques for larger objects such as a space craft and take a look at how different techniques are required for freestyle modeling. After this, we’ll create the basic shapes for the robot and combine the meshes to create unified objects. We'll assign materials and explore the various options for freestyle rendering. We’ll discuss techniques to build low-poly models, create a low-poly racer, and explain how they differ from the high poly models we created previously. By the end of this book, you will have mastered a workflow that you will be able to apply to your own creations.

Instant Nancy Web Development. Leverage the powerful and lightweight .NET-based Nancy Web Framework

Christian Horsdal

Nancy is a C# web framework which aims to provide you ,the application developer, with an easy path to follow, where things will naturally fall into place and work. Nancy is a powerful, flexible, and lightweight web framework that allows you to get on with your job.Instant Nancy Web Development will give Readers practical introduction to building, testing, and deploying web applications with Nancy. You will learn how to take full advantage of Nancy to build clean application code, and will see how this code lends itself nicely to test driven development. You will also learn how to hook into Nancy to easily extend the framework.Instant Nancy Web Development offers you an in-depth exploration of all the major features of the Nancy web framework, from basic routing to deployment in the Cloud, and from model binding to automated tests.You will learn how to build web applications with Nancy and explore how to build web sites using Razor views. Next, you will learn how to build web based APIs suitable for JavaScript clients, mobile clients, and even desktop applications. In fact, you will learn how to easily combine the two into one.Finally, you will learn how to leverage Nancy to write clean and maintainable web applications quickly.

AJAX and PHP: Building Responsive Web Applications. Enhance the user experience of your PHP website using AJAX with this practical tutorial featuring detailed case studies

Mihai Bucica, Cristian Darie, Bogdan Brinzarea, Filip Chereches-Tosa, ...

Assuming a basic knowledge of PHP, XML, JavaScript and MySQL, this book will help you understand how the heart of AJAX beats and how the constituent technologies work together. After teaching the foundations, the book will walk you through numerous real-world case studies covering tasks you'll be likely to need for your own applications:Server-enabled form-validation pageOnline chat collaboration toolCustomized type-ahead text entry solutionReal-time charting using SVGDatabase-enabled, editable and customizable data gridRSS aggregator applicationA server-managed sortable list with drag&drop support using the script.aculo.us JavaScript toolkitThe appendices guide you through installing your working environment, using powerful tools that enable debugging, improving, and profiling your code, working with XSLT and XPath.From the Author, Cristian Darie AJAX and PHP: Building Responsive Web Applications is mainly a book for beginners, but when designing its contents we tried to find the ideal blend of topics that would help both novice and experienced web developers make a big step forward. One customer was very kind to let us know, through a review, that we succeeded:The theory behind all the technologies used is very clearly explained, without boring you with details about obvious things. Right from the first chapter you start learning by examples. The examples can be easily adapted to many web projects and they cover stuff that is both useful and fun.Here are a few examples of such useful and fun things that you can find in this book:details on using proxy scripts to work around the security measures in modern browsersclient-side and server-side code that doesn't break when fed with special characters (such as

Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) Exam Guide. Validate your knowledge of Kubernetes and implement it in a real-life production environment

Mélony Qin, Brendan Burns, Mark Whitby, Alessandro Vozza

Kubernetes is the most popular container orchestration tool in the industry. The Kubernetes Administrator certification will help you establish your credibility and enable you to efficiently support the business growth of individual organizations with the help of this open source platform.The book begins by introducing you to Kubernetes architecture and the core concepts of Kubernetes. You'll then get to grips with the main Kubernetes API primitives, before diving into cluster installation, configuration, and management. Moving ahead, you’ll explore different approaches while maintaining the Kubernetes cluster, perform upgrades for the Kubernetes cluster, as well as backup and restore etcd. As you advance, you'll deploy and manage workloads on Kubernetes and work with storage for Kubernetes stateful workloads with the help of practical scenarios. You'll also delve into managing the security of Kubernetes applications and understand how different components in Kubernetes communicate with each other and with other applications. The concluding chapters will show you how to troubleshoot cluster- and application-level logging and monitoring, cluster components, and applications in Kubernetes.By the end of this Kubernetes book, you'll be fully prepared to pass the CKA exam and gain practical knowledge that can be applied in your day-to-day work.

