Making fake programs is fun :) - Page 6

SirataXero · 07/05/2009, 09:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattbrad2

Btw, you guys may want to take a look at this site:

www sergiopereira com/articles/prototype.js.html#UsingAjax

Prototype has some cool AJAX wrapper classes that should help simplify the process.

Hey mattbrad!

That's an AWESOME link! That's exactly what I was looking for to learn Ajax functions! Thank you!

Lemme know if you figured it out, or if you need more help with the slider functionality... I can try to help you out on that if you still need help.

Good Luck!

kmax12 · 07/06/2009, 01:23 AM

this thread has motivated me to make my own apps. check out my tic tac toe one in the homebrew section. any advice from the people in this thread would be appreciated

murdermajig · 07/06/2009, 10:02 AM

Hey Guys, I wont be working on my app for a while, my laptop is out of commison. I broke my screen. gonna fix it

SirataXero · 07/06/2009, 01:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kmax12

this thread has motivated me to make my own apps. check out my tic tac toe one in the homebrew section. any advice from the people in this thread would be appreciated

Hey that's awesome! I'll install it to my SDK right now and let you know what I think!

Quote:

Originally Posted by murdermajig

Hey Guys, I wont be working on my app for a while, my laptop is out of commison. I broke my screen. gonna fix it

LOL. That sucks! I was out of commission for three days during the weekend (trip, so no internet) and it was harsh! Hang in there!

haha

so I just found out for sure that any website you want to access with the Ajax calls needs to support it and needs to "post" said Ajax components which can then be received by clients (i.e. your app). *SIGH*. So lame... I guess I might end up doing a "webview" widget for my app... we'll see...

davenukem · 07/06/2009, 01:30 PM

Anybody want to throw me a link teaching me how exactly to put the appsi make onto the pre sdk? Can't seem to figure it out, just want to test out the hello world app.

murdermajig · 07/06/2009, 01:44 PM

I have a second laptop (netbook) But i dont think i want to reinstall the SDK on my netbook. too cramp to work long time.

SirataXero · 07/06/2009, 01:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davenukem

Anybody want to throw me a link teaching me how exactly to put the appsi make onto the pre sdk? Can't seem to figure it out, just want to test out the hello world app.

Hey... here's a short quick tutorial:

Code:

1. open up command prompt (start -> type in "cmd")
     1a. right click and run as admin if you're on Vista
2. type cd .. until you get to the "C:/>" directory
3. Type in cd Palm/SDK/share/tutorial
     3a. This is assuming you installed the SDK directly on your C drive and not
          in a folder or in Program files
4. type in:
     
	Code:
	palm-package HelloWorld (hit enter)
palm-install com.yourdomain.helloworld_1.0_all.ipk (hit enter)
5. This SHOULD get your app loaded into the emulator, you shouldn't need to restart the emulator or basically do anything else...

If this doesn't work:

Check to see you have all your directory's correct. Change any in the command prompt that you might need to correct for your specific install case.

Let me know if that works. Post back here and tell me if it worked for you or not...

schoksi · 07/06/2009, 04:10 PM

Hey Sirata, maybe you can web scrape/screen scrape for the data you want from the site instead? I've never done it but I know friends who have had to use such techniques to get the data they needed. I don't have too much knowledge more to offer on it but I am sure there is a lot of info on the web.

SirataXero · 07/06/2009, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by schoksi

Hey Sirata, maybe you can web scrape/screen scrape for the data you want from the site instead? I've never done it but I know friends who have had to use such techniques to get the data they needed. I don't have too much knowledge more to offer on it but I am sure there is a lot of info on the web.

Hey Schoksi,

Thanks for the suggestion! I figured I might just end up doing that. I REALLY wanted to pull out the data and format it into a really nice, clean looking, Pre formatted table... but I might just end up doing it the "ghetto" way... we'll see... I'm kind of busy working right now... I'll start looking into it more later tonight. I will definitely post my progress up here for any "noob" like me who wants to try it.

Blubble · 07/06/2009, 05:23 PM

If you want to scrape pages, you will want to learn about regular expressions in JavaScript. That is a method for finding patterns in text. For example, if you could figure out that the particular piece of data you want is always formatted a certain way, you could use regular expressions to find and extract that data from the source HTML of a web page.

SirataXero · 07/06/2009, 05:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blubble

If you want to scrape pages, you will want to learn about regular expressions in JavaScript. That is a method for finding patterns in text. For example, if you could figure out that the particular piece of data you want is always formatted a certain way, you could use regular expressions to find and extract that data from the source HTML of a web page.

Well, the data I want is always in a table on the side. So are you saying, I could "scrape" the webpage, find this exact data, extract its contents and then display them with a formatting of my own choice?

Blubble · 07/06/2009, 05:53 PM

Yes. You would look for a pattern that you could match in the HTML source of the page.

