Is it possible to transform a rails application to a desktop application? And if yes what is the best way of doing it.
And where should I start if I just want to create an simple windows desktop application that shows a few columns from a Mysql Database and check if they have changed.
Transform in the literal sense, no, no such tech exists. However, you can make a rails app that's live on the web, or any other web application appear somewhat like a desktop application (with its own icon, and even some OS integration) by using a "Site Specific Browser"
OSX: http://fluidapp.com/
Windows (and OSX): https://mozillalabs.com/prism
I think it could be possible to use activerecord but you would need to do something different when dealing with the presentation layer. Maybe run your application using JRuby (see the gem redcar for a good example of how to implement a desktop application in Ruby/Java)
There are a few things to consider:
Do I just want this to run using a specific window manager?
Is it important for this to be cross platform?
My guess is that you would want to JRuby in conjunction with SWT and then reuse your data layer (models etc).
I think it could be done but you will have to pick and choose from some of Rails' sub-gems.
Rails, no, but Ruby can be used for this. I would take a look at JRuby for that. Write you app in Ruby but run it on java and access all the libraries it has. FXRuby is also an option.
Rhodes is supposed to be MVC and close to Rails but I don't know how close. Its intended for mobile apps though.
This won't be direct. Desktop apps coud be done using shoes which is a really great tool.
Here is a basic example:
Shoes.app :width => 300, :height => 200 do
button("Click me!") { alert("Good job.") }
end
They provide many apps examples here: http://the-shoebox.org/
And for basic examples: https://github.com/ashbb/shoes_tutorial_walkthrough
For more details see: http://shoesrb.com/
Related
Is it possible to write front-end of my application in QML and back-end in C++ and compile it somehow so that I can deploy it to a web-server like Apache or JBoss so that it is accessible from within a web browser ?
If yes, do you have any examples how to perform this ?
Thank you very much for your answers :)
I was trying to find an answer to my question on the Internet but I was not successful.
QmlWeb is a JavaScript library that is able to parse QML-code and create a website out of it using normal HTML/DOM elements and absolute positions within CSS, translating the QML properties into CSS properties.
QmlWeb is a small project started primarily by Lauri Paimen who developed it for a few years and is now a KDE project maintained by Anton Kreuzkamp.
QmlWeb of course doesn’t yet support everything Qt’s implementation of QML does, but it already supports a quite usable subset of it. It supports nearly all of the most basic QML syntax. Moreover it has support for HTML input elements (Button, TextInput, TextArea are currently supported, more to come).
Well, QmlWeb is not finished. I hope Digia help with this project to make it ready with mature features.
The javascript currently sits on top of v8 but serves the purpose of expressing complex bindings and some (preferably small) client logic. But the engine could change (http://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/2013/04/15/evolution-of-the-qml-engine-part-1/).
Like in a browser, the actual graphics are kind of orthogonal to javascript which can only interact (or instantiate) with already existing graphical objects. In a browser, the graphics are described by html/css/svg/dom, and interpreted by the web engine written in C++. In QtQuick, the graphics are written in Qml and interpreted by the qml engine (scengraph) written in C++.
The two stacks are completely different.
Exception made of the Html canvas and the Qml canvas (which almost share the same api). But those are graphics working in immediate mode (opposed to a SVG or Qml scenegraph, working in a Retained mode fashion).
That being said...
There are 3 attempts to port Qml to the web:
A Qt port to Google Nacl (never heard of it from a long time, most likely dead)
Qt port through Emscripten/asm.js (awesome project, but not viable for production, and I don't think QtQuick is even supported... might require a huge effort to be actively maintained)
QmlWeb (Javascript apis to translate Qml files and interpret those on top of the HTML5 stack). Work in progress and only a subset of the whole QtQuick ecosystem might be supported in the long term. But still a really interesting project and maybe the most promising of all three. At least, it is the youngest one, and it might get some traction from the KDE community. http://akreuzkamp.de/2013/07/10/webapps-written-in-qml-not-far-from-reality-anymore/
You might also be interested in other scenegraphs technologies sitting on top of the web stack (amino, cake.js, rapahel.js...).
