Has anyone had any luck using ColdFusion as a way to collect data via streaming APIs?
i.e. - https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-api
I know the best option is to use an app that literally sits on the server monitoring these portals. Just curious if anyone has done anything using CF yet.
Aaron Longnion built refynr.com using CF9. It's a service that collects users' Twitter streams based on supplied criteria. I imagine he's down something like you describe.
However, I'd look into the new web socket functionality built into ColdFusion 10 and see if that makes consuming streaming APIs any easier.
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/coldfusion10/
If you know a bit of Java, it may not be too difficult to use Twitter4J, and build an event gateway for your CF app to consume the stream.
If you want to go the web socket route, see: Twitter + HTML5 webSocket API
Related
Is it possible to communicate from a web browser(Loaded an HTM page from server) to an application running in the same server using AJAX. Need to send the request from browser using a button click and update the page with responses received from one another application running in the same server machine?
I am using HTML pages to create website and not using any PHP or ASP like server side scripting. In server machine data are manipulated using a C++ application.
I think you can use any sort of Javascript functions to do that. But you might need to use jQuery or similar frameworks to make your live easier. You might need to search for "Comet Programming" to know exactly how to do 2-way communication between client and server
Updated:
Well, this kind of stuff requires you to read a lot (if you have not already known). Basically, what you need is a server that can do long-polling (or eventsource, websockets). There are many open-source ones that might help you to get started. I can list a several good ones here. There are a lot more
http://www.ape-project.org/
http://cometd.org/
http://socket.io/
http://code.google.com/p/erlycomet/
http://faye.jcoglan.com/
So after you have the comet server up and running you will need to setup the client side (probably Javascript). For those listed projects, most of them come with the client side code to interact with the server (Except for erlycomet). Therefore, you can just use the examples provided and run a quick prototype. If you want to use your raspberry pi, you can use nodejs which provide a lot of ease for dealing with real-time communication (socket.io, faye). And lately, http://www.meteor.com/
I would think of the problem this way: you want to provide a web front end to an existing c++ application. To achieve this you need to think about how your web server communicates with your c++ application. Communication between the browser and web server can be thought of as a separate problem - as you say AJAX calls can be used, or maybe have a look at websockets.
Once you have your request in the web server you need to communicate it to the C++ application (and/or visa versa). This can be done a number of ways, e.g. sockets or RPC. I found this question here which has some good advice.
We're about to start a new project and I've been looking at some of the new web technologies. We want to build a RESTful api which a client can access. To date we've been using python with django/flask to build the api and using jquery for the front end.
I've read quite a bit on javascript frameworks such as emberjs and angular, as well as nodejs solutions like express, meteor and derby. I really like the idea that a site should 'auto update' when the model changes.I'm aware that there are some libraries like gevent which can help facilitate socket level communication, but it seems to be more of a patch than an elegant solution.
Ideally, I don't want to give up a proven technology, ie writing server code in python (or php,ruby whatever) for building my whole app on nodejs. Having a RESTful API is important since we want our services to be open and accessible.
Would it be a bad idea to have 2 servers and 1 client? 1 traditional api server communicating with a javascript framework on the client. Then also run a nodejs server alongside the api server which can somehow talk to the api and if it finds updates, passes it along to the client.
We want to build a RESTful api which a client can access.
Ideally, I don't want to give up a proven technology, ie writing server code in python (or php,ruby whatever) for building my whole app on nodejs.
Then you should probably go with Rails and Ember.js. I'll quote eviltrout (co-founder of discourse) which is build on ember and rails:
One amazing side effect of a rich client side app is you end up with a battle tested API. Our app has consumed our own API since day one, so we know it works.
If we want to create a native client for Android or iOS, it would be a lot easier because we already speak JSON fluently. If people want to build services that use Discourse, they won’t have to result to screen scraping. It’s a huge win for us and the developers that use our platform. 1
However you should keep in mind that ember is as of to date still a very young framework (rc3 v1.0.0).
I don't know what sort of application you are building (in respect to why you would want to use node) How to decide when to use Node.js?
As mentioned here
https://github.com/blog/1174-auto-updating-comments
What is the technology behind this? If I've to add this feature in a Django powered web app, what should I use and study?
Looking at network tab it looks like they (at least with chrome) are using HTML5 Server Sent Events.
So practically the browser subscribes to a event stream and the web server just sends messages back.
I am not an expert but I guess on the server side you need to be able to keep an open connection that streams the events to the client.
I found an implementation of SSE for python here: https://github.com/niwibe/sse and a django implementation on top of that: https://github.com/niwibe/django-sse
I did not use them (yet) on any production so I suggest them only as study / poc material :)
I am looking on advice on how best to approach a new project I need to develop. From the outset I must add, I have 0 experience with Web development on any level.
