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What a pleasurable way to learn a language!

This site was recommended to me, and I have to say, it is a fun way to become more familiar with the syntax of a language. There’s the journey aspect:

things are not what they appear to be: nor are they otherwise
your path thus far [...X______________________________________________] 19/280

and the fact that when you see something you want to investigate further, you just write another unit test:

  def test_slicing_arrays
    array = [:peanut, :butter, :and, :jelly]

    assert_equal [:peanut], array[0,1]
    assert_equal [:peanut,:butter], array[0,2]
    assert_equal [:and,:jelly], array[2,2]
    assert_equal [:and,:jelly], array[2,20]
    assert_equal [], array[4,0]
    assert_equal [], array[3,0] # my addition
    assert_equal [], array[4,100]
    assert_equal nil, array[5,0]
  end

Now, running through these koans certainly isn’t going to make me a Ruby expert, but I will have passing familiarity with the language and be ready to use it on my next small project.

Apparently I’ve been living under a rock, because there appear to be koans projects for quite a few languages: java, haskell, erlang (cue whatsapp reference), and even bash. I was, however, unable to find a koans package for assembler.

Dynamic Languages Lifehack Testing Tips | moore |

Older versions of Sinon.js don’t work with jquery 2.0

This is a quick hit, hopefully to help someone avoid spending the half day I just did.

The older versions of sinon.js, a helpful javascript testing tool which lets you mock up and stub out objects, do not work with jquery 2.0.  Even though 2.0 is API compatible with the 1.x series, apparently some different stuff happens under the covers.  This is an issue for me because a few months ago, I followed these instructions to set up our testing infrastructure, and used sinon.js version 1.4.2.  That worked fine with jquery 1.8.2, but when I upgraded everything, tests where I mocked up server calls failed–the backbone model’s parse method was never called.

The answer?  Use at least version 1.7.1 of sinon.js.

Dynamic Languages Javascript Testing | moore |

Running a Google Apps Script Once a Month

I needed a way to email a Google spreadsheet to my boss once a month, for some reporting purposes.  I could have put an entry in my calendar reminding me to do it, but I thought it would be a great time to try out the Google Docs scripting that I had read about for a year or two, and seen an AppSumo video about.  (I got the AppSumo video for free, from an ad on HARO.)

It was laughably easy to get write the actual script (here’s a great set of tutorials).  The only rub was Google doesn’t allow you to run scripts in month intervals, only hourly, daily or weekly.  A small bit of scripting got around that.

Here’s the final script (edited to remove sensitive data):

function myFunction() {
  var dayOfMonth = Utilities.formatDate(new Date(), "GMT", "dd");
  if (dayOfMonth == 05){
    MailApp.sendEmail("email@example.com", "Spreadsheet Report Subject", 
'https://spreadsheets.google.com/a/mydomain.com/ccc?key='+SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getId());
  }
}

I set up a daily trigger for this script and installed it within the spreadsheet I needed to send.

I really really like Google Apps Script.  I think it has the power to be the VB of the web, in the way that VB made it easy to automate MS Office, reduce drudgery, and allow non developers to build business solutions.  It also ties together some really powerful tools–check out all the APIs you can access.

Once you let non developers develop, which is what Google Apps Script does, you do run into some maintenance issues (versioning, sharing the code, testing), but the same is true with Excel Macros, and solving those issues is for greater minds than mine.

Business Cloud Computing Dynamic Languages Google Apps Useful Tools | moore |

Review of SkaDate dating software

I recently helped a client move an existing dating site from a custom ASP/MS-SQL system to an off the shelf PHP/mysql platform.

The off the shelf software we ended up choosing was SkaDate.  I haven’t really found a good review of SkaDate out there, so I asked Max Chadwick to collaborate with me on a review.  (Max provided some design, system configuration and project management, and I focused on back end system setup and data migration.)  Updated 4/2: We used SkaDate 7.5, versions 1485 and 1550.

Note that we had a challenge not present for a typical SkaDate installation: migrating ~1100 user accounts (and mail messages) from one unknown system to another.  I had to learn two very different data models and map from one to the other.  On a fixed bid project.  Whoops.

Oh well, live and learn.

