Publisher: Packt Publishing
Founded in 2004 in Birmingham, UK, Packt's mission is to help the world put software to work in new ways, through the delivery of effective learning and information services to IT professionals. Working towards that vision, we have published over 6,500 books and videos so far, providing IT professionals with the actionable knowledge they need to get the job done - whether that's specific learning on an emerging technology or optimizing key skills in more established tools. As part of our mission, we have also awarded over $1,000,000 through our Open Source Project Royalty scheme, helping numerous projects become household names along the way.
145
Ebook

Hands-On Artificial Intelligence with Java for Beginners. Build intelligent apps using machine learning and deep learning with Deeplearning4j

Nisheeth Joshi

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly in demand as well as relevant in the modern world, where everything is driven by technology and data. AI can be used for automating systems or processes to carry out complex tasks and functions in order to achieve optimal performance and productivity.Hands-On Artificial Intelligence with Java for Beginners begins by introducing you to AI concepts and algorithms. You will learn about various Java-based libraries and frameworks that can be used in implementing AI to build smart applications. In addition to this, the book teaches you how to implement easy to complex AI tasks, such as genetic programming, heuristic searches, reinforcement learning, neural networks, and segmentation, all with a practical approach.By the end of this book, you will not only have a solid grasp of AI concepts, but you'll also be able to build your own smart applications for multiple domains.

146
Ebook

Infrastructure as Code (IAC) Cookbook. Automate complex infrastructures

Stephane Jourdan, Pierre Pomes

Para 1: Infrastructure as code is transforming the way we solve infrastructural challenges. This book will show you how to make managing servers in the cloud faster, easier and more effective than ever before. With over 90 practical recipes for success, make the very most out of IAC.

147
Ebook

Game Physics Cookbook. Discover over 100 easy-to-follow recipes to help you implement efficient game physics and collision detection in your games

Gabor Szauer

Physics is really important for game programmers who want to add realism and functionality to their games. Collision detection in particular is a problem that affects all game developers, regardless of the platform, engine, or toolkit they use.This book will teach you the concepts and formulas behind collision detection. You will also be taught how to build a simple physics engine, where Rigid Body physics is the main focus, and learn about intersection algorithms for primitive shapes.You’ll begin by building a strong foundation in mathematics that will be used throughout the book. We’ll guide you through implementing 2D and 3D primitives and show you how to perform effective collision tests for them. We then pivot to one of the harder areas of game development—collision detection and resolution. Further on, you will learn what a Physics engine is, how to set up a game window, and how to implement rendering. We’ll explore advanced physics topics such as constraint solving. You’ll also find out how to implement a rudimentary physics engine, which you can use to build an Angry Birds type of game or a more advanced game.By the end of the book, you will have implemented all primitive and some advanced collision tests, and you will be able to read on geometry and linear Algebra formulas to take forward to your own games!

148
Ebook

Hands-On Automation Testing with Java for Beginners. Build automation testing frameworks from scratch with Java

Rahul Shetty

Java is one of the most commonly-used software languages by programmers and developers. Are you from a non-technical background and looking to master Java for your automation needs? Then Hands-On Automation Testing with Java for Beginners is for you.This book provides you with efficient techniques to effectively handle Java-related automation projects. You will learn how to handle strings and their functions in Java. As you make your way through the book, you will get to grips with classes and objects, along with their uses. In the concluding chapters, you will learn about the importance of inheritance and exceptions with practical examples. By the end of this book, you will have gained comprehensive knowledge of Java.

149
Ebook

Mastering Spark for Data Science. Lightning fast and scalable data science solutions

Andrew Morgan, Antoine Amend, Matthew Hallett, David George

Data science seeks to transform the world using data, and this is typically achievedthrough disrupting and changing real processes in real industries. In order to operate at this level you need to build data science solutions of substance –solutions that solve real problems. Spark has emerged as the big data platform of choice for data scientists due to its speed, scalability, and easy-to-use APIs.This book deep dives into using Spark to deliver production-grade data sciencesolutions. This process is demonstrated by exploring the construction of a sophisticated global news analysis service that uses Spark to generate continuous geopolitical and current affairs insights.You will learn all about the core Spark APIs and take a comprehensive tour of advanced libraries, including Spark SQL, Spark Streaming, MLlib, and more.You will be introduced to advanced techniques and methods that will help you to construct commercial-grade data products. Focusing on a sequence of tutorials that deliver a working news intelligence service, you will learn about advanced Spark architectures, how to work with geographic data in Spark, and how to tune Spark algorithms so they scale linearly.

