I'm looking for options/alternative to achieve the following.
I want to connect to several data sources (e.g., Google Places, Flickr, Twitter ...) using their APIs. Once I get some data back I want to apply my "user-defined dynamic filters" (defined at runtime) on the fetched data.
Example Filters
Show me only restaurants that have a ratting more than 4 AND have more than 100 ratings.
Show all tweets that are X miles from location A and Y miles from location B
Is it possible to use a rule engine (esp. Drools) to do such filtering ? Does it make sense ?
My proposed architecture is mobile devices connecting to my own server and this server then dispatching requests to the external world and doing all the heavy work (mainly filtering) of data based on user preferences.
Any suggestions/pointers/alternatives would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Yes, Drools Fusion allows you to easily deal with this kind of scenario. Here is a very simple example application that plays around with twitter messages using the twitter4j API:
https://github.com/droolsjbpm/droolsjbpm-contributed-experiments/tree/master/twittercbr
Please note that there is an online and an offline version in that example. To run the online version you need to get access tokens on the twitter home page and configure them in the configuration file:
https://github.com/droolsjbpm/droolsjbpm-contributed-experiments/blob/master/twittercbr/src/main/resources/twitter4j.properties
check the twitter4j documentation for details.
Related
I'm currently developing a mobile application that will fetch data from server by request (page load) or by notification received (e.g. GCM).
Currently I'm starting to think about how to build the backend for that app.
I thought about using PHP to handle the http requests to my database (mySQL) and to return the response as JSON. As I see it there are many ways to implement such server and would like to hear to hear thoughts about my ideas for implementations:
1. create a single php page that will receive an Enum/Query, execute and send the results.
2. create a php page for every query needs to be made.
Which of my implementations should I use? if none please suggest another. Thank you.
P.S, this server will only use as a fetcher for SQL and push notifications. if you have any suggestion past experience about how to perform it (framework, language, anything that comes to mind) I'd be happy to learn.
You can use PHP REST Data services framework https://github.com/chaturadilan/PHP-Data-Services
I am also looking for information about how to power a web and mobile application that has to get and save data on the server.
I've been working with a PHP framework such as Yii Framework, and I know that this framework, and others, have the possibility to create a API/Web service.
APIS can be SOAP or REST, you should read about the differences of both to see wich is best for mobile. I think the main and most important one is that for SOAP, you need a Soap Client library on the device you are trying to connect, but for REST you just make a http request to the url.
I have built a SOAP API with Yii, is quite easy, and I have use it to communicate between two websites, to get and put data in the same database.
As for your question regarding to use one file or multiple files for every request, in the case of SOAP built on Yii, you have to normally define all the functions available to the API on the server side in only one file(controller) and to connect to that webservice you end up doing:
$client=new SoapClient("url/of/webservice);
$result=$client->methodName($param1, $param2, etc..);
So basically what you get is that from your client, you can run any method defined on the server side with the parameters that you wish.
Assuming that you use to work program php in the "classic way" I suggest you should start learning a framework, there are many reasons to do it but in the end, it is because the code will result more clean and stable, for example:
You shouldn't be writing manual queries (sometimes yes), but you can use the framework's models to handle data validation and storage into the database.
Here are some links:
http://www.larryullman.com/series/learning-the-yii-framework/
http://www.yiiframework.com/doc/guide/1.1/en/topics.webservice
http://www.yiiframework.com/wiki/175/how-to-create-a-rest-api/
As I said, I am also looking to learn how to better power a mobile application, I know this can be achieved with a API, but I don't know if that is the only way.
create a single php page that will receive an Enum/Query, execute and send the results.
I created a single PHP file named api.php that does exactly this, the project is named PHP-CRUD-API. It is quite popular.
It should take care of the boring part of the job and provides a sort of a framework to get started.
Talking about frameworks: you can integrate the script in Laravel, Symfony or SlimPHP to name a few.
I would like to try to use ExtJs for a new web app.
I need to handle users and roles to give different app features according to the connected user's role. Are there native or pre-built libraries to do this (as, for example in Drupal) or should i create it from scratch?
Build your own. Consult the following URL:
http://technopaper.blogspot.com/2010/02/access-control-in-extjs-applications.html
Particularly the first sentence of the second paragraph:
"Permissions should be always be implemented on server side and JavaScript security is always secondary"
Remember, ExtJS is a client side, Javascript-based framework. Therefore comparisons with server side frameworks such as Drupal are not valid.
