Is there any tool, similar to codepad, writing code in C language that I can share my code with a group and my group can make changes and simultaneous views in real time editing?
I can't tell you enough that this is going to make your work more difficult if you're planning on using this for anything other than something like a code review. However, it's called a real-time collaborative editor. There are a ton of them. I used one on linux a while back that I can't remember the name of, but in the mean-time, let wikipedia start you off...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_real-time_editor
Edit:
The tool I used on Linux that worked well was called Gobby.
There are a bunch of others in this question on SO Real time tool for collaborative coding
Sorry for resurrecting an old question but I thought I should share this.
I usually use Collab.Center (http://collab.center). Some features I like about it better than others are:
Online, real-time collaborative coding
Support for a lot of languages (40+, I think) (EX: C, C++, Java, HTML/CSS/JS, PHP, etc)
Text and Video (Webcam) chat (Requires Sign-In)
Syntax highlighting, auto-closing brackets, matching brackets, etc.
Ability to manage all your documents (Requires Sign-In)
Private documents (Requires Sign-In)
I think it would be great for you and your group, if you haven't already found an alternative.
Related
Preface: I have a broad, college knowledge, of a handful of languages (C++, VB,C#,Java, many web languages), so go with which ever you like.
I want to make an android app that compares numbers, but in order to do that I need a database. I'm a one man team, and the numbers get updated biweekly so I want to grab those numbers off of a wiki that gets updated as well.
So my question is: how can I access information from a website using one of the languages above?
What I understand the problem to be: Some entity generates a data set (i.e. numbers) every other week and you have a need to download that data set for treatment (e.g. sorting).
Ideally, the web site maintaining the wiki would provide a Service, like a RESTful interface, to easily gather the data. If that were the case, I'd go with any language that provides easy manipulation of HTTP request & response, and makes your data manipulation easy. As a previous poster said, Java would work well.
If you are stuck with the wiki page, you have a couple of options. You can parse the HTML your browser receives (Perl comes to mind as a decent language for that). Or you can use tools built for that purpose such as the aforementioned Jsoup.
Your question also mentions some implementation details such as needing a database. Evidently, there isn't enough contextual information for me to know whether that's optimal, so I won't address this aspect of the problem.
http://jsoup.org/ is a great Java tool for accessing content on html pages
Consider https://scraperwiki.com/ - it's a site where users can contribute scrapers. It's free as long as you let your scraper be public. The results of your scraper are exposed as csv and JSON.
If you don't know what a "scraper" is, google "screen scraping" - it's a long and frustrating tradition for coders, who have dealt with the same problem you have since the beginning of networked computing.
You could check out :http://web-harvest.sourceforge.net/
For Python, BeautifulSoup is one of the most tolerant HTML parsers out there. The documentation also lists similar libraries in Ruby and Java, so you'll probably find something relevant there.
I'm looking to create a very small cataloguing app for personal use (although I'd open source it if I thought anyone else would use it). I don't want a web app as it seems like overkill to have an application server just for this - plus I like the idea of it being standalone and sticking it on a USB stick.
My Criterea:
Interface must be simple to program. It can be curses-style if that makes it easer to code. My experience with ncurses would suggest otherwise, but I'd actually quite like a commanline UI.
Language doesn't really matter. My rough order of preference (highest first):
Python
C
C++
Java
I'll consider anything linux-friendly
I'm thinking sqlite for storage, but other (embeddable) suggestions welcome.
Has anyone done this sort of thing in the past? Any suggestions? Pitfalls to avoid?
EDIT:
Ok, it looks like python+sqlite is the early winner. That just leaves the question of which ui library. I know you get tkinter for free in python - but it's just so ugly (I'd rather have a curses interface). I've done some GTK in C, but it looks fairly un-natural in python. I had a very brief dabble with wxwidgets but the documentation's pretty atrocious IIRC (They renamed the module at some point I think, and it's all a bit confused).
So that leaves me with pyqt4, or some sort of console library. Or maybe GTK. Thoughts? Or have I been too hasty in writing off one of the above?
I would definitely recommend (or second, if you're already thinking it) - python with sqlite3. It's simple, portable and no big db drivers. I wrote a similar app for my own cataloguing purposes and it's doing just fine.
I vote for pyqt or wx for the GUI. (And second the Python+sqlite votes to answer the original question.)
I second (or third) python and sqlite.