150
Ebook

Angular Router. From Angular core team member and creator of the router

Victor Savkin

Managing state transitions is one of the hardest parts of building applications. This is especially true on the web, where you also need to ensure that the state is reflected in the URL. In addition, you might want to split applications into multiple bundles and load them on demand. Doing this transparently isn’t easy. The Angular router solves these problems. Using the router, you can declaratively specify application states, manage state transitions while taking care of the URL, and load bundles on demand.This book is a complete description of the Angular router written by its designer. It goes far beyond a how-to-get-started guide and talks about the library in depth. The mental model, design constraints, and the subtleties of the API-everything is covered. You’ll learn in detail how to use the router in your own applications. Predominantly, you’ll understand the inner workings of the router and how you can configure it to work with any edge cases you come across in your sites.Throughout the book, you’ll see examples from real-world use in the MailApp application. You can view the full source of this application and see how the router code works to manage the state of the application and define what is visible on screen. Reading this book will give you deep insights into why the router works the way it does and will make you an Angular router expert.

151
Ebook

Hands-On Design Patterns with Swift. Master Swift best practices to build modular applications for mobile, desktop, and server platforms

Florent Vilmart, Giordano Scalzo, Sergio De Simone

Swift keeps gaining traction not only amongst Apple developers but also as a server-side language. This book demonstrates how to apply design patterns and best practices in real-life situations, whether that's for new or already existing projects.You’ll begin with a quick refresher on Swift, the compiler, the standard library, and the foundation, followed by the Cocoa design patterns – the ones at the core of many cocoa libraries – to follow up with the creational, structural, and behavioral patterns as defined by the GoF. You'll get acquainted with application architecture, as well as the most popular architectural design patterns, such as MVC and MVVM, and learn to use them in the context of Swift. In addition, you’ll walk through dependency injection and functional reactive programming. Special emphasis will be given to techniques to handle concurrency, including callbacks, futures and promises, and reactive programming. These techniques will help you adopt a test-driven approach to your workflow in order to use Swift Package Manager and integrate the framework into the original code base, along with Unit and UI testing.By the end of the book, you'll be able to build applications that are scalable, faster, and easier to maintain.

152
Ebook

Keras Deep Learning Cookbook. Over 30 recipes for implementing deep neural networks in Python

Rajdeep Dua, Manpreet Singh Ghotra

Keras has quickly emerged as a popular deep learning library. Written in Python, it allows you to train convolutional as well as recurrent neural networks with speed and accuracy.The Keras Deep Learning Cookbook shows you how to tackle different problems encountered while training efficient deep learning models, with the help of the popular Keras library. Starting with installing and setting up Keras, the book demonstrates how you can perform deep learning with Keras in the TensorFlow. From loading data to fitting and evaluating your model for optimal performance, you will work through a step-by-step process to tackle every possible problem faced while training deep models. You will implement convolutional and recurrent neural networks, adversarial networks, and more with the help of this handy guide. In addition to this, you will learn how to train these models for real-world image and language processing tasks. By the end of this book, you will have a practical, hands-on understanding of how you can leverage the power of Python and Keras to perform effective deep learning

153
Ebook

Docker and Kubernetes for Java Developers. Scale, deploy, and monitor multi-container applications

Jarosław Krochmalski

Imagine creating and testing Java EE applications on Apache Tomcat Server or Wildfly Application server in minutes along with deploying and managing Java applications swiftly. Sounds too good to be true? But you have a reason to cheer as such scenarios are only possible by leveraging Docker and Kubernetes.This book will start by introducing Docker and delve deep into its networking and persistent storage concepts. You will then proceed to learn how to refactor monolith application into separate services by building an application and then packaging it into Docker containers. Next, you will create an image containing Java Enterprise Application and later run it using Docker. Moving on, the book will focus on Kubernetes and its features and you will learn to deploy a Java application to Kubernetes using Maven and monitor a Java application in production. By the end of the book, you will get hands-on with some more advanced topics to further extend your knowledge about Docker and Kubernetes.