Bootstrap 4 - Responsive Web Design. A step-by-step practical course enabling you to nail Bootstrap and make your web designs responsive

Silvio Moreto, Matt Lambert, Benjamin Jakobus, Jason Marah

Bootstrap framework's ease-of-use (along with its cross-browser compatibility, support for mobile user interfaces, and responsive web design capabilities) makes it an essential building block for any modern web application. With the first module, plunge into the Bootstrap frontend framework with the help of examples that will illustrate the use of each element and component in a proper way. You will get a better understanding of what is happening and where you want to reach. Also, you will gain confidence with the framework and develop some very common examples using Bootstrap. All these examples are explained step by step and in depth. The second module is a comprehensive tutorial; we'll teach you everything that you need to know to start building websites with Bootstrap 4 in a practical way. You'll learn about build tools such as Node, Grunt, and many others. You'll also discover the principles of mobile-first design in order to ensure that your pages can fit any screen size and meet responsive requirements. Learn Bootstrap's grid system and base CSS to ensure that your designs are robust and that your development process is speedy and efficient. Right from the first chapter of the third module, you'll delve into building a customized Bootstrap website from scratch. Get to grips with Bootstrap's key features and quickly discover the various ways in which Bootstrap can help you develop web interfaces. Once you reach the final pages of this book, you should have mastered the framework's ins and outs, and should be building highly customizable and optimized web interfaces. The course will enable you to rapidly build elegant, powerful, and responsive interfaces for professional-level web pages using Bootstrap 4.This Learning Path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package. It includes content from the following Packt products:? Bootstrap by Example – by Silvio Moreto? Learning Bootstrap 4, Second Edition – by Matt Lambert ? Mastering Bootstrap 4 – by Benjamin Jakobus and Jason Marah

MySQL Management and Administration with Navicat. Master the tools you thought you knew and discover the features you never knew existed with this book and

Gökhan Ozar

Any database designer who wants to accomplish both everyday tasks and more advanced actions with a few clicks or drag-and-drops can now do so using Navicat's advanced tools and this book.Starting with the basics before progressing with advanced features, this book can be read from cover to cover, or simply used as a reference guide for any problems you encounter.The book features 'work along' tutorials, some of which will surprise you by revealing features of Navicat which you may never have known existed ñ features such as designing functions and stored procedures, event triggers, creating batch jobs and scheduling.MySQL Management and Administration with Navicat is an ideal resource to master Navicat and unlock its true potential.

Building Smart Home Automation Solutions with Home Assistant. Configure, integrate, and manage hardware and software systems to automate your home

Marco Carvalho

Picture a home where you can adjust the lighting based on the time of day or when movement is detected. In this same home, you can also detect when a door is unexpectedly opened or an alarm is triggered in response to any suspicious activity. Such automated devices form part of a smart home, and the exciting part is that this book teaches you how to create and manage these devices all by yourself.This book helps you create your own ecosystem to automate your home using Home Assistant software. You’ll begin by understanding the components of a home automation system and learn how to create, hack, and configure them to operate seamlessly. Then, you'll set up Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi to work as a home automation server, build your own IoT sensors based on ESP32/ESP8266, and set up real-life automation use cases using hands-on examples and projects. The chapters will also guide you in using software tools such as Node-RED, InfluxDB, and Grafana to manage, present, and use data collected from your Home Automation devices. Finally, you’ll gain insights into new technologies and trends in the home automation space to help you continue with your learning journey.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to build your own creative, IoT-based home automation system using different hardware and software technologies.