Skadate pluses:

  • Price: this is a big one.  You get a lot of features for only $350.
  • Technology: it is built on the LAMP stack, so there are a lot of developers out there who can help you extend the platform.
  • Support: they have a client site with some useful PDF documentation.
  • Had a defined and documented upgrade procedure (even though it was a hassle).
  • Changing look and feel was relatively easy; we went with one of the many predefined templates and only had to hack a little bit of CSS and a couple of images.
  • Caching: SkaDate caches of php files and css.  Performance was reasonably snappy on a shared hosting account.
  • You get the source code.
  • Version control support: it wasn’t hard to find out which files/directories to pull into version control.
  • Support for 5-6 languages out of the box.  We didn’t use this, though.
  • Geographic features: SkaDate knows a lot about cities and where they are located, around the world.

SkaDate Minuses:

  • Support: they charged $90/hour $95/month for support; I didn’t end up asking them for much help, but the times I did, they immediately wanted ssh access to the server (which tweaked me out).  I’m guessing that SkaDate might be a loss leader for ‘support services’.
  • In general the administrative interface was unintuitive and could use some work.
  • Intricate object and data model: lots of indirection, and because it is PHP, no IDE to help you unravel it.  I discovered this when asked to turn off a particular feature (that didn’t have an admin setting)–I’d have to hunt through 3-4 files to find out where a UI element was set up.
  • Secretive nature: they don’t really give you any documentation until you pay for it; however, they do provide a demo and when I emailed them and explained the situation (“I’m a developer and want enough information to do a bid for a project”) they responded with some of the documentation.
  • They had a new release midway through the project, and then a user found several of the php files had been hacked.  Not exactly confidence inspiring.
  • Initial configuration of the site was complicated: all the site features were turned on and the site was pre-configured with specific payment/membership options. The tricky part was not just turning off features, but figuring out that not only did the feature need to be turned off, but that the navigation needed to be disabled for that same feature on another section of the admin area.
  • Setting up custom dating fields was cumbersome partly because of the poor interface but also because there were a number of dating fields already set up that needed to be removed.
  • The software uses dollar signs ($) in some of the automated directories.  This caused an issue with mod_security on one of the hosts we tried to use; go with one of their suggested hosting providers.

I think SkaDate is a good choice for a basic dating site; if you need just the features in the demo and you’re willing to spend some time unraveling the administration UI and you are on a tight budget. Expect some bugs and frustrations, but hey, you only paid $350!
I would hesitate to use it as a platform for a more fully featured dating site until I’d reviewed the alternatives.

Final grade: B-

[tags]skadate review,dating site software[/tags]

Dynamic Languages Web Applications | moore |

Using APIs to move time entries from FreshBooks to Harvest

I recently was working for a client who has their own time tracking system–they use Harvest.  They want me to enter time that I work for them into that system–they want more insight into my time use than monthly invoice. However, I still use my own invoicing system, FreshBooks (more on that choice here) and will need to invoice them as well.  Before the days when APIs were common, or if either of these sites did not have an API, I would have had three, equally unsavory, choices:

  • Convince the client to use my system or at least access it for whatever data they needed
  • Send reports (spreadsheets) to the client from my system and let them process it
  • Enter my time in both places.  This option would have won, as I don’t like to inconvenience people who write me checks.

Luckily, both Harvest and FreshBooks provide APIs for time tracking (Harvest doco here, FreshBooks doco here). I was surprised at how similar the time tracking data formats were.  With the combination of curl, gnu date, sed, Perl and bash, I was able to write a small script (~80 lines) that

  • pulled down my time data for this client, for this week, from FreshBooks (note you have to enable API access to your account for this to work)
  • mapped it it from the FreshBooks format to the Harvest format
  • then posted it to Harvest.

A couple of caveats:

  • I still log in to Harvest to submit my time (I didn’t see a way to submit my time in the API documentation), but it’s a heck a lot easier to press one button and submit a weeks worth of time than to do double entry.
  • I used similar project and task codes in both systems (or, more accurately, I set up the FreshBooks tasks and projects to map to the Harvest ones, since FreshBooks is what I had control over).  That mapping was probably the most tedious part of writing the script.

You can view my script here, or at least a sanitized version thereof.  it took about an hour and a half to do this. Double entry might have been quicker in the short term, but now I’m not worried about entry mistakes, and submitting my time every week is easy!  I could also have used XSLT to transform from one data format to the other, but they were so similar it was easier just parse text.

