Category: Development

Categories
Development

Yahoo! Term Extraction Web Service

Just finished up using one of my favorite and what seems to be little well known web service, the Term Extraction from the folks a Yahoo! You feed it some content and it returns a list of significant words from the content. This simple service can be incredibly useful.

For instance I recently used this service to scan an article on a site and using the words that it returns, as tags to pull relevant photos from Flickr to go along with the article. So in this case I used it to pull tags from a body of text, very cool. You can also use YQL to make calls to it as well.

Categories
Development

Pulling Flickr photos using YUI Get Utility with photo_id

Atlantic Cape Community College has been using a Flickr Pro account to store and share our photos (Flickr Pro at $24.95/yr is a steal) and also like to incorporate those photos into our news releases from time to time. 

So I began working an a little script that would call the flickr.photos.getSizes API Method using YQL to return the info to display the photo (dimensions, source, etc.) in an easy to consume JSON object. Oh yeah, and also had to do all this using the YUI Get Utility since our server at the moment doesn’t have cURL installed.

So first I went to the YQL console (it’s awesome to be sure to check it out) to generate the HTTP to call the JSON we’re looking for using the flickr.photos.getSizes API Method. Here is the the YQL I fed it:

select * from flickr.photos.sizes where photo_id = "414195174"

and it gave me this wonderful REST Query (again YQL is awesome):

http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20flickr.photos.sizes%20where%20photo_id%20%3D%20%223591600467%22&format=json&callback=cbfunc

this returns the following JSON info:

cbfunc({
 "query": {
  "count": "6",
  "created": "2009-06-08T06:37:37Z",
  "lang": "en-US",
  "updated": "2009-06-08T06:37:37Z",
  "uri": "http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/yql?q=select+*+from+flickr.photos.sizes+where+photo_id+%3D+%223591600467%22",
  "diagnostics": {
   "publiclyCallable": "true",
   "url": {
    "execution-time": "149",
    "content": "http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.getSizes&photo_id=3591600467&page=1&per_page=10"
   },
   "user-time": "154",
   "service-time": "149",
   "build-version": "1678"
  },
  "results": {
   "size": [
    {
     "height": "75",
     "label": "Square",
     "media": "photo",
     "source": "http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2447/3591600467_1f25e40ce1_s.jpg",
     "url": "http://www.flickr.com/photos/accc_cr/3591600467/sizes/sq/",
     "width": "75"
    },
    {
     "height": "100",
     "label": "Thumbnail",
     "media": "photo",
     "source": "http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2447/3591600467_1f25e40ce1_t.jpg",
     "url": "http://www.flickr.com/photos/accc_cr/3591600467/sizes/t/",
     "width": "84"
    },
    {
     "height": "240",
     "label": "Small",
     "media": "photo",
     "source": "http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2447/3591600467_1f25e40ce1_m.jpg",
     "url": "http://www.flickr.com/photos/accc_cr/3591600467/sizes/s/",
     "width": "202"
    },
    {
     "height": "500",
     "label": "Medium",
     "media": "photo",
     "source": "http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2447/3591600467_1f25e40ce1.jpg",
     "url": "http://www.flickr.com/photos/accc_cr/3591600467/sizes/m/",
     "width": "420"
    },
    {
     "height": "1024",
     "label": "Large",
     "media": "photo",
     "source": "http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2447/3591600467_1f25e40ce1_b.jpg",
     "url": "http://www.flickr.com/photos/accc_cr/3591600467/sizes/l/",
     "width": "861"
    },
    {
     "height": "2400",
     "label": "Original",
     "media": "photo",
     "source": "http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2447/3591600467_1fe814e144_o.jpg",
     "url": "http://www.flickr.com/photos/accc_cr/3591600467/sizes/o/",
     "width": "2017"
    }
   ]
  }
 }
});

So now we have an easy to use REST Query to use with all the info that we just so happen to need from Flickr.

Now I needed to create a little Javascript using the YUI Get Utility to consume the REST Query that we just built.

Here’s a basic version of the script I wrote:

function jsonFlickrApi(rsp){
 
		if (rsp.query.count == 0){
			return;
		} else {
 
			var container = document.getElementById('article-photo');
 
			// create elements
 
			var photoAnchor = document.createElement('a');
			var photoImg = document.createElement('img');
 
			// set attributes
			photoAnchor.setAttribute('href', rsp.query.results.size[3].source);
			photoAnchor.setAttribute('rel', 'lightbox');
 
			photoImg.setAttribute('src', rsp.query.results.size[2].source);
			photoImg.setAttribute('width', rsp.query.results.size[2].width);
			photoImg.setAttribute('height', rsp.query.results.size[2].height);
 
			// append to DOM
			photoAnchor.appendChild(photoImg);
 
			container.appendChild(photoAnchor); 
 
		}
    }
 
    var objTransaction = YAHOO.util.Get.script("http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20flickr.photos.sizes%20where%20photo_id%20%3D%20%223591600467%22&format=json&callback=jsonFlickrApi");

The function jsonFlickrAPI gets called when the JSON has loaded since it’s sent along with the Get request as the callback function. Then we just check if anything has been returned from the REST call before proceeding by checking the count returned.

