Projects

When I’m not working for other people, I often get carried away with side projects and experiments. This category will include all posts related to those projects. Most of them are technical or web-related, but once in a while I’ll even do things IRL!

XooMLe Download Finally Available!

After a very long wait, a downloadable version of XooMLe is now available!

This means that you can now download XooMLe and install it on your own PHP-enabled server so that you can use it locally for integrating Google search results (and cache and spelling suggestion power) into your web-based applications.

In the near future, a ‘XooMLe In Action’ page will also be added to the site, showcasing some of the ways that people are making use of XooMLe and Google.

Namespace Modification

I’ve modified the namespace being used by XooMLe because it was conflicting with some XSLs and making them not work. The top-level namespace now looks like this;

xmlns:xoomle="https://beaulebens.com/xoomle/docs/"

Please let me know if this causes any problems for anyone.

No More HTTP Authentication

Well, it’s official. webpad 3.0 will now use integrated, session-based authentication for users, rather than HTTP Authentication. I’ve changed to this in large part to allow me to use it in CGI mode (which, incidentally, works wonderfully), so webpad is even more portable now. In fact, if you have PHP running in CGI mode, I will be reccommending that you run webpad under that mode.

With the new integrated authentication, when you hit webpad you are presented with a log in screen, where you enter a username/password as normal, then continue to the actual application.

I’m also currently looking at templating (thanks to a previous hack that Brad Choate made to webpad 2.0 which allowed it to selectively edit the contents of a file, only within certain regions (denoted by webpad tags of some sort). I will have this functionality included in the official release of webpad 3.0 Personal Edition, and it will definitely be a part of the Professional release.

Things may have been quiet, but they’re not completely dead! 🙂

Problem With Permissions

As I have previously experienced, creating files on the server using webpad can sometimes cause problems with permissions, because the resultant files are owned (on a *NIX box) by the user that Apache was running as. Since that’s not normally the same as your shell user, you can have some problems managing those files later on.

Ideally, I’d have webpad create files, then change them so that a specified user account owns/controls them, but that the Apache user would have access to them. Since I’m yet to get this working (or figure out exactly how I can do it on DreamHost), in the meantime I am just creating files or directories and immediately chmod’ing them to 777 (I know, I know, not secure etc, but the only way I can do it so that I can work with the files later.)

Anyone know a better way of doing it?

I am also considering switching away from HTTP Authentication, and using a form to log in to webpad, which might just allow me to run webpad in CGI mode on DreamHost, and thus solve user problems, because it would run as my user… will keep you posted on that though.

Blank File Bug Fixed

I’ve finally figured out a bug in the current development version of webpad that meant once in a while I’d somehow overwrite a file I had previously been working on with a blank file.

Turns out that it was because I was reloading webpad in a window which I had previously used it, so the session (containing filenames etc) was still active. When webpad loaded, it was triggering the ‘save’ operation, and saving the now-empty main window as the file I was previously working on. All I’ve done is make it so that you can’t write a blank file now — if you want to delete something, you should be using the delete operation in the file dialog anyway.

One step closer to release! Blogs are still a sticking point tho… how/what to support on Blogger.com/MovableType is the thing holding me up. Complete blosxom support is already in there, and works wonderfully – I’m using it to maintain my blogs and website. The Blogger Atom API sounds really ugly and excessively complex, but I’ll let it stabilise a little more and then have a proper look at it I think…

API Problem Fixed

Thanks to a suggestion from Bill, I found the problem that AvantBlog has been having when attempting to authenticate with the Blogger.com servers… basically they moved their servers!.

As Robert discovered in this post, the server that responds to API requests moved from plant.blogger.com to www.blogger.com, so basically I was posting authentication requests to a server that didn’t exist. This has been rectified now and it appears to be operating properly.

Enjoy your blogging folks 🙂

Problems with Blogger.com

Something appears to be wrong with Blogger‘s API server, so AvantBlog authentication is very touch-and-go. I’ve modified the program slightly so that it reports properly when it can’t connect to their server, so at least you’ll know what’s going on. Also, on suggestion from Ron, I’ve added a ‘Try Again’ link so that you can log out/log back in again and see if their servers are responding properly.

This problem appears to have been happening for the last couple days at least, so let’s just hope that Blogger sort it out soon. I wonder if their fancy new Atom API is going to be any more reliable?

If Not For The Blogs

webpad development is coming along very well, and the UI is streets ahead of version 2.0, with a collection of really useful little extras, some great new features and some bits and pieces that just make life a lot easier while using the program. If it weren’t for the blogging functionality, I’d be this close to releasing a beta version of 3.0 Personal Edition.

Incidentally, adding the functionality for the fantastic blogging application, blosxom was completely trivial, care of it’s wonderful use of the file system of the server that it’s hosted on. In effect, blosxom blogs within webpad are represented as alternate home directories, and use all the same file access operations as the normal server actions do – excellent!

Check it out and get yourself a copy of blosxom if you’re running a blog, it’s the best thing out there if you don’t mind a bit of hackery and custom mods 🙂