[tags]getharvest,freshbooks,time tracking, process automation[/tags]

Business Dynamic Languages Programming Web Applications | moore |

Useful Tools: piwik, a worthy web statistics package

I recently installed a open source web analytics tool called piwik.  (You can demo it at that site.) I found out about it via the sourceforge.net mailing list. It was the featured project for July 2009. It bills itself as an alternative to Google Analytics (GA) (actually, right now, the home page states “Piwik aims to be an open source alternative to Google Analytics.”) and I can see why it does so. The architecture is similar, JavaScript executing on every page and sending data to a server; the interface is similar as well, with lots of whizzy Web 2.0, JavaScript heavy features and detailed data.

I had to see been using the Wusage installation that came with my web hosting service. piwik was quite a step up from that, with richer graphs, results and UI. Plus, because it was JavaScript executing and I was assured that every visit was actual visit by an actual person. Since it’s hosted on my server, I control all the data, which was a sticking point for me considering using Google Analytics.

I recently upgraded to 0.4.2, which broke the dashboard, but I’ve been assured a fix is in SVN (Update Aug 4: They no longer plan to fix the bug, but there is a workaround in that thread.).  If you want to get the latest code, go here.  You can download 0.4.1, the last working version I know of, here. I’ll update this to point to the piwik website when they have a release up that works. For some reason they don’t have a release archive that I could find.

So what’s good about piwik?  Well compared to what, Google analytics, or other website analytics tools? This is a fundamental question, because if you are using GA just for the web stats piece, or are using some other static logfile analysis tool, piwik is well worth reviewing.

In comparison to Google Analytics

The downside is

  • you have to maintain another server/database, etc.  I imagine that someone will offer piwik via SAAS sometime soon, though I couldn’t find anyone doing that right now.
  • it’s a beta product and is not as mature as Google Analytics, as evidenced by the 0.4.2 issue above
  • some key GA features are missing (goals, funnels, etc).

In comparison to the other website analytics tools I’ve used, AWstats (which I’ve written about before and is open source) and wusage (not open source, but free with my hosting contract), piwik has

  • a slick user interface
  • JavaScript execution, so you know you’re getting a real browser instead of a bot (the javascript browser guarantee)
  • click outs easier to track
  • easier configuration
  • javascript widgets available

The downside is:

This is obviously not intended to be a full, detailed analysis of all the differences between these tools, but I think that piwik has a lot of promise.  They have a roadmap full of planned features but they definitely aren’t yet an alternative to Google Analytics for anyone who uses some of the more advanced features of that product. Funnels, the click overlay or goals, are all unsupported in piwik as of this version. In the forums, I saw several requests for such richer analysis tools, and in the roadmap I saw a goal tracking plugin as a blocker for version 1.0, so the team is aware of the lack.

When browsing around doing research for this post, I saw a post (sorry, couldn’t find it again) about how piwik features would be developed for smaller websites because it’s an open-source alternative, but I believe that the support of openX (an ad server company that I wrote about in the past), who is funding at least one of the developers, will prevent such feature capture.  In addition, I find that open source projects that have an existing project to model themselves on (like GA), tend to try to reach feature parity.  If piwik continues on its current valid path of replicating Google Analytics features, then I think it will live up to its aim.

If you’re simply using Google Analytics to see who referred traffic to your sites, or for which keywords search engines are showing your site, and you want something more open or more control of your data, piwik is a good fit.  If you use any other web stats tool, and want a slicker admin interface or the javascript browser guarantee, piwik is also worth a look.

Update, 7/31: A friend pointed out this broad survey of the current state of free (as in beer) web analytics options
[tags]piwik,the javascript browser guarantee,google analytics, piwik vs google analytics, web stats[/tags]

Dynamic Languages Useful Tools Web Applications | moore |

Supporting cutting and pasting in web applications

Dion has a long, interesting, painful article about supporting cut, paste, and copy operations for Bespin, a web based code editor.

In our world with the editor [in webkit], we use the before events to set things up, and we have to do something pretty hacky to make it happen. The copy event itself only actually goes through if you are on an element that supports it. There are hacks around this too. For example, if you want to be able to get a copy event on a div, you need to turn on contentEdible and set the tab index to -1. Strange huh?

All I can say is ‘Ow!’