Then create some DOM nodes and attach them to a div in our HTML. That’s really about it.

Next, I’m going to improve this to pull all relevant photos with a certain tag(s) from our Flickr account to dynamically create relevant galleries.

Categories
Design Development

sjrates.com

sjrates.comJust finished up building www.sjrates.com. It’s a site that makes comparing local rates easy and convenient for those in Southern New Jersey.

The client approached with with a sound idea of making it easier for local people to compare rates. Instead of having to search each financial institution individually, he wanted to group them all together to save users time.

The site makes use of many technologies.  Notable uses include:

Working with the client was a real pleasure. I thought we had a great client – developer relationship and I this really helped contribute to a really nice finished project.

Categories
Development

Akismet WordPress Plugin

The Akismet WordPress Plugin is awesome. I was up to a couple of hundred or so spam comments a day on various WordPress hosted blugs, and it was getting to be quite a waste of time deciding what was a real comment of a wonderful gift of spam.

Downloading and installing the Akismet WordPress Plugin was simple.  Directions can be found on their site, it took me probably 5 minutes to get the whole think up and running. Also necessary for the install is a WordPress API key.  This can be gotten from the WordPress.  

Again, if you have a WordPress powered blog install the  Akismet plugin now.

Categories
Development

WordPress Template Errors with Dreamweaver CS4

This one had me scratching my head for a bit, so I figured I’d write it down.  While creating a new WordPress template the template name was coming up incorrectly in the WordPress admin. Instead of just displaying the name of the template, it was rendering all the info in the template. 

I kept checking existing templates that weren’t having this problem and could see no noticeable difference between mine and what they had typed. After much confusion, I decided that perhaps it was how Dreamweaver CS4 handled line returns. So I fired up a basic text editor and typed it all up and uploaded it and it worked fine! 

So now I’ll be coding up my WordPress templates in BBEdit not Dreamweaver CS4.

Categories
Development

Insert row into Google Spreadsheet using Zend Framework

I got a little stumped when attempting to insert a new row in a Google Docs Spreadsheet using the Zend Framework, so I figured I’d share this in case someone else runs in the same problems. The documentation provided is really great, but I was getting caught in how the row data was supposed to be getting passed. It just needs a basic array with key/value pairs.

First you need to have the Zend Framework installed on your server. Google Code has a great article on getting started. Then you need to have a spreadsheet in Google Docs.

Now we’re going to write a simple PHP script that will input a new row into a basic spreadsheet. First you need to call the following Zend Framework include files for the script to work:

require_once 'Zend/Loader.php';
Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_Http_Client');
Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_Gdata');
Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_Gdata_ClientLogin');
Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_Gdata_Spreadsheets');

Next we’re going to set two variables with your Google Docs login info to authenticate our row creation. Enter you Google Account login:

$email = '<your_google_account_username>';
$pass = '<your_google_account_password>';

Now we authenticate ourselves with Google Docs and create a Zend_Gdata_Spreadsheets object.

$authService = Zend_Gdata_Spreadsheets::AUTH_SERVICE_NAME;
$httpClient = Zend_Gdata_ClientLogin::getHttpClient($email, $pass, $authService);
$spreadsheetService = new Zend_Gdata_Spreadsheets($httpClient);

Next we have to let Google Docs know which of our spreadsheets we want to write to. To do this we need the spreadsheet key. Obtaining the key is fairly simple, just grab it from the spreadsheet’s URL.

For instance:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/a/atlantic.edu/ccc?key=pqtY4KMBjwqlinsu9-f1PEg&hl=en

the key is:

pqtY4KMBjwqlinsu9-f1PEg

Not only do we need the spreadsheet key, but you also have to know what the worksheet id is too. Obtaining the worksheet id can be a little tricky, but if you only have one worksheet then it usually always is od6.

$spreadsheetKey = 'pqtY4KMBjwqlinsu9-f1PEg';
$worksheetId = 'od6';

Now we have to create the row data that we want to add to the above mentioned spreadsheet. You have to pass it an array with key/value pairs. The key is the column label in all lower case.

So to add a new row containing the string smurf to a column named stuff you build the following array:

$rowData = array('stuff' => 'smurf');

That’s it. If you were adding to more columns you would just pass more key/value pairs to the variable.

Now you just call the insertRow method and you’re all set.

$insertedListEntry = $spreadsheetService->insertRow($rowData, $spreadsheetKey, $worksheetId);

Pretty easy and very cool stuff.