Last but not least, you might be interested by Wt (http://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt).
No. You cannot compile QML, and in any form it cannot be deployed onto a Java Application server such as JBoss. Qml is strictly for creating applications to run on a local machine. It sounds like you want to build a Web Application out of HTML with some sort of backend like .Net.
Can I use OpenCV with Ruby on Rails? If so, how can I do that? Or, what resources do you recommend for that?
Thanks.
There is also an open CV gem, fwiw -- https://github.com/ruby-opencv/ruby-opencv.
Sure you can!
It just depends on what do you need as there is no "one" silver bullet.
If you want to create an online home surveillance, for example, then you would probably have least effort by writing:
C++ image-processing command-line application on top of OpenCV that would write the surveillance events and/or images to SQLite database.
Read the database directly from Rails.
For anything more complex, you'd need a more complex architecture.
Whatever you do, pick the best tools for the purpose:
Let OpenCV do what it is best at (image processing)
Let Rails to it's magic (simple, less demanding online access to some resources)
In order to link OpenCV and Ruby together, you could create a dedicated Ruby-to-C++ bridge because none of the existing ones can match diverse needs and most frameworks will do for a few specialized (i.e. designed by you) function-calls through your bridge.
This link would be a good start to pick a framework for a bridge - just go for one and see what comes out.
You could write a program using OpenCV in C++, and then just process your data with it, by using CGI (Common Gateway Interface http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface). I don't think you can bind native code to Ruby like you can do in Java (JNI)
I am planning to use yui or jquery ui as front end for native c++ applications. I found no bindings present for this purpose. Will it be feasible/possible to do this ? If it is so, then how shall i proceed? please suggest advice.thanks
#rwik - I can see your point and desire to do what you intend and I would presume it to be a wise move to be making at this point in time considering the vast facilities browsers bring to the table as well as other aspects... I know we are in September now and I have come across this pretty late, but this is also for others who have a similar problem...
As far as I know, descending from JavaScript in to C++ is pretty murky, mostly due to the heterogenous nature of Javascript engines [Rhino, Tracemonkey, Spidermonkey, V8, Caracan,Charka, etc] employed by different browsers. But there are indeed ways to do this - depending on how dirty you want to get your hands and, indeed, on your abilities...
If you were to go with Google as a browser, you should take a look at projects such as cproxyv8 - http://code.google.com/p/cproxyv8/ or v8-juice - http://code.google.com/p/v8-juice/ which both offer interesting facilities...
My preference however is with Mozilla - simply because of XML User-Interface Language (XUL) which, if you do not know, allows you to speedily create your own user interfaces by giving direct access to its layout engine. I.e., you can even do away with the browser look and have your own independent layout while still having all browser facilities at your disposal.
With respect to C++/Javascript interaction - projects should exist for all alternatives - it pays to check.
I wish you good luck if you haven't already solved this problem.
I'd recommend QT instead.
However since native C++ has nothing to do with GUI I'm going to assume you are making a library in C++. However Yui is basically just JavaScript as is jQuery. So if you're asking can a web page or script be a C++ application the answer is not really.
What you could do is create a web service which uses your C++ library and exposes an interface for your web based application to call it indirectly.
One way to accomplish this is to embed WebKit into your application and provide your custom C++ functionality via a plugin. Both the WebKit framework on OSX and the Chromium Embedded Framework on Windows allow this style of application development. This allows you to write a UI using local Javascript/HTML files without the need for a webserver.
There are no direct bindings in JQuery and YUI because these libraries run in a web browser. Thus unless you’re planning to write your own browser plugins, the integration with the C++ will happen at the webserver that serves the data to the browser.
