can’t do much testing since our api key got shutdown (rogue cronjob), but i’m building some new methods for flickr based user authentication. it requires passing around email address and password unencrpyted, which i hate. when you test the methods at flickr services, they’re not needed. perhaps it’s based on their cookies or part of their session. i wish it were only that easy.
so bickr is coming along. we’re sucking down the content and i just (finally) got the first form working to add a contest. now i’m going to try and get the picture sucking to relate to the actual contest now gracing our database. from there we can add the voting code.
it’s coming.
i got pictures! so i’m finally on my way to parsing flickr’s REST response into something presentable. so, i think i’m getting the hang of web services (REST at least—SOAP and XML-RPC are for bigger fish) and i can move on to the database. better late than never (it would have been nice to show this to people in class).
really it’s bickr’s equivalent of hallo world. just a simple gesture. the fight continues as how to populate the database and build a nice voting system as well as a real slideshow. but i’m happy and i can sleep now.
i’m in shock. well not really, but after nearly two weeks of mucking around for examples and code for the flickr API, i found a useful article on REST. i’m finally getting something useful from flickr.
now i can build a query and get a response:
#build the REST query
$params = array( 'method' => 'flickr.groups.pools.getPhotos',
'api_key' => 'YOUR-API-KEY',
'group_id' => 'GROUP-ID'
);
foreach ($params as $key => $value) {
$query_string .= "$key=" . urlencode($value) . "&";
}
#call flickr
$url = "$base?$query_string";
$xml = file_get_contents($url);
print($url);
the file_get_contents() only works in php >=4.3, so to get this to work on stage try this:
$c = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($c, 1, 1);
$xml = curl_exec($c);
curl_close($c);
onward and upward.
so, we’ve got a new idea and i’m excited. there’s even room for collaboration with outside schools like RCA. derek proposed tying flickr to fixed physical locations. once the idea was out it became a platform for moblogging commnunity and gaming.
right now, the idea is to tap into the flickr api and allow users to at specific locations to view and vote on submissions participants make through flickr groups. the hope is that this will foster a form of communication through images and share culture and community of the fixed locations involved. and we may get to use mo’s beautiful frame he made in materials.
so, that’s flickr + physical locations + gaming = bickr. woo!
some nice thoughts for social software minds to vibe on:
web 2.0 – kottke’s 15 questions for a new web
tomboy – note-taking software (with auto-intra-linking; wiki-style)
we are interested in exchanging messages with audio/video within a social location.
members of a social network who wish to communicate (ie. pass notes) in more than a textual manner.
maximize of asynchronous communication.
email and phone messages are still easier; fixed location.
in the middle of a jam session, so this will be quick. just a stop and drop of ideas:
day one
day two
day three
well, it turns out that i’ve actually embarked on several little final projects.
first, i experimented with xslt on my personal site by playing around with my journal and molding a collection of links into a mini portal. xslt was a really interesting solution but i’m not sure i’m ready to implement it more widely.
so next i turned to an older problem. i’ve been in the process of putting together a media server for my living room. so far it’s serving mp3s via iTunes music sharing protocal and working as a music jukebox, which is mainly controlled through a web client (phpMp ). I’d like to add video files to the mix and build a web frontend for mplayer . i eventually got it working with perl but i couldn’t keep the process alive without access to a real shell. that defeated the purpose, so i put the problem aside and tried to think of something else.
finally, after thinking about more problems to solve, i realized i’d forgotten something and wouldn’t it be nice if i had a place to put notes to myself so that i’d be less likely to forget. and what if it was open to everyone else as well? so, i decided to build a virtual pegboard for myself where i leave myself stickie notes. one of the benefits of this is that i finally learned the best way for me to deal with flash: actionscript. after a day of hacking away, i’d come up with StickIt . if i continue with it i’d like to make it more robust and user friendly, but as is anyone can enter a note based on an xml template and the results will be dynamically placed on the pegboard in flash. when i have more time, i’ll learn how to allow them to be resized and moved around.
Final Project: Dynamic webpage utilizing xml and perl.
XML/XSLT fun: portal and journal
Messaging: Stickit
Your assignment is to create a Flash movie and a Perl script that work together to modify data in your database. Via your Flash interface, a user should be able to specify certain changes in your database and have these changes reflected back in Flash. Your interface does not have to be elaborate, but it should demonstrate a firm knowledge of Flash’s LoadVars object, its sendAndLoad() method, and how Perl interacts with this object.