Simpler, wins

Writing some “Quality of Life” helpers today. Finance wanted a breakdown of usage, but data on monitoring database was recording only the id of each application, not their name or to which business they belonged to.

Started writing something that queried the database, soon realised it was going to be an uphill battle. Needing a library with a binary, making it boring to deploy on a Lambda, or needing to figure out database access if running from our centralised GitHub Actions runners, all sorts of complications.

Luckily, I realised that I shouldn’t be going to the database, ever.

There’s an API that gives me that. And I can securely get the API token I need, and run all from the centralised place.

Sometimes we need to remember that those uphill battles are best not fought, things were made difficult to access for a good reason. Use the front door!