I found the URL above by googling for "extjs access control". You might cast a wider net Javascript-wise by replacing ExtJS with jQuery, though my cursory examination of the results leads me to believe that you will not find much useful.
I am building a website (probably in Wordpress) which takes data from a number of different sources for display on various pages.
The sources:
A Twitter feed
A Flickr feed
A database on a remote server
A local database
From each source I will mainly retrieve
A short string, e.g. for Twitter, the Tweet, and from the local database the title of a blog page.
An associated image, if one exists
A link identifying the content at its source
My question is:
What is the best way to a) store the data and b) retrieve the data
My thinking is:
i) Write a script that is run every 2 or so minutes on a cron job
ii) the script retrieves data from all sources and stores it in the local database
iii) application code can then retrieve all data from the one source, the local database
This should make application code easier to manage - we only ever draw data from one source in application code - and that's the main appeal. But is it overkill for a relatively small site?
I would recommend putting the twitter feed and flickr feed in JavaScript. Both flickr and twitter have REST APIs. By putting it on the client you free up resources on your server, create less complexity, your users won't be waiting around for your server to fetch the data, and you can let twitter and flickr cache the data for you.
This assumes you know JavaScript. Once you get past JavaScript quirks, it's not a bad language. Give Jquery a try. JQuery Twitter plugin Flickery JQuery plugin. There are others, that's just the first results from Google.
As for your data on the local server and remote server, that will depend more on the data that is being fetched. I would go with whatever you can develop the fastest and gives acceptable results. If that means making a REST call from server to sever, then go for it. IF the remote server is slow to respond, I would go the AJAX REST API method.
And for the local database, you are going to have to write server side code for that, so I would do that inside the Wordpress "framework".
Hope that helps.
What environment-independent tools are available to detect new spam blogs or comments appearing on a hosting infrastructure?
As an occasional hosting provider, we want to watch for new blogs or comments which appear spammy, but avoid relying on plugins or modules in the CMS environment (because these are easy to circumvent, or expose only to Google).
A (pseudo) example would be to set up Google Alert for "viagra ip:10.0.0.1", where 10.0.0.1 is the front-facing IP of the servers. (Google doesn't offer such an advanced operator term though ...)
Seems I'm looking for a combination of Nagios + Google Alerts + ( ??? ) ... what does fill this space?
I would setup an hourly cronjob that wgets the entire website then greps the resulting files for whatever spam strings you're looking for an alerts on a hit. Let me know if you'd like me to hack up a quick example, or if thats not the direction you were thinking.
I am developing a web app that will be hit frequently by mobile browsers. I am wondering if there is a way to get enough information from the browser request to lookup position data (triangulation or GPS) Not from the request directly, of course. A colleague suggested there some carriers supply a unique identifier in the request header that can be sent to a web service exposed by said provider that will return position data if the customer has enabled that. Can anyone point me in the right direction for this or any other method for gleaning position data, even very approximate. Obviously this is app candy, e.g. if the data is not available the app doesn't really care...
Or perhaps a web service by carrier that will provide triangulated data by IP?
Google has ClientLocation as part of their AJAX APIs. You'll need to load Google's AJAX API (requires an API key) and it'll try to resolve the user's location data for you.
I've got blackberry gps to javascript working OK in a GMaps mashup. Pretty simple, actually. http://www.saefern.org/tickets/test4.php -- help yrself to view source.
(I don't currently have a bb. A user emailed me with "... it seems to be polling every 15 seconds or so, so it keeps adding new locations ... ".)
I'm looking for javascript gps info on an iPhone equivalent. And Nokia, and ... .
Any information appreciated.
I have used this javascript library sucessfully:
http://code.google.com/p/geo-location-javascript/
The examples work great. The user will always be prompted to share their location--don't know a way to avoid that.
Use the source IP address to approximate a network location. No, you won't get latitude and longitude in an HTTP request from an iPhone. Not unless you write a 3rd party app and ask them to run it.
You might be better off just running a poll on your website.
I know that some providers in Japan have a tracking service for location of cellphones.
I also know that the information is not public. I think you need to have a very good reason before the provider gives that information free as it is in my opinion sensitive personal data. Of course they will give the information to police officers but not to the general public.