Dynamic Languages Web Applications | moore |

GWT impressions

After about a year of working with GWT, it seems to me like there are two places where it is really useful as a technology:

  1. Quickly building relatively sophisticated user interfaces for entire web based applications. An intranet ‘client-server’ type application, like a timesheet, would be a perfect fit. If you use Java on the server side, domain objects can even be shared.
  2. Building small widgets that have anything beyond the simplest logic. This is the best way to integrate GWT into an existing application–add small bits of functionality that improve the user experience. You can use GWT to manage, reuse and package this logic.

However, what GWT is best for is not the limiting factor for GWT; rather, if you aren’t a Java developer, GWT just doesn’t make sense. (I’m ignoring the fact that if a user doesn’t have JavaScript enabled, GWT doesn’t make sense, since this is a failing of almost all the Web 2.0 rich user interface toolkits).

For me, being a Java developer and a fan of Eclipse, GWT is a natural fit for a number of reasons. The Java object serialization support, the use of an IDE to code Javascript, the JRE emulation, and the event driven user interface model all make it extremely comfortable to develop in the language. If you’re already coding the server side in Java, GWT is one less language to learn (until you need to do something that isn’t provided for in the emulation libraries, or you need to use a Java 1.5 feature, or a bug leaks up through the abstraction; of course, these problems will never happen).

While I don’t have deep knowledge with other toolkits (I’ve worked slightly with the Yahoo! User Inteface Library and have toyed with Dojo), it seems to me that many many folks can get by using them; there’s no tie to Java.

If someone was going to ask me whether or not they should use GWT, I’d boil it down to the following questions:

  1. Are your developers familiar with Java? (If ‘no’, don’t use GWT.)
  2. Are your developers familiar with JavaScript? (If ‘yes’, consider not using GWT.)
  3. Are you integrating with an existing app? (If ‘yes’, GWT might be a good fit.)
  4. If so, are you planning to ‘web 2.0’-ify the existing application, or add widgets to enhance existing functionality? (If planning to ‘web 2.0’-ify existing functionality, don’t use GWT.)

On a final note, I don’t want to bag on GWT too much. GWT has improved tremendously over the past year or so, and I’m very glad to have used it. I think it’s quite cool tech, and I think it has really improved the user experience on my client’s site.

Thank you, Google, for releasing GWT and making it available for me to use.

Dynamic Languages GWT Java YUI | moore |

IE 7 does not have a built in javascript debugger (update)

I recently was debugging the dreated “Operation Aborted” error, which was appearing in both IE6 and IE7. (Incidentally, Joel has written a great delineation of the three parts of software: design, development and debugging.) I usually do development in FF and then test in IE. But this bug is specific to IE, which made debugging harder. I was using IE6, looking at the error message and trying to find the line numbers it referenced. Pretty miserable. The fact that I was dealing with external code (Google Analytics, Google Website Optimizer) made it all the more fun!

I was testing at work, and feeling a bit frustrated. I found a reference to the Microsoft Script Debugger, but wasn’t able to find it separate from Microsoft Office.

I went home and tested on IE7, and saw the same error. I thought I’d try to find the debugger for IE7. It was easier than I thought–all you have to do is go to ‘Tools’, then ‘Internet Options…’, click the Advanced tab and uncheck ‘Disable Script Debugging (Internet Explorer)’. Then, when you visit a page with a javascript error, it asks you if you want to debug it. Fantastic!

As far as I know, that was a vanilla install of IE7. I’m thrilled they’re shipping a debugger, as it will make developing for them just a little bit easier.

Update: I was incorrect, I think that you need to install the script debugger separately.  Link below.

[tags]ie7,javascript debugger[/tags]

Dynamic Languages Web Applications | moore |

Connecting PHP and Java

Have you ever had a project written primarily in PHP, but there were some java systems that you wanted to connect to? Perhaps there was a third party library or a java API that you really want (or are required) to use, but PHP had been chosen for other reasons.

The php java bridge is your solution. The documentation is good, and the performance is pretty darn good (if you’re looking for benchmarks, search for ‘How fast is it?’). You can use the bridge over sockets, a xml based protocol via servlets, or over a mono application. The mailing list is active, and it looks like the primary developer actually answers questions on said list (as of May 2007).

I’ve always been a bit hesitant regarding cross language programming: “Great, now I get to debug in two languages that communicate via sockets! Yahoo!”. But for a certain set of circumstances, using this bridge can be the right answer.

[tags]php, java, cross-language programming,php java bridge[/tags]

Dynamic Languages Java PHP | moore |