Blog on Google App Engine for Java - google-app-engine

I am considering to add a Blog on my GAE/J application and wondered what is the best way to do so.
Are there any implementations I can use?
Should I write something on my own?
I read about Microblog but it is written in python, I am not sure it will co-exists with my Java app.
Appreciate your thoughts.

While I don't know any implementations that you can use, this question is very broad and there are a lot of different things that you could do, and writing your own is one of them.
Just to begin with you could use the Blogger API to read the posts and present them in your app. By doing that you're able to add/modify/delete posts using the Blogger's UI and in your own app you will only present the posts. The only problem with this solution is regarding the comments, where you could implement your own (just to start somewhere) or include maybe the Facebook's Comments Box.
I did exactly that for the kiebdoj.com/blog/ and it saved me a lot of time for not implementing my own WYSIWYG editor or a post manager. That was written in Python, so I can't provide any examples, but in either case it wasn't written to work on it's own.

Related

How can you build React on top of Drupal?

I've never used Drupal, but have been looking up tutorials online. My client would really like the adaptability of React and to have more flexibility in terms of design. I could make my own database and React app, but I have not studied security (I'm a team of one, so no one for security on my end, either). Security and access to a content management system was the main reason we decided to go with Drupal. However, I would still like to be able to code in React/something I'm familiar with to produce a site I am proud to say I made.
I've been Googling and Youtubing tutorials and help, but not having anyone to ask specific questions is making this difficult.
If anyone knows of a relatively easy way to build a React app on Drupal, I would really appreciate the advice. Or if there is a better way I should go about beginning a project as I've briefly mentioned above, I would also be open to that. Thank you in advance and sorry for the long message!
What you are asking is quite broad in concept and not easy to answer in just one answer post. Try to look for Headless / Decoupled Drupal.
https://www.acquia.com/drupal/decoupled-drupal
What this essentially means is that all the services and the content management are handled by Drupal while the core user experience or the way the site is displayed in a browser is controlled via a JavaScript framework such as React.js or backbone.js. This is achieved via Drupal’s RESTful API service.
Hope this helps.

How do I streamline/automate data-entry?

I'm looking to create a website around a tool that plugs info from different sites into a form on mine. I'd like to eliminate/streamline data-entry. Anyone know a good way to accomplish this?
There are plenty of web scraper scripts available on github that can do data capture from web.
You will still need programming skills to change and plug those scripts as per your requirement. Here is one such parser but you must know basic DOM and programming to access information of your need from a website.
Apart from this you can also use excel sheet to access web data and then you can fill your form with that data.
You should try to learn web scraping using python. Threre are plenty of web based tutorials for it. Youtube may also be helpful.

What is the best way to do web scraping from an BlackBerry (10 OS) App?

I am writing an BlackBerry app and I need to scrape about 50+ websites for data.
Does anyone know of any good client-side solutions that I can use ? I dont want to build a backend just for this.
I actually wrote a blog posting about this a while back. The example uses screen-scraper, but the principles would apply regardless of what you decide to use for your scraping solution. I deliberately wrote the posting to be relatively agnostic toward specific technologies, so it it will at least hopefully give you a few ideas.

gae-boilerplate documentation

In my search for a good social login package for App Engine, I am giving gae-boilerplate a try. But I find there is no documentation except the readme file, which I think it is not enough at all.
I have many questions, among them:
Should the boilerplate be used as a library or download and modify as needed?
How should the boilerplate be updated?
What does each model do?
Where should my templates go?
Should I have a different routes file?
Should I derive my Handlers from BaseHandler?
In general, what things should I implement in my pages? For example, I found out that I have to include a csrf_token in all POST requests. It would have been nice to know this in advance, and the many other things that I'm having to find out along the way, and which I implement without being sure if I'm supposed to be doing that.
And some more...
My biggest problem is that Social login is not working, and I feel this boilerplate is a big monster with which I don't know where to start. To make things worse, it is hard to debug social auth from any machine that is not the production one. Thats why I'm desperately looking for some docs.
I have not found anything in SO, and I guess there must be more people in my situation. So, any pointers to documentation that could help to understand gae-boilerplate a little bit better would be very appreciated.
EDIT: I switched to gae-boilerplate in a site that I had previously working. Maybe most of my problems come from the way that I have tried to integrate gae-boilerplate and my existing site. As a result I have tried to treat gae-boilerplate as a library, and keep my own templates, handlers, static files and such.
Thank you guys!
EDIT 2: After trying other options, I have to say that I am very happy with gae-simpleauth. It works really well, and Alex's support is superb.
I will try to answer most of your questions below:
Should the boilerplate be used as a library or download and modify as needed?
You can modify it as needed based on your specific requirements.
How should the boilerplate be updated?
What do you mean?
What does each model do?
User and SocialUser are pretty self explanatory. LogVisit and LogEmail are used for auditing purposes.
Where should my templates go?
In the templates directory
Should I have a different routes file?
No, you can use the existing file for all your routes.
Should I derive my Handlers from BaseHandler?
It't not mandatory but I would recommend to do so. BaseHandler is very handy and provides a lot of good stuff.
In general, what things should I implement in my pages?
What exactly do you mean?
In general, you can use gae-boilerplate as a reference on top of which you will built your own project. Study the code step by step, try to figure out what is the purpose of each file and library used and how they work together. This way you will gain good knowledge of a lot of things like jinja templating, oauth2, etc.
Hope this helps.

how to get a smartclient example on the web?

I'm pretty much totally lost.. I've posted twice on the smartclient forums and gotten no help so maybe the people here are more friendly than their own staff. (it really bothers me but they appear to have the best software for what I'm trying to do)
I'm trying to wrap my head around how I would get one of their examples (the demo showcase ones which I have downloaded etc) on my web host, just to see how it works/play with it, but I couldn't find any forum guides or videos etc on this (documentation is really abysmal for people that don't speak code yet).
Is there some special back-end I need on my web host? Where can I go to figure out how to link the stuff together? Do I have to compile something using java.. etc.
I'm used to just editing stuff in notepad++, uploading it, and hitting refresh, but I'm guessing smartclient isn't that simple, or is it? (I'm just going to use it to make tables from excel spreadsheets that I can filter through, that's it, no fancy application).
Sincerely,
Mr. Totally Lost.
Everything is covered by the guide (page 6) : http://www.smartclient.com/docs/8.2/docs/SmartClient_Quick_Start_Guide.pdf
SmartClient embed everything needed, you will only need a valid JDK installation and the zip provided in their website.

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