This is my first post, and i just started developing, so this question is properly stupid.
I am currently creating an application that pulls two sets of data.
1) All the contact information on business that went out of business in Denmark.
2) All of the customers at the firm i work at.
So the functionality is that every time one of our customers goes bankrupt we get a notification.
I have "successfully" made the query that gets the right information in two separate consts.
But how do i math up the numbers i want?
i will describe it like this in plain english, just so you understand what i mean.
Select every firm where "Employer Identification Number" matches up in the two consts.
I use suquel pro as the database, and adonis js for as the programming language
we want to do something that's relatively common among mobile games. We want to reset our Facebook scoreboard every week. I am surprised to find that - looking around - there is no automatic way to do this.
Is it in the plans to offer this functionality? A probably easier thing on Facebook's end that would work for us is if when we ask for friends scores, we get the date of each score, so we can then filter out the scores that are too old.
Other than that, it seems that we'd have to write a Windows Service or Cron task to call the Facebook every week and do this (or do it manually from Putty or other tool), neither of which seem accceptable for this small task.
Thank you and let us know!
-Brian Hunsaker
Technical Director # DarkTonic Games
There's no way to tell Facebook to wipe your app's Scores automatically, but you only need to make a single API call to wipe all scores:
https://graph.facebook.com/[APP ID]?access_token=[APP ACCESS TOKEN]&method=delete
This is mentioned here:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/score/
The call to delete all the scores from your facebook App is as follows (may have changed):
https://graph.facebook.com/[APP ID]/scores?access_token=[APP TOKEN]&method=delete
it should return true.
I have a django application that contains customer and product information. It is simple but gets the job done. My customer wants the capability to send form letters and news letters and create them from within my app. From a text editing perspective, I understand how simple form letters work by replacing certain blocks of text with queries from the database. But my customer wants fliers with complex graphics and column-based layouts. There are some very mature products out there that I can't come close (nor want to) compete with. He talked about building and editing these pages from within my app. This seems a bridge too far but I don't know if its even possible to build that into a django app.
I have no idea how to approach this and it seems very complicated. But, before say no, I want to explore the available technology and level of effort entailed. Are there open source packages that can help? How could one integrate this capability into a django-based web application? and how hard is it? For a part-time intermediate developer how long would it take?
I'd farm the layout off to something like TeX Live. From there you can generate a PDF and attach it to an email message. Don't let "... a popular means by which to typeset complex mathematical formulae" throw you, TeX is useful for more than that.
I have a django app and I would like to display some graphical data visualization to my users. I am looking for an easy-to-use package that would allow me to add graphs and widgets.
The kind of widget I want to build is a kind of speedometer dial that is red at one end and green at the other. As a user completes their job over the day, the graphic/widget adjusts itself. The dial moves from red to green.
I also want an S-curve graphic that shows the cumulative amount of work accomplished against planned. That is kind of an x/y line plot.
My question are: How easy is this to implement? Are there any add-ins libraries or packages that do this already? I am trying to keep my entire application open-source. I've seen a couple subscription services that do this type of thing, but I can't stomach the cost.
I don't mind using ajax or jquery to implement such a thing, but I would like the most elegant and maintainable solution.
Any advice or examples on how to tackle this project?
There are lots of good javascript libraries these days, but all require some effort to learn how to use. I have not found one that really is easy to use, I guess because everyone wants something different. My general experience has been the more effort you put into learning them, the more you get out.
Google has gauges: http://code.google.com/apis/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/gauge.html
Also
http://www.flotcharts.org/
http://philogb.github.com/jit/
http://www.highcharts.com/
http://www.jqplot.com/
Or really take control:
http://mbostock.github.com/protovis/
As first, see the following grid (https://www.djangopackages.com/grids/g/dashboard-applications/) on djangopackages.
Not sure if that's exactly what's asked for, but you might take a look at django-dash (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-dash).
It allows each user to make his own dashboard (from plugins available). Those dashboards can be made public.
Some screenshots (http://pythonhosted.org/django-dash/#screenshots).
It's modular and plugin based, so you need to make a plugin and widgets for every specific feature (in this particular case - the speedometer plugin and widgets for it). Each plugin/widget can include own JS/CSS when being rendered.
See the following chart usage examples:
D3.js integration examples (https://github.com/barseghyanartur/django-dash/tree/master/example/example/d3_samples).
Polychart2.js integration example (https://github.com/barseghyanartur/django-dash/blob/master/example/example/bar/).
protovis is no longer under active development, but they started a new poject: http://d3js.org/
You may choose from these packages:
https://www.djangopackages.com/search/?q=dash
I'm very curious to know how this process works. These sites (http://www.sharkscope.com and http://www.pokertableratings.com) data mine thousands of hands per day from secure poker networks, such as PokerStars and Full Tilt.
Do they have a farm of servers running applications that open hundreds of tables (windows) and then somehow spider/datamine the hands that are being played?
How does this work, programming wise?
There are a few options. I've been researching it since I wanted to implement some of this functionality in a web app I'm working on. I'll use PokerStars for example, since they have, by far, the best security of any online poker site.
First, realize that there is no way for a developer to rip real time information from the PokerStars application itself. You can't access the API. You can, though, do the following:
Screen Scraping/OCR
PokerStars does its best to sabotage screen/text scraping of their application (by doing simple things like pixel level color fluctuations) but with enough motivation you can easily get around this. Google AutoHotkey combined with ImageSearch.