As far as suggestions are concerned:
If you're feeling minimally ambitious, I'd suggest building a very simple web service to synchronize your catalog to a server. I've done this (ashamedly, a few times) for similar purposes in the past.
With sqlite, backups can literally be as simple as uploading or downloading the latest database file, depending on the file's timestamp.
Then, if you lose or break your flash drive (smashed to pieces, in my case), your catalog isn't lost. You gain more portability, at least 1 backup, and some peace of mind.
I'm implementing an Apache 2.0.x module in C, to interface with an existing product we have. I need to handle FORM data, most likely using POST but I want to handle the GET case as well.
Nick Kew's Apache Modules book has a section on handling form data. It provides code examples for POST and GET, which return an apr_hash_t of the key+value pairs in the form. parse_form_from_POST marshalls the bucket brigade and flattens it into a buffer, while parse_form_from_GET can simply reference the URL. Both routines rely on a parse_form_from_string routine to walk through each delimited field and extract the information into the hash table.
That would be fine, but it seems like there should be an easier way to do this than adding a couple hundred lines of code to my module. Is there an existing module or routines within apache, apr, or apr-util to extract the field names and associated data from a GET or POST FORM into a structure which C code can more easily access? I cannot find anything relevant, but this seems like a common need for which there should be a solution.
I switched to G-WAN which offers a transparent ANSI C scripts interface for GET and POST forms (and many other goodies like charts, GIF I/O, etc.).
A couple of AJAX examples are available at the GWAN developer page
Hope it helps!
While, on it's surface, this may seem common, cgi-style content handlers in C on apache are pretty rare. Most people just use CGI, FastCGI, or the myriad of frameworks such as mod_perl.
Most of the C apache modules that I've written are targeted at modifying the particular behavior of the web server in specific, targeted ways that are applicable to every request.
If it's at all possible to write your handler outside of an apache module, I would encourage you to pursue that strategy.
I have not yet tried any solution, since I found this SO question as a result of my own frustration with the example in the "Apache Modules" book as well. But here's what I've found, so far. I will update this answer when I have researched more.
Luckily it looks like this is now a solved problem in Apache 2.4 using the ap_parse_form_data funciton.
No idea how well this works compared to your example, but here is a much more concise read_post function.
It is also possible that mod_form could be of value.
I'm hearing more and more about domain specific languages being thrown about and how they change the way you treat business logic, and I've seen Ayende's blog posts and things, but I've never really gotten exactly why I would take my business logic away from the methods and situations I'm using in my provider.
If you've got some background using these things, any chance you could put it in real laymans terms:
What exactly building DSLs means?
What languages are you using?
Where using a DSL makes sense?
What is the benefit of using DSLs?
DSL's are good in situations where you need to give some aspect of the system's control over to someone else. I've used them in Rules Engines, where you create a simple language that is easier for less-technical folks to use to express themselves- particularly in workflows.
In other words, instead of making them learn java:
DocumentDAO myDocumentDAO = ServiceLocator.getDocumentDAO();
for (int id : documentIDS) {
Document myDoc = MyDocumentDAO.loadDoc(id);
if (myDoc.getDocumentStatus().equals(DocumentStatus.UNREAD)) {
ReminderService.sendUnreadReminder(myDoc)
}
I can write a DSL that lets me say:
for (document : documents) {
if (document is unread) {
document.sendReminder
}
There are other situations, but basically, anywhere you might want to use a macro language, script a workflow, or allow after-market customization- these are all candidates for DSL's.
DSL stands for Domain Specific Language i.e. language designed specifically for solving problems in given area.
For example, Markdown (markup language used to edit posts on SO) can be considered as a DSL.
Personally I find a place for DSL almost in every large project I'm working on. Most often I need some kind of SQL-like query language. Another common usage is rule-based systems, you need some kind of language to specify rules\conditions.
DSL makes sense in context where it's difficult to describe\solve problem by traditional means.
If you use Microsoft Visual Studio, you are already using multiple DSLs -- the design surface for web forms, winforms, etc. is a DSL. The Class Designer is another example.
A DSL is just a set of tools that (at least in theory) make development in a specific "domain" (i.e. visual layout) easier, more intuitive, and more productive.
As far as building a DSL, some of the stuff people like Ayende have written about is related to "text parsing" dsls, letting developers (or end users) enter "natural text" into an application, which parses the text and generates some sort of code or output based on it.
You could use any language to build your own DSL. Microsoft Visual Studio has a lot of extensibility points, and the patterns & practices "Guidance Automation Toolkit" and Visual Studio SDK can assist you in adding DSL functionality to Visual Studio.
