Oylex: Tools, a reference for programmers

Because sometimes, we just need to decode a base64 string!

As a web developer, I often need to get a one time result of a programming function, such as base64_decode() in PHP. This is why I launched my new website: Oylex: Tools, it contains various useful online tools, including a base64 decoder. I’ll go in details below.

Oylex: Tools

My new website is a collection of online tools that I originally made for my own use, but I figured that I might as well publish it.

Here’s an idea of what tools it contains, at the time of publishing this article:

• Poll: Create a poll with you own question and answer choices and send the link to your target users.
• Randomizers: Various sorts of random number generators, such as dice rolls, coin flip, from a number range, from a data set.
• Generators: A secure password generator which is based on cryptographically strong pseudo-random data.
• Network: Of course, I added a tool to get the current public IP, and if you read the text on that page, it has a link to a JSON API, if you want to get it programmatically.
• Encodings: Encode / Decode for base64, hashing tool that supports: md5, sha1, sha256, sha512.

I wanted to have all the tools I use under the same website, and by making the website myself, I also have the opportunity to add more tools as I need them, or as I receive feedback requests.

How it began

Before making that website, whenever I needed to decode a base64 string for instance, I had the choice of making a short script to output the result, or look on Google for an existing one. I found it too time consuming to create a custom script every time I needed it, so I opted to search online. However, I never found a good website that offered all the tools I needed, and my online tools bookmark folder was getting pretty big.

I originally started by making a local website on my computer which had a list of scripts and an index page retrieving the list of my scripts and generating a menu. This worked great and I even shared the source code with my coworkers so that they could install it on their computer, but it was pretty limited.

I wanted a new solution, and in the process, make it look better than the default browser styling and no design. I opted to make it in Node.js, because I never used it before, so it was an occasion to learn something new, and I did!

What’s next?

I have several other tools planned and also a few enhancements for existing ones.

Future tools might include:

• Placeholder text generator (Lorem Ipsum)
• Password strength meter
• Plain pseudo-random data (Which I use to generate the passwords)

The poll system and the password generator are going to be upgraded significantly in the near future.

I hope this tool will be useful for others as it is for me! If you have any comments or requests about Oylex: Tools, you can email them to the address in it’s About section or leave them in the comments here.

Meanwhile, I’d like it if you could answer my poll: Do you use online tools like this site?