154
Ebook

scikit-learn Cookbook. Over 80 recipes for machine learning in Python with scikit-learn - Second Edition

Julian Avila, Trent Hauck

Python is quickly becoming the go-to language for analysts and data scientists due to its simplicity and flexibility, and within the Python data space, scikit-learn is the unequivocal choice for machine learning. This book includes walk throughs and solutions to the common as well as the not-so-common problems in machine learning, and how scikit-learn can be leveraged to perform various machine learning tasks effectively.The second edition begins with taking you through recipes on evaluating the statistical properties of data and generates synthetic data for machine learning modelling. As you progress through the chapters, you will comes across recipes that will teach you to implement techniques like data pre-processing, linear regression, logistic regression, K-NN, Naïve Bayes, classification, decision trees, Ensembles and much more. Furthermore, you’ll learn to optimize your models with multi-class classification, cross validation, model evaluation and dive deeper in to implementing deep learning with scikit-learn. Along with covering the enhanced features on model section, API and new features like classifiers, regressors and estimators the book also contains recipes on evaluating and fine-tuning the performance of your model. By the end of this book, you will have explored plethora of features offered by scikit-learn for Python to solve any machine learning problem you come across.

155
Ebook

Voice User Interface Projects. Build voice-enabled applications using Dialogflow for Google Home and Alexa Skills Kit for Amazon Echo

Henry Lee

From touchscreen and mouse-click, we are moving to voice- and conversation-based user interfaces. By adopting Voice User Interfaces (VUIs), you can create a more compelling and engaging experience for your users. Voice User Interface Projects teaches you how to develop voice-enabled applications for desktop, mobile, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.This book explains in detail VUI and its importance, basic design principles of VUI, fundamentals of conversation, and the different voice-enabled applications available in the market. You will learn how to build your first voice-enabled application by utilizing DialogFlow and Alexa’s natural language processing (NLP) platform. Once you are comfortable with building voice-enabled applications, you will understand how to dynamically process and respond to the questions by using NodeJS server deployed to the cloud. You will then move on to securing NodeJS RESTful API for DialogFlow and Alexa webhooks, creating unit tests and building voice-enabled podcasts for cars. Last but not the least you will discover advanced topics such as handling sessions, creating custom intents, and extending built-in intents in order to build conversational VUIs that will help engage the users.By the end of the book, you will have grasped a thorough knowledge of how to design and develop interactive VUIs.

156
Ebook

Natural Language Processing with TensorFlow. Teach language to machines using Python's deep learning library

Thushan Ganegedara

Natural language processing (NLP) supplies the majority of data available to deep learning applications, while TensorFlow is the most important deep learning framework currently available. Natural Language Processing with TensorFlow brings TensorFlow and NLP together to give you invaluable tools to work with the immense volume of unstructured data in today’s data streams, and apply these tools to specific NLP tasks.Thushan Ganegedara starts by giving you a grounding in NLP and TensorFlow basics. You'll then learn how to use Word2vec, including advanced extensions, to create word embeddings that turn sequences of words into vectors accessible to deep learning algorithms. Chapters on classical deep learning algorithms, like convolutional neural networks (CNN) and recurrent neural networks (RNN), demonstrate important NLP tasks as sentence classification and language generation. You will learn how to apply high-performance RNN models, like long short-term memory (LSTM) cells, to NLP tasks. You will also explore neural machine translation and implement a neural machine translator.After reading this book, you will gain an understanding of NLP and you'll have the skills to apply TensorFlow in deep learning NLP applications, and how to perform specific NLP tasks.