What I need to do is provide a web interface through the browser which will communicate with a server back end. The data retrieved will be sourced from either a DB or from another source - external device which the server itself will communicate with via IP. The data retrieved from the external device will always be a string format of n length (non unicode) and the DB data will mostly be strings and numbers with the odd blob thrown in (storing a picture). The communication will always go from the Client (web browser) to the Server. I don't believe that the server would need to instigate the comms.
I have Delphi XE, so started looking at using a REST server for communication and I think that seems to be OK. However, from what I can see, I need to create HTML web pages to "render" the data on the web browser. Is that true? Can I use the IW components with a REST server? If so, I'm not sure how to get the data to/from the browser UI. Am I better of investigating Ruby on Rails perhaps? From what I read on a different thread in here, it's based on MVC and some other areas which I feel, design wise, would fit how I would create the application (I was planning on creating the app based on the MVP or similar design pattern).
I think REST makes the most sense, so if the IW components can't be used, are there any 3rd party products I can use which would let me design "pretty" UI html. Given I don't know java script, would that be a stumbling block with REST too.
Thanks and hopefully I have provided enough information.
Thanks
Jason
Will a human being be responsible for typing the data retrieved from your external device into a web page?
If so, and you have no web development experience, Intraweb is definitely the way to go for Delphi programmers wanting to build a web application without learning new skills. For additional components to create a prettier UI I suggest using TMS Software's Intraweb Component Pack Pro.
If you don't need a human being to manually type in this data then you don't need Intraweb at all. Instead you would write a client application which presumably interrogated your external device for the data and then transmitted it to the REST server. Look at the documentation you've used to build your REST server and it should have a section on how to build a REST client.
You can build an ISAPI module with delphi that does the job, or include a HTTP server right into you executable with Indy, ICS or Synapse.
ISAPI will give you the freedom to choose Apache or IIS and give you all their power this way. Embeded HTTP server will give you a nice small application in which you control all ascpects of how it works.
Yes go with REST as it is simple and clean. All you need is to think and design the API (functions that your server will support). You can bind the APIs to the URL schema thus using the REST principle. I would do it simply like this.
A client makes a request. You show some form of GUI (load or render a HTML page with possible javascript)
User makes an action, you call appropriate API (or the user does it directly).
Show the user some result
Just guide the user process through a series of API calls until the result is made
You can use plain HTML and then add javascript if needed (jquery) or you can use ExtJS from Sencha which makes building a nice GUI a lot easier and is very well structured.
I would not use any "WYSIWYG" web tools. Plain old HTML written by your favorite editor is still the king in my opinion.
Do you think it would be possible to embed a HTTP server inside a Google Chrome extension?
I've seen other Google Chrome extensions execute native code and apparrently they do it by using NPAPI, but I have no idea what that is. And it's really freaking me out, as I'm no C++ expert or anything like that. So I feel a little stuck now and that's why I'm asking for help.
Specifically, I want to create an extension for Chrome with features similar to Opera Unite. For those who don't know what I'm talking about: Opera Unite is basically a zero-conf web server bundled with the browser. I don't want to use it for the same things Opera does, but I like the concept.
I was thinking about using something like node.js inside the browser to create a simple web interface to control some stuff in the browser. Think of it as a remote control for the browser. If node.js isn't possible I'd like to use lighthttpd or something similar. The technology really doesn't matter as long as it allows me to receive commands over HTTP.
But how do I take an existing web server and make a NPAPI plugin out of it?
Clarification: I'd like any browser to be able to communicate with my extension. Especially I want mobile devices like Android or the iPhone to be able to remote control the browser. Is there any other way to accomplish that except with a HTTP server?
Another update: I think the easiest way to do this would be to use a relay server on the web like Pusher or some self-created service. But I don't like this approach because it requires constant internet access and because it's a paid service.
Thank you all!
If you want to do a remote control for the browser, would something like HTML5 WebSockets work for you?
http://www.html5rocks.com/tutorials/websockets/basics/
You can have an external "remote" server that your extension listens to via WebSockets. If you want to host a webserver via extensions. You would need to use NPAPI, there are many C++ libraries out there (Google search) that can do a simple webserver. But I would rather use WebSockets communicate to an external server which will provide you anything you want.
But if you insist, you would need to learn C++, NPAPI, there are many examples online regarding NPAPI.
Here is another web server implemented with chrome.socket: https://github.com/kzahel/web-server-chrome. The server example linked to in chrome-app-samples is actually really buggy and will lock up if you e.g. hold down Ctrl-R on a page served by it.
Here is info on making a web-server in a Chrome app:
https://developers.google.com/live/shows/7320022-5001