API Access and XML Feeds
PokerStars doesn't offer public access to its API. But it does offer an XML feed to developers who are pre-approved. This XML feed offers:
PokerStars Site Summary - shows player, table, and tournament counts
PokerStars Current Tournament data - files with information about upcoming and active tournaments. The data is provided in two files:
PokerStars Static Tournament Data - provides tournament information that does not change frequently, and
PokerStars Dynamic Tournament Data - provides frequently changing tournament information
PokerStars Tournament Results - provides information about completed tournaments. The data is provided in two files:
PokerStars Tournament Results – provides basic information about completed tournaments, and
PokerStars Tournament Expanded Results – provides expanded information about completed tournaments.
PokerStars Tournament Leaders Board - provides information about top PokerStars players ranked using PokerStars Tournament Ranking System
PokerStars Tournament Leaders Board BOP - provides information about top PokerStars players ranked using PokerStars Battle Of Planets Ranking System
Team PokerStars – provides information about Team PokerStars players and their online activity
It's highly unlikely that these sites have access to the XML feed (or an improved one which would provide all the functionality they need) since PokerStars isn't exactly on good terms with most of these sites.
This leaves two options. Scraping the network connection for said data, which I think is borderline impossible (I don't have experience with this so I'm not sure; I've heard it's highly encrypted and not easy to tinker with, but I'm not sure) and, mentioned above, screen scraping/OCR.
Option #2 is easy enough to implement and, with some work, can avoid detection. From what I've been able to gather, this is the only way they could be doing such massive data mining of PokerStars (I haven't looked into other sites but I've heard security on anything besides PokerStars/Full Tilt is quite horrendous).
[edit]
Reread your question and realized I didn't unambiguously answer it.
Yes, they likely have a massive amount of servers running watching all currently running tables, tournaments, etc. Realize that there is a decent amount of money in what they're doing.
This, for instance, could be how they do it (speculation):
Said bot applications watch the tables and data mine all information that gets "posted" to the chat log. They do this by already having a table of images that correspond to, for example, all letters of the alphabet (since PokerStars doesn't post their text as... text. All text in their software is actually an image). So, the bot then rips an image of the chat log, matches it against the store, converts the data to a format they can work with, and throws it in a database. Done.
[edit]
No, the data isn't sold to them by the poker sites themselves. This would be a PR nightmare if it ever got out, which it would. And it wouldn't account for the functionality of these sites, which appears to be instantaneous. OPR, Sharkscope, etc. There are, without a doubt, applications running that are ripping the data real time from the poker software, likely using the methods I listed.
maybe I can help.
I play poker, run a HUD, look at the stats and am a software developer.
I've seen a few posts on this suggesting it's done by OCR software grabbing the screen. Well, that's really difficult and processor hungry, so a programmer wouldn't choose to do that unless there were no other options.
Also, because you can open multiple windows, the poker window can be hidden or partially obscured by other things on the screen, so you couldn't guarantee to be able to capture the screen.
In short, they read the log files that are output by the poker software.
When you install your HUD like Sharkscope or Jivaro etc, than they run client software on your PC. It reads the log files and updates its own servers with every hand you play.
Most poker software is similar, but lets start with Pokerstars, as thats where I play. The Poker software outputs to local log files for every action you/it makes. It shows your cards, any opponents cards that you see plus what you do. eg. which button you have pressed, how much you/they bet etc. It posts these updates in near real time and timestamps the log file.
You can look at your own files to see this in action.
On a PC do this (not sure what you do on a Mac, but will be similar)
1. Load File Explorer
2. Select VIEW from the menu
3. Select HIDDEN ITEMS so that you can see the hidden data files
4. Goto C:\Users\Dave\AppData\Local\PokerStars.UK (you may not be called DAVE...)
5. Open the PokerStars.log.0 file in NOTEPAD
6. In Notepad, SEARCH for updateMyCard
7. It will show your card numerically
3c for 3 of Clubs
14d for Ace of Diamonds
You can see your opponents cards only where you saw them at the table.
Here is a few example lines from the log file.
OnTableData() round -2
:::TableViewImpl::updateMyCard() 8s (0) [2A0498]
:::TableViewImpl::updateMyCard() 13h (1) [2A0498]
:::TableViewImpl::updatePlayerCard() 7s (0) [2A0498]
:::TableViewImpl::updatePlayerCard() 14s (1) [2A0498]
[2015/12/13 12:19:34]
cheers, hope this helps
Dave
I've thought about this, and have two theories:
The "sniffer" sites have every table open, AND:
Are able to pull the hand data from the network stream. (or:)
Are obtaining the hand data from the GUI (screen scraping, pulling stuff out via the GUI API).
Alternately, they may have developed/modified clients to log everything for them, but I think one of the above solutions is likely simpler.
Well, they have two choices:
they spider/grab the data without consent. Then they risk being shut down anytime. The poker site can easily detect such monitoring at this scale and block it. And even risk a lawsuit for breach of the terms of service, which probably disallow the use of robots.
they pay for getting the data directly. This saves a lot of bandwidth (e.g. not having to load the full pages, extraction, updates with html changes etc.) and makes their business much less risky (legally and technically).
Guess which one they more likely chose; at least if the site has been around for some time without being shut down every now and then.
I'm not sure how it works but I have an application id and a key- which you get as a gold or silver subscriber- sign up for a month and send them an email and you will get access and the API documentation.