Ooyala is a feature rich video hosting platform. Something I needed recently was some way to link the data over at ooyala into a django site I’m building. So I wrote myself a library. It’s available over at github and it’s called (predictably) django-ooyala. Currently there is a management command syncooyala to pull in all the data using the Backlot Query API. These imported items are then linked to a specific URL. Finally in your templates there is a ooyala_video tag which when given the current path (via request.path) returns the <script> tags needed for it to render.

Expect some updates as I flesh it out into the front end over the next few days.

Updated (11th August): I have added in analytics support. You can now make requests for video stat’s for a given account or video. The facebook SDK has also been added with a new template tag to output the headers in your template for a given video. Remember to request whitelisting from facebook for SWF embeds to work.

Code block

from django.http import HttpResponse
from ooyala.library import OoyalaAnalytics
from ooyala.constants import OoyalaConstants as O
from ooyala.models import OoyalaItem
 
def backlot_query(request):
    req = OoyalaAnalytics(video=OoyalaItem.objects.all()[0].embed_code, \
        method=O.ANALYTIC_METHODS.VIDEO)
    ooyala_response = req.process()
    return HttpResponse(ooyala_response.toprettyxml(), mimetype="text/xml")

Update (v1.3.2) Some layout rejigging has been done, defaults added and a few more menu options for resetting/prefilling. The preferences layout has also been tidied. (July 17)

Updated (v1.2.0) I have updated this app to disable submission until all the station/date info is added. I’ve also added some more labels to show what’s been entered so far. You must make sure you’ve filled in all the preferences or else it’ll fail (Click menu>preferences). (July 16)

A few days ago I was in bed trying to sleep and I suddenly thought it would be good if there was an app to submit refunds for the tube as you come out. I had in my head the idea of a timer that would count down from 15 minutes and then alert you that you were in valid refund territory.

After I coded said timer, I pushed it live without refund submissions working. I also did a quick google to see what else there was only to discover that there was a company that released the exact same app on the iPhone about 3 months ago. Let this be a lesson that if you are about to code something as an exercise don’t go googling first or you’ll inevitably be put off because “whats the point”.

Several hours later today and it is now submitting refund applications to TFL and I get an email confirmation with the reference number. I’m very happy if incredibly tired. The app is free for now, all the others that do these on Blackberry/iOS are paid for. There doesn’t seem to be one for android yet, the guys that did the iPhone app said they where working on one way back in March or April, not quite sure what happened to it. They’re about to release the blackberry one so for now this is the only refund submission app on android Took me basically 2 days part time.

From a technical point of view this is making use of the apache http libraries to do a GET request for the TFL refund page. It parses that to grab the ASPX Viewstate variable and session cookies. Then it grabs the data from the main activity and combines that with the data stored in shared preferences for the form variables. The POST request is processed and the response parsed again to find the reference number. That’s then displayed via a Toast call. Fairly simple, having to deal with the viewstate crap was probably the most annoying part, that and debugging the actual POST.

I have had this code sitting around for a while and I thought why not knock out the news code and release it and then just continue to work on it and update it. As the saying goes, release early, release often! I think it’ll be easy enough to add in reviews using the same sort of code to get the data and just re-using the show layout. This particular app was a lot more complicated than the django-reference thing, so here is some of what I’ve learned… You can get this in the marketplace now. Bug reports are expected & indeed welcome.

Warning! Technical crap follows.