157
Ebook

Kali Linux Network Scanning Cookbook. A Step-by-Step Guide leveraging Custom Scripts and Integrated Tools in Kali Linux - Second Edition

Michael Hixon, Justin Hutchens

With the ever-increasing amount of data flowing in today’s world, information security has become vital to any application. This is where Kali Linux comes in. Kali Linux focuses mainly on security auditing and penetration testing. This step-by-step cookbook on network scanning trains you in important scanning concepts based on version 2016.2. It will enable you to conquer any network environment through a range of network scanning techniques and will also equip you to script your very own tools.Starting with the fundamentals of installing and managing Kali Linux, this book will help you map your target with a wide range of network scanning tasks, including discovery, port scanning, fingerprinting, and more. You will learn how to utilize the arsenal of tools available in Kali Linux to conquer any network environment. The book offers expanded coverage of the popular Burp Suite and has new and updated scripts for automating scanning and target exploitation. You will also be shown how to identify remote services, how to assess security risks, and how various attacks are performed. You will cover the latest features of Kali Linux 2016.2, which includes the enhanced Sparta tool and many other exciting updates.This immersive guide will also encourage the creation of personally scripted tools and the skills required to create them.

158
Ebook

Mastering SFML Game Development. Inject new life and light into your old SFML projects by advancing to the next level

Raimondas Pupius

SFML is a cross-platform software development library written in C++ with bindings available for many programming languages. It provides a simple interface to the various components of your PC, to ease the development of games and multimedia applications. This book will help you become an expert of SFML by using all of its features to its full potential. It begins by going over some of the foundational code necessary in order to make our RPG project run. By the end of chapter 3, we will have successfully picked up and deployed a fast and efficient particle system that makes the game look much more ‘alive’. Throughout the next couple of chapters, you will be successfully editing the game maps with ease, all thanks to the custom tools we’re going to be building. From this point on, it’s all about making the game look good. After being introduced to the use of shaders and raw OpenGL, you will be guided through implementing dynamic scene lighting, the use of normal and specular maps, and dynamic soft shadows. However, no project is complete without being optimized first. The very last chapter will wrap up our project by making it lightning fast and efficient.

159
Ebook

ROS Robotics By Example. Learning to control wheeled, limbed, and flying robots using ROS Kinetic Kame - Second Edition

Carol Fairchild, Dr. Thomas L. Harman

ROS is a robust robotics framework that works regardless of hardware architecture or hardware origin. It standardizes most layers of robotics functionality from device drivers to process control and message passing to software package management. But apart from just plain functionality, ROS is a great platform to learn about robotics itself and to simulate, as well as actually build, your first robots. This does not mean that ROS is a platform for students and other beginners; on the contrary, ROS is used all over the robotics industry to implement flying, walking and diving robots, yet implementation is always straightforward, and never dependent on the hardware itself.ROS Robotics has been the standard introduction to ROS for potential professionals and hobbyists alike since the original edition came out; the second edition adds a gradual introduction to all the goodness available with the Kinetic Kame release.By providing you with step-by-step examples including manipulator arms and flying robots, the authors introduce you to the new features. The book is intensely practical, with space given to theory only when absolutely necessary. By the end of this book, you will have hands-on experience on controlling robots with the best possible framework.

160
Ebook

Getting Started with Unity 5.x 2D Game Development. Enter the world of 2D Game development with Unity 5.x

Francesco Sapio

Want to get started in the world of 2D game development with Unity? This book will take your hand and guide you through this amazing journey to let you know exactly what you need to build the games you want to build, without sacrificing quality. You will build a solid understanding of Unity 5.x, by focusing with the embedded tools to develop 2D games. In learning about these, along with accurate explanations and practical examples, you will design, develop, learn how to market and publish a delectable Tower Defense game about cupcakes versus pandas.Each chapter in this book is structured to give you a full understanding on a specific aspect of the workflow pipeline. Each of these aspects are essential for developing games in Unity. In a step-by-step approach, you will learn about each of the following phases: Game Design, Asset Importing, Scripting, User Interfaces, Animations, Physics, Artificial Intelligence, Gameplay Programming, Polishing and Improving, Marketing, Publishing and much more.This book provides you with exercises and homework at the end of each chapter so that you can level up your skills as a Unity game developer. In addition, each of these parts are centered on a common point of discussion with other learners just like you. Therefore, by sharing your ideas with other people you will not only develop your skills but you will also build a network.