DSL are basic compilers for custom languages. A good 'free and open' tool to develop them is available at ANTLR. Recently, I've been looking at this DSL for a state machine language use on a new project . I agree with Tim Howland above, that they can be a good way to let someone else customize your application.
FYI, a book on DSLs is in the pipeline as part of Martin Fowler's signature series.
If its of the same standard as the other books in the series, it should be a good read.
More information here
DSL is just a fancy name and can mean different things:
Rails (the Ruby thing) is sometimes called a DSL because it adds special methods (and overwrites some built-in ones too) for talking about web applications
ANT, Makefile syntax etc. are also DSLs, but have their own syntax. This is what I would call a DSL.
One important aspect of this hype: It does make sense to think of your application in terms of a language. What do you want to talk about in your app? These should then be your classes and methods:
Define a "language" (either a real syntax as proposed by others on this page or a class hierarchy for your favorite language) that is capable of expressing your problem.
Solve your problem in terms of that language.
DSL is basically creating your own small sublanguage to solve a specific domain problem. This is solved using method chaining. Languages where dots and parentheses are optional help make these expression seem more natural. It can also be similar to a builder pattern.
DSL aren't languages themselves, but rather a pattern that you apply to your API to make the calls be more self explanatory.
One example is Guice, Guice Users Guide http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dd2fhx4z_5df5hw8 has some description further down of how interfaces are bound to implementations, and in what contexts.
Another common example is for query languages. For example:
NewsDAO.writtenBy("someUser").before("someDate").updateStatus("Deleted")
In the implementation, imagine each method returning either a new Query object, or just this updating itself internally. At any point you can terminate the chain by using for example rows() to get all the rows, or updateSomeField as I have done above here. Both will return a result object.
I would recommend taking a look at the Guice example above as well, as each call there returns a new type with new options on them. A good IDE will allow you to complete, making it clear which options you have at each point.
Edit: seems many consider DSLs as new, simple, single purpose languages with their own parsers. I always associate DSL as using method chaining as a convention to express operations.
I've recently started using Eclipse Ganymede CDT for C development and I couldn't like it more. I'm aware the learning curve could be sort of pronounced, therefore and with your help, my goal is to flatten it as much as possible. I'm looking for the best hacks, hints, tips, tricks, and best practices to really unleash the full power of the IDE.
Accurate Indexing
With CDT you should be sure to enable the "Full Indexing" option rather than the "Fast Indexing" default. It's not perceptibly slower on modern hardware and it does a much better job. In that vein, you should be sure to enable semantic highlighting. This isn't as important in C/C++ as it is in a language like Scala, but it's still extremely useful.
Streamlined Editing
Get used to using Ctrl+O and Ctrl+Alt+H. The former pops up an incrementally searchable outline view, while the latter opens the "Call Hierarchy" view and searches on the currently selected function. This is incredibly useful for tracing execution.
Ctrl+Shift+T (Open Type) isn't exactly an "editing" combo per se, but it is equally important in my workflow. The C++ Open Type dialog not only allows incremental filtering by type, but also selecting of definition (.h) or declaration (.cpp) and even filtering by element type (typedef, struct, class, etc).
Task Oriented Programming
Mylyn: never leave home without it. I just can't say enough about this tool. Every time I'm forced to do without it I find myself having to re-learn how to deal with all of the code noise. Very, very handy to have.
Stripped Down Views
The default Eclipse workspace layout is extremely inefficient both in space and in usability. Everyone has their favorite layout, take some time and find yours. I like to minimize (not necessarily close) everything except for Outline and keep the C/C++ Project Explorer docked in the sidebar configured to precisely hide the Outline when expanded. In this way I can always keep the editor visible while simultaneously reducing the space used by views irrelevant to the current task.
CTRL+TAB let you navigate quickly between a source file and it's header file (foo.cpp <--> foo.h).
I like also the local history feature because you can go back and revert your changes in a convenient way.
ctrl + space is the best tool ever in Eclipse. It is the auto-complete feature. It can complete variable names, method declarations, user defined templates, and a ton more.
Go Eclipse. Tons of my code is generated by ctrl + space.
If the Java Developer Tools aren't installed the Spellcheck won't work.
The Spellcheck functionality is dependent upon the Java Development Tools being installed. This can be a perplexing issue if you just install the C Development Tools exclusively, because it gives no reason for the Spell Checker not working.