It takes a bit of time to get your head around it, essentially you subclass the ArrayAdapter class with a container class to hold your list view elements. The ArrayAdapter is a templated class so you first need another class that is actually going to hold your data. This is were you’ll need to create a class for your data and then instantiate the ArrayList with this type. The code to hold my news post data is very simple:

Code block

package eu.jaymz.spinemag;
 
import android.util.Log;
 
public class NewsPost {
    private String title;
    private String description;
    private String date;
    private String author;
 
    public String getTitle() {
        return title;
    }
    public void setTitle(String title) {
        this.title = title;
    }
    public String getDescription() {
        return description;
    }
    public void setDescription(String description) {
        this.description = description;
    }
    public String getAuthor() {
        return author;
    }
    public void setAuthor(String author) {
        this.author = author;
    }
    public String getDate() {
        return date;
    }
    public void setDate(String date) {
        this.date = date;
    }
 
}

Then in my main activity class I cast the templated ArrayList to a NewsPost class:

ArrayList<NewsPost> spr_news = new ArrayList<NewsPost>();

With the data structure sorted I need a method in my ListView activity to actually fill in the ArrayList with data. This is very typically something along the lines of the following, here I read the JSON data from a URL, decode it and assign it to the class members, finally appending it to the ArrayList from earlier.

Code block

private void getPosts() {
        try {
            URL url = new URL("url for data");
            BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(url.openStream()));
            String str = in.readLine();
            in.close();
            spr_news = new ArrayList<NewsPost>();
            JSONObject json = new JSONObject(str);
            JSONArray posts = json.getJSONArray("posts");
            for(int x=0; x < posts.length(); x++) {
                JSONObject post_data = new JSONObject(posts.get(x).toString());
                NewsPost post = new NewsPost();
                post.setTitle(post_data.get("title").toString());
                post.setDescription(post_data.get("description").toString());
                post.setDate(post_data.get("date").toString());
                post.setAuthor(post_data.get("author").toString());
                spr_news.add(post);
                //Log.d("NEW", "added a post - "+post.getTitle());
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
 
        }
        runOnUiThread(setPosts);
    }

With all the above in place the code is at the point where there is now an array full of structured data for our ArrayAdapter to show. To do this the ArrayAdapter needs subclassed to work with our earlier NewsPost classes members:

Code block

private class NewsAdapter extends ArrayAdapter<NewsPost> {
 
        private ArrayList<NewsPost> items;
 
        public NewsAdapter(Context context, int textViewResourceId, ArrayList<NewsPost> items) {
                super(context, textViewResourceId, items);
                this.items = items;
        }
        @Override
        public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {
                View v = convertView;
                if (v == null) {
                    LayoutInflater vi = (LayoutInflater)getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
                    v = vi.inflate(R.layout.post, null);
                }
                NewsPost o = items.get(position);
                if (o != null) {
                    /* hmm, this looks proper ugly */
                    TextView title = (TextView)v.findViewById(R.id.post_title);
                    TextView description = (TextView)v.findViewById(R.id.post_description);
                    TextView date = (TextView)v.findViewById(R.id.post_date);
                    TextView author = (TextView)v.findViewById(R.id.post_author);
 
                    description.setText(o.getDescription());
                    title.setText(o.getTitle());
                    author.setText(o.getAuthor());
                    date.setText(o.getDate());
                }
                return v;
        }
    }

All this code is really doing is loading the layout resource XML for our row and binding the data from the array elements members to views within the XML. Finally we need to tell the list view to update. Typically the above code has all been kicked off and ran in a thread, populating the ListView when it’s actually finished without stalling the phone itself.

Code block

for(int i=0;i<spr_news.size();i++) {
    n_adapter.add(spr_news.get(i));
}
m_ProgressDialog.dismiss();
n_adapter.notifyDataSetChanged();

All the above is doing is updating the ArrayAdapter and adding our ArrayList elements to display. We then signal that the data has changed which will cause the ListView itself to update. Simple! Again, I must make the point of how verbose this all feels when I’m coding in python all day. I’m sure it needs a good refactor to now but I’m a lot more familiar with the way android works with layouts and indeed strong typing

If you go to the blogs section on vans as it stands it will pull in an XML feed of all the current blogs and display them on one giagantic page. It can take a fair bit of time to load and its hard to see how each different blog gets displayed as its really one big list. For now it’s not so easy to pull in bits of content from the various blogs without someone having to mess with files or copy & paste, with the build in django I wanted to create a much cleaner & easier way to work with this content.