Say you're looking for name of a product from a site that let's you search by model number. If for example, the product name was always contained in a table cell with a unique format, you could try to match that pattern.

<td class="someclass">Bike Helmet</td>

You could look for a pattern like <td class="someclass">*</td> and extract your text out of the piece of HTML source that matches your pattern. You need a good tutorial on regular expressions. They don't actually use an asterisk as a wildcard. There are certain codes for letters, numbers, symbols, whitespace, etc.

Another option would be to parse the DOM of a results page. If you can figure out exactly where a piece of data will show up in the DOM structure of a webpage, you can just do a getElementById (if it has a valid ID) and pull the value of the element. You can also just get to an element via it's DOM hierarchy.

murdermajig · 07/06/2009, 06:14 PM

So what your saying Blubble is that you want to view that webpage but with only certain text from the webpage, right?

Blubble · 07/06/2009, 06:42 PM

You want to view the HTML source of the page. The idea is to use either pattern matching with regular expressions or DOM (Document Object Model) techniques to analyze the HTML source to find and extract a particular piece (or pieces) of data. The best approach depends on the makeup of the particular page you are trying to scrape.

ken@weboshelp.net · 07/06/2009, 07:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SirataXero

As for WebOShelp.net... I'm not sure if you have the SDK leak or not, but if you go to:

Code:

...Palm\SDK\share\framework\javascripts

You will see a list of .js files that have a lot of information in the comments before the actual code begins. These comments are literal, detailed instructions on how to set up each function, how to call it and how to implement it into your code. If you could somehow compile all these instructions that would be AMAZING. As of right now, its sort of a hassle to go through each file to find information on which Widget you want to use and how to use it and such... I saw on WebOShelp you guys have started building a good collection of all the functions, Widgets, APIs and such for reference, but besides listing them, it doesn't do much else. So if WebOShelp could be a good reference place where all those instructions are listed and compiled ready to be searched through, that would drastically cut down coding time.

Thanks for the feedback!

We're definitely looking into doing this. However, we may end up having to rewrite a lot of it to avoid "distributing" or "reproducing" Palm-owned materials. I'll keep you guys updated.

SirataXero · 07/06/2009, 07:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blubble

Yes. You would look for a pattern that you could match in the HTML source of the page.

Another option would be to parse the DOM of a results page. If you can figure out exactly where a piece of data will show up in the DOM structure of a webpage, you can just do a getElementById (if it has a valid ID) and pull the value of the element. You can also just get to an element via it's DOM hierarchy.

Hey Blubble, thanks for all your help! I'm just about to start looking into DOMs and HTML scraping. I looked up scraping a little bit and seems to be exactly what I need! I guess knowing HTML/Java Definitely would have helped a lot before jumping right in. lol. Personally, I find it more fun to figure out exactly what I need and ask the forums for questions about things I don't know.

Thanks!

Quote:

Originally Posted by ken@weboshelp.net

Thanks for the feedback!

We're definitely looking into doing this. However, we may end up having to rewrite a lot of it to avoid "distributing" or "reproducing" Palm-owned materials. I'll keep you guys updated.

Hey Ken, I figured there might be some problems with that, but I'm sure you guys can figure it out. I really hope you're able to keep a well organized library of all the functions, that would help a LOT. Good luck!

murdermajig · 07/06/2009, 09:30 PM

web scraping tutorial
Web scraping tutorial : CodeDiesel

Blubble · 07/06/2009, 09:35 PM

That tutorial will help some, especially the firebug part. However, you will need to learn how to manipulate and parse the DOM using javascript.

SirataXero · 07/06/2009, 10:20 PM

Oh awesome! Thanks guys! I really wanna start doing this but I promised a couple people that I'd help them with their apps... so that's what i'm working on right now. >.<.

You know, the tutorial uses Firebug to inspect the code, you don't even need to do that? On firefox you can just highlight something and click "View Selection Source" and it will give you the HTML code for that item, or you can just right click anywhere and hit "View Page Source". Isn't that basically what they're using Firebug in the tutorial for?

And Blubble, yeah I noticed that I didn't quite catch the calls and specifications given to the scraping function... so I guess I have to look into that as well... YARG... soon...

>.<

Thanks for all your help guys!

Blubble · 07/06/2009, 10:27 PM

Looking at the source is fine, but if you don't understand DOM structure well, Firebug can be very helpful. I know that some of my designers at the office rely on it a lot when they are working on HTML/CSS.