161
Ebook

Mastering Kali Linux for Web Penetration Testing. The ultimate defense against complex organized threats and attacks

Michael McPhee

You will start by delving into some common web application architectures in use, both in private and public cloud instances. You will also learn about the most common frameworks for testing, such as OWASP OGT version 4, and how to use them to guide your efforts. In the next section, you will be introduced to web pentesting with core tools and you will also see how to make web applications more secure through rigorous penetration tests using advanced features in open source tools. The book will then show you how to better hone your web pentesting skills in safe environments that can ensure low-risk experimentation with the powerful tools and features in Kali Linux that go beyond a typical script-kiddie approach. After establishing how to test these powerful tools safely, you will understand how to better identify vulnerabilities, position and deploy exploits, compromise authentication and authorization, and test the resilience and exposure applications possess.By the end of this book, you will be well-versed with the web service architecture to identify and evade various protection mechanisms that are used on the Web today. You will leave this book with a greater mastery of essential test techniques needed to verify the secure design, development, and operation of your customers' web applications.

162
Ebook

Progressive Web Application Development by Example. Develop fast, reliable, and engaging user experiences for the web

Chris Love

Are you a developer that wants to create truly cross-platform user experiences with a minimal footprint, free of store restrictions and features customers want? Then you need to get to grips with Progressive Web Applications (PWAs), a perfect amalgamation of web and mobile applications with a blazing-fast response time.Progressive Web Application Development by Example helps you explore concepts of the PWA development by enabling you to develop three projects, starting with a 2048 game. In this game, you will review parts of a web manifest file and understand how a browser uses properties to define the home screen experience. You will then move on to learning how to develop and use a podcast client and be introduced to service workers. The application will demonstrate how service workers are registered and updated. In addition to this, you will review a caching API so that you have a firm understanding of how to use the cache within a service worker, and you'll discover core caching strategies and how to code them within a service worker.Finally, you will study how to build a tickets application, wherein you’ll apply advanced service worker techniques, such as cache invalidation. Also, you'll learn about tools you can use to validate your applications and scaffold them for quality and consistency. By the end of the book, you will have walked through browser developer tools, node modules, and online tools for creating high-quality PWAs.

163
Ebook

Deep Learning with PyTorch Quick Start Guide. Learn to train and deploy neural network models in Python

David Julian

PyTorch is extremely powerful and yet easy to learn. It provides advanced features, such as supporting multiprocessor, distributed, and parallel computation. This book is an excellent entry point for those wanting to explore deep learning with PyTorch to harness its power. This book will introduce you to the PyTorch deep learning library and teach you how to train deep learning models without any hassle. We will set up the deep learning environment using PyTorch, and then train and deploy different types of deep learning models, such as CNN, RNN, and autoencoders. You will learn how to optimize models by tuning hyperparameters and how to use PyTorch in multiprocessor and distributed environments. We will discuss long short-term memory network (LSTMs) and build a language model to predict text.By the end of this book, you will be familiar with PyTorch's capabilities and be able to utilize the library to train your neural networks with relative ease.

164
Ebook

Test-Driven iOS Development with Swift 4. Write Swift code that is maintainable, flexible, and easily extensible - Third Edition

Dr. Dominik Hauser

Test-driven development (TDD) is a proven way to find software bugs early. Writing tests before you code improves the structure and maintainability of your apps. Using TDD, in combination with Swift 4's improved syntax, means there is no longer any excuse for writing bad code.This book will help you understand the process of TDD and how to apply it to your apps written in Swift. Through practical, real-world examples, you’ll learn how to implement TDD in context. You will begin with an overview of the TDD workflow and then delve into unit-testing concepts and code cycles.You will also plan and structure your test-driven iOS app, and write tests to drive the development of view controllers and helper classes. Next, you’ll learn how to write tests for network code and explore how the test-driven approach—in combination with stubs—helps you write network code even before the backend component is finished.Finally, the book will guide you through the next steps to becoming a testing expert by discussing integration tests, Behavior Driven Development (BDD), open source testing frameworks, and UI Tests (introduced in Xcode 9).