For this I introduce django-blogger, a django application which will integrate Google Blogger blogs via their RSS feeds. As it is it will import the blogs for a given profile id and then sync up with the latest data via their RSS feeds. These can be enabled easily for your given blogs. When you first install it comes with some admin actions which will all ow you to sync up the blogs manually all at once. There is also a management command, syncblogs, which is more suited to scheduling an update via cron (if you’re going to use cron you might be interested in django-crontab).

This works on the feeds and not an archive, so it doesn’t require authentication, just access to the feed URL. A basic template is included to show how to render out the blog posts & blogs as a menu, I override these myself for the format I need. The app itself now lets me pull content from any of the blogs and use it within the rest of the django based site cleanly & easily. Rather than directly reading and displaying via the feed URL I’m creating actual objects for each post and blog so it’s easily extendible also, say to return posts in various formats or pulling images from each blog post to create blog galleries automatically.

The code is available from GitHub.

I was quite happy with the random scatter effect as different pools of colour made their way through the canvas space. I thought it would be a nice addition to add in some basic boundary conditions so I added a quick polygon class and added in an array of those. A few functions later and I could click around the screen defining new polygons. Using the well known Jordan Curve theorem we can tell if the walker is currently within an arbitrary polygon (without holes of course). Here’s an example video of it in action. Heart’s seem pretty easy to draw compared to anything crazy complex and give a good idea of the effect:

Europe for me as a young child was world war Europe. I’d always thought of the many different countries as totally separate and thought the huge amount of cultural difference a difficult thing to placate, especially growing up in Northern Ireland where even people in the same country hated each other.

Then one evening my parents put on BBC1 and bemoaned that “Eurovision” was coming on. I’d no idea what it was and after being told “it’s a singing competition for countries in Europe” I was significantly intrigued enough to demand to watch it. After a few hours I’d decided that this programme alone was responsible for the prevention of world war 3 and began to see Europe more like this:

The reason I believe what many consider a giant waste of time to be the reason we’re not all living under the fourth Reich is simple. If you actually watch the show it’s hard to not get a sense of communal euro-love throughout.Each country might be several million people but it all feels like each country is a single entity standing there at this casual party where you’re encouraged to be a bit crazy. I feel like the idea we all get together once a year to play some music and get to know each other some more does actually help cohesion. I like eurovision more for the unique window into Europe than the music. The music’s always been a little hard to love but recently there’s been a lot more diversity to the musical selection and this year there were more than a few standout songs for me.

But just before that, if you are still in doubt as to why watch Eurovision you should also realise it serves as a giant display of the amazing female talent that makes Europe such a kick ass bunch of countries. I am reminded about what is so awesome about being in an EU member state and being allowed to travel around it freely. If I wanted, I could get on a train tomorrow and go move to Germany to work. Damn I love the concept of open borders.

I suppose I should mention at least a few tunes, firstly, Turkey went out there again this year and dropped a rock number for their entry. They had a similiarly themed tune last year which I quite liked. This is their 2010 entry and it’s worth a listen all on its own.

Bosnia really surprised me too with their entry, again it’s fairly rocky. It reminds me of Azerbaijan’s entry in 2008. I’m not quite sure why but I really like the non-english accent english vocal sound. Most probably hate it but there’s something about the vocals I like in this.

The actual winning entry this year was from Germany, which is kind of a surprise as they’re one of the “big four”, they normally tend to get shunned as part of the “establishment”. As much as it pains me to admit it, I do find this song irritatingly catchy, and the girl, Lena, is proper gorgeous. She also comes across as a cooky crazy girl, which is good…

A final honourable mention to Denmark, who’s song this year put me in mind of Sting. This I could imagine in some 90′s montage shot with windswept hair.

The UK ended up in last place, the bloke singing did seem to be a genuinely nice guy but the song itself was utter shite. Ireland played an experienced hand, having a woman that had previously won it for us before. It was pretty boring, run of the mill fare although made a welcome change from the now usual joke entry. Hell, I think this was our first final in 3 years. If you are in the mood for old fashioned europop cheese then do checkout Greece’s entry “Opa!”. I thought for a minute Bruce Willis had entered.