07/06/2009, 01:23 AM	#102 (permalink)
kmax12 Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Chicago Posts: 316 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 32 Thanked 166 Times in 26 Posts	this thread has motivated me to make my own apps. check out my tic tac toe one in the homebrew section. any advice from the people in this thread would be appreciated
	Liked by

07/06/2009, 10:02 AM	#103 (permalink)
murdermajig Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 73 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 5 Thanked 7 Times in 6 Posts	Hey Guys, I wont be working on my app for a while, my laptop is out of commison. I broke my screen. gonna fix it
	Liked by

07/06/2009, 01:30 PM	#105 (permalink)
davenukem Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 179 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 14 Thanked 24 Times in 9 Posts	Anybody want to throw me a link teaching me how exactly to put the appsi make onto the pre sdk? Can't seem to figure it out, just want to test out the hello world app.
	Liked by

07/06/2009, 01:44 PM	#106 (permalink)
murdermajig Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 73 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 5 Thanked 7 Times in 6 Posts	I have a second laptop (netbook) But i dont think i want to reinstall the SDK on my netbook. too cramp to work long time.
	Liked by

07/06/2009, 04:10 PM	#108 (permalink)
schoksi Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 30 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 4 Thanked 2 Times in 2 Posts	Hey Sirata, maybe you can web scrape/screen scrape for the data you want from the site instead? I've never done it but I know friends who have had to use such techniques to get the data they needed. I don't have too much knowledge more to offer on it but I am sure there is a lot of info on the web.
	Liked by

07/06/2009, 05:23 PM	#110 (permalink)
Blubble Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Silicon Valley, California Posts: 1,025 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 37 Thanked 444 Times in 161 Posts	If you want to scrape pages, you will want to learn about regular expressions in JavaScript. That is a method for finding patterns in text. For example, if you could figure out that the particular piece of data you want is always formatted a certain way, you could use regular expressions to find and extract that data from the source HTML of a web page.
	Liked by

07/06/2009, 05:53 PM	#112 (permalink)
Blubble Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Silicon Valley, California Posts: 1,025 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 37 Thanked 444 Times in 161 Posts	Yes. You would look for a pattern that you could match in the HTML source of the page. Say you're looking for name of a product from a site that let's you search by model number. If for example, the product name was always contained in a table cell with a unique format, you could try to match that pattern. <td class="someclass">Bike Helmet</td> You could look for a pattern like <td class="someclass">*</td> and extract your text out of the piece of HTML source that matches your pattern. You need a good tutorial on regular expressions. They don't actually use an asterisk as a wildcard. There are certain codes for letters, numbers, symbols, whitespace, etc. Another option would be to parse the DOM of a results page. If you can figure out exactly where a piece of data will show up in the DOM structure of a webpage, you can just do a getElementById (if it has a valid ID) and pull the value of the element. You can also just get to an element via it's DOM hierarchy.
	Liked by Thanked By: SirataXero

07/06/2009, 06:14 PM	#113 (permalink)
murdermajig Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 73 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 5 Thanked 7 Times in 6 Posts	So what your saying Blubble is that you want to view that webpage but with only certain text from the webpage, right?
	Liked by

07/06/2009, 06:42 PM	#114 (permalink)
Blubble Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Silicon Valley, California Posts: 1,025 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 37 Thanked 444 Times in 161 Posts	You want to view the HTML source of the page. The idea is to use either pattern matching with regular expressions or DOM (Document Object Model) techniques to analyze the HTML source to find and extract a particular piece (or pieces) of data. The best approach depends on the makeup of the particular page you are trying to scrape.
	Liked by

07/06/2009, 09:30 PM	#117 (permalink)
murdermajig Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 73 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 5 Thanked 7 Times in 6 Posts	web scraping tutorial Web scraping tutorial : CodeDiesel
	Liked by

07/06/2009, 09:35 PM	#118 (permalink)
Blubble Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Silicon Valley, California Posts: 1,025 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 37 Thanked 444 Times in 161 Posts	That tutorial will help some, especially the firebug part. However, you will need to learn how to manipulate and parse the DOM using javascript.
	Liked by

07/06/2009, 10:20 PM	#119 (permalink)
SirataXero Member Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Rhode Island, USA Posts: 1,739 Likes Received: 15 Thanks: 381 Thanked 398 Times in 217 Posts	Oh awesome! Thanks guys! I really wanna start doing this but I promised a couple people that I'd help them with their apps... so that's what i'm working on right now. >.<. You know, the tutorial uses Firebug to inspect the code, you don't even need to do that? On firefox you can just highlight something and click "View Selection Source" and it will give you the HTML code for that item, or you can just right click anywhere and hit "View Page Source". Isn't that basically what they're using Firebug in the tutorial for? And Blubble, yeah I noticed that I didn't quite catch the calls and specifications given to the scraping function... so I guess I have to look into that as well... YARG... soon... >.< Thanks for all your help guys!
	Liked by

07/06/2009, 10:27 PM	#120 (permalink)
Blubble Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Silicon Valley, California Posts: 1,025 Likes Received: 0 Thanks: 37 Thanked 444 Times in 161 Posts	Looking at the source is fine, but if you don't understand DOM structure well, Firebug can be very helpful. I know that some of my designers at the office rely on it a lot when they are working on HTML/CSS.
	Liked by

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