165
Ebook

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Extensions Cookbook. Add functionality to existing model elements, source code and finally package and deploy using DevOps

Rami Mounla

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a powerful tool. It has many unique features that empower organisations to bridge common business challenges and technology pitfalls that would usually hinder the adoption of a CRM solution. This book sets out to enable you to harness the power of Dynamics 365 and cater to your unique circumstances.We start this book with a no-code configuration chapter and explain the schema, fields, and forms modeling techniques. We then move on to server-side and client-side custom code extensions. Next, you will see how best to integrate Dynamics 365 in a DevOps pipeline to package and deploy your extensions to the various SDLC environments. This book also covers modern libraries and integration patterns that can be used with Dynamics 365 (Angular, 3 tiers, and many others). Finally, we end by highlighting some of the powerful extensions available.Throughout we explain a range of design patterns and techniques that can be used to enhance your code quality; the aim is that you will learn to write enterprise-scale quality code.

166
Ebook

Hands-On Red Team Tactics. A practical guide to mastering Red Team operations

Himanshu Sharma, Harpreet Singh

Red Teaming is used to enhance security by performing simulated attacks on an organization in order to detect network and system vulnerabilities. Hands-On Red Team Tactics starts with an overview of pentesting and Red Teaming, before giving you an introduction to few of the latest pentesting tools. We will then move on to exploring Metasploit and getting to grips with Armitage. Once you have studied the fundamentals, you will learn how to use Cobalt Strike and how to set up its team server.The book introduces some common lesser known techniques for pivoting and how to pivot over SSH, before using Cobalt Strike to pivot. This comprehensive guide demonstrates advanced methods of post-exploitation using Cobalt Strike and introduces you to Command and Control (C2) servers and redirectors. All this will help you achieve persistence using beacons and data exfiltration, and will also give you the chance to run through the methodology to use Red Team activity tools such as Empire during a Red Team activity on Active Directory and Domain Controller.In addition to this, you will explore maintaining persistent access, staying untraceable, and getting reverse connections over different C2 covert channels.By the end of this book, you will have learned about advanced penetration testing tools, techniques to get reverse shells over encrypted channels, and processes for post-exploitation.

167
Ebook

Beginning API Development with Node.js. Build highly scalable, developer-friendly APIs for the modern web with JavaScript and Node.js

Anthony Nandaa

Using the same framework to build both server and client-side applications saves you time and money. This book teaches you how you can use JavaScript and Node.js to build highly scalable APIs that work well with lightweight cross-platform client applications. It begins with the basics of Node.js in the context of backend development, and quickly leads you through the creation of an example client that pairs up with a fully authenticated API implementation. By the end of the book, you’ll have the skills and exposure required to get hands-on with your own API development project.

168
Ebook

Azure PowerShell Quick Start Guide. Deploy and manage Azure virtual machines with ease

Thomas Mitchell

As an IT professional, it is important to keep up with cloud technologies and learn to manage those technologies. PowerShell is a critical tool that must be learned in order to effectively and more easily manage many Azure resources. This book is designed to teach you to leverage PowerShell to enable you to perform many day-to-day tasks in Microsoft Azure. Taking you through the basic tasks of installing Azure PowerShell and connecting to Azure, you will learn to properly connect to an Azure tenant with PowerShell. Next, you will dive into tasks such as deploying virtual machines with PowerShell, resizing them, and managing their power states with PowerShell. Then, you will learn how to complete more complex Azure tasks with PowerShell, such as deploying virtual machines from custom images, creating images from existing virtual machines, and creating and managing of data disks. Later, you will learn how to snapshot virtual machines, how to encrypt virtual machines, and how to leverage load balancers to ensure high availability with PowerShell.By the end of this book, you will have developed dozens of PowerShell skills that are invaluable in the deployment and management of Azure virtual machines.