Considering that the competition is going to be in Berlin in 2011 I’m actually tempted to make my way over there. I have to go see it live at lease once in my life I think. Huzzah for Eurovision, may it long continue. Because if it’s not on, we’re probably at fucking war.

Basically, all I wanted was a more dedicated browser for the django docs. The content there is excellent so I quickly knocked together an application that lets you jump to major sections, set a page zoom by default and switch version easily. All in all it only took a few hours of development and thanks to the approval procedure it’s already available to install.

It’s a glorified web view but it’s a start point and its at least out there now. I’m getting a lot more used to the dev process now on android. The total code for this app weighs in around 400 lines – around 80 of those being XML to define the layout and strings used. The main activity class then manipulates the XML defined webview component to react to the (again XML) menu. My main constructor method looks like this:

Code block

@Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        Resources res = getResources();
 
        version = res.getString(R.string.default_version);
        base_url = res.getString(R.string.url_base);
 
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);
        webview = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.webview);
 
        webview.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
        webview.setWebViewClient(new DjangoWebClient());
 
        final View zc = webview.getZoomControls();
        FrameLayout mContentView = (FrameLayout) getWindow().getDecorView().findViewById(android.R.id.content);
        mContentView.addView(zc, ZOOM_PARAMS);
        zc.setVisibility(View.GONE);
 
        setZoom();
        loadDocs();
    }

The remainder of the methods are basically just reacting to the menu choices and directing the webview url appropriately. All in all quite simple.

In the end it’s easier to just code my own. It makes use of the excellent REST api provided by Ben Dodson. Creating such an extension is trivial. You can make your life a bit easier if you just include jquery from the google ajax api’s. Then its really just a collection of a few html files (in this case just the one popup.html). All my HTML is doing is making an AJAX request for the JSON data from Ben’s api. That comes back and it simply renders out a few div’s with the colors set and based on the status a unicode entity to add some fun to it.

The method of making extensions on chrome really is a breeze and the documentation is plentiful, so hats off to google yet again for making me happy to be an open source, linux loving  developer. The extension is now in the chrome gallery and available here.

Working with android on linux has been a total pleasure. Mostly. I’m still getting re-used to the verbosity of java compared to my day-to-day python but the experiance has been a good one so far. I’ve basically been learning by looking at the sample apps supplied combined with a lot of googling and reading of android dev forums. There is a real wealth of documentation out there and there’s an absolute ton of general java code to solve most problems. This is where I’m at about a week into it (spending a couple of hours every few days on it).

The HTTP posts are working now as is uploading a camera shot, you can store user/passwords and then it’ll do the form posts with that data. For now I have it just “logging” in to a dummy setup on my own server – that side is just some PHP for now. The real backend runs python (django), for now its just easier to run that data through some PHP on my blog server. The data for the views comes via a JSON array, that data is served up via python and is essentially just a REST interface to the TIA area. I’m mainly concentrating on just learning my way around the SDK but already I’m seeing that theres a lot of power in combining the android platform with django (and maybe django-pistons on top) to create rather powerful connected mobile apps.

Anyway, for sunday style coding sessions I tend to like just zoning out with a pizza and a bottle of pepsi max. I don’t rate pizza hut and papa johns don’t deliver here so dominos is my preferred major pizza chain retailer. Anyone that’s ever bought a pizza from them will know that they’re fucking expensive! It can easily run you £16+ for a “large” pizza. But only a total internet noob would order straight up without checking out the many voucher sites. I say many, I only ever check retailmenot.com (or voucherhub as its UK site is known). This gem just got me the pizza + more for less than the actual pizza SGBLFENR.

It can seem a bit of a waste but you might as well have the money than dominos. And if you’re a social type that has someone else in the house you can be all sharing and get a warm glow inside.