You could feed the data from your C++ code directly into JQuery/YUI by building web services directly in C++. But you might want to build a web application that will be serving your JQuery/YUI pages and that act as user interface controller (like in the MVC pattern). Web application languages like Java, PHP, etc. all have ways to call native code. Java has JNDI and in PHP you build extensions that link to C++ code.
Hey there,
So I've been heavily focused on design/development using web technology for the last few years (php/mysql, javascript, etc), and I'm a bit hesitant to start learning C++.. At the same time, I see it as a potentially enjoyable learning experience.
To keep things brief, right now I'm developing an online app that plots out certain locations on a map, and you can sort through these locations and do a bunch of other nifty things..sorry to be vague. The point is: I don't see any real advantages of making this an actual "app" when the entire functionality of the app itself can do quite fine through the modern mobile browser..
Not to mention that, by living in a browser, it's much less proprietary
So, my question is: Is there any way to make a simple app that's basically porting the user to my site? I guess it'd be convenient that as an app, the user has a nice little icon to click on when they do need to access it..
Android development relies heavily on Java. So you are all ready on the right track.
However if you just want to make an app that brings people to your website, running javascript I am guessing, this is easy to do with android.
Android supports the webkit browser and has a view group called WebView. Your app can be nothing more than a shortcut on a desktop that opens a webview directly pointed to your website. It could add other options to point to other parts of your website like bookmarks.
WebView webview = new WebView(this);
setContentView(webview);
weview.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
webview.loadUrl("yoursiteurlgoeshere);
A lot of apps on the market are actually based around a WebView. There are other classes that allow you more control over the view, like whether links are opened in the webview or in a new browser, or whether the user is allowed to use the resize options, etc.
Welcome to Android.
There is a massive article on exactly this type of idea. It discusses a number of different things and is well worth the read if you are indeed interested in making a cross-phone web-app. It talks about an html5 facility in the works for creating such a thing as you describe, but it isn't quite universal yet.
Here is an article on making an iphone app in html5.
You can also use phonegap to port your design to andorid.
also, check out a jquery plugin calld jqtouch if you are interseted in developing touch capable applications quickly.
If you are worried about speed and the issue of internet connectivity, you can use html5 local storage features which are available on both android and itouch. Ibm has a great series on these issues and part 2 covers local storage.
No. The problem with web technology on a mobile device is the delay. You are far away from the server, so a lot of the things you can easily do with a normal client creates a very bad user experience on a mobile device. The roundtrip time is simply too large. You have to move much more functionality to the client. This client is also less powerfull, and tends to have limits on caching large elements
How is this related to C++?
There is also a C++ API which is only recently available. Google calls it the NDK (Native Development Kit). Information about it can be found here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html
I personally haven't developed using the NDK. The only real reason someone would really need to would be to write a high-performance application that can't stand the overhead of the Java JVM--which is getting more and more rare these days IMO.
As far as creating a simple app with a web container in it, see Phobos' response. That is exactly how I'd do it personally.
I'm thinking of creating an application that can use Firefox as a download manager. Is there any way to control Firefox (add downloads, start/stop downloads, etc) from an external program in C/C++?
If that is not possible, then perhaps an extension that can do that? If an extension is the only way, then how do I communicate with the extension from outside of Firefox?
You're starting with a solution, not a problem. The easier idea is to use XulRunner, the platform on which FireFox is built. You'd effectively implement your own application as a XulRunner plugin and use Necko (the network layer of XulRunner and FireFox) from there.
First of all I suggest that you familiarize yourself with developer.mozilla.org
As far as I understand, most Mozilla platform functions are available through a cross language API known as XPCOM. There's also a plugin API but it's primary aim is to visualize stuff (used by Flash, etc.).
Take a look at Gecko API. It allows third party developers to use the same technology as found in Mozilla.
For downloading files no need to use Firefox. Consider using libcurl.
Take a look at wget.