Ajax Magazine

Socket.IO Real-time Web Application Development Book Reviewed

2013-04-20T08:13:07Z

Last night I finished reading Socket.IO Real-time Web Application Development by Rohit Rai, the book is 140 pages published by Packt publishing. The book could be interesting for NodeJS beginners, interested to get started using a real world applications such as the chat app. I used the kindle edition of the book, and finished reading the whole book in about 15min (kindle estimation time was 9min). So don’t be fooled with the 140 pages, as it’s mostly sample code followed by line by line explanation, very straightforward.

The book started with a brief history of Real Time web applications, followed by the applications of real-time web in gaming, social media, and business apps. Chapter two, getting started with NodeJS, and there are only wiki links provided to install the packages if you don’t have it already. Then the most common hello world sample code, deeply explained, how to routing requests, usage of http methods, creating your own modules, and serving files. Then finally ExpressJS is introduced briefly, which is the most widely used NodeJS Framework. This time no wiki links to learn more, just “refer to the vast documentation available online, or other NodeJS books”, for a moment I thought the book was about something else.

Chapter three and four are a step by step real-time chat application development, which are probably the only interesting chapters in the book that also introduce jQuery and Socket.IO. By the end of chapter four, you will be able to create a chat app, with registration, public and private rooms, etc. Chapter five give a quick look at the Socket.IO protocol, and how it works. I would refer you instead to the http://socket.io website to read more about it. Chapter six provides steps to deploy and scale your real-time web application, using HAProxy, and the node cluster. Finally a distributed database is introduced (Redis) about the end of the book, I would prefer introducing all the necessary tools in the beginning then showing how it can be used.

Overall the book is just good, the chat application code is very well explained, two parts that I find missing the installation and a clear overview of the architecture of real-time web applications.

Our rating is : 2/5
Order : Socket.IO Real-time Web Application Development from Amazon.

Tabula, online PDF to CSV conversion

2013-04-05T08:26:04Z

One of the problems that many Open Government Data projects faces is the availability of tons of old documents in PDF format, which is not open and reusable format. Yesterday, Mozilla announced Tabula, a new tool to help liberate tables trapped in PDFs. Do not confuse with “Tabula” the lebanese salad

Tabula online demo is just amazing, to use it simply make a rectangular selection over a table on the PDF pages. That’s it!

There are obviously many limitations since it’s very new solution, for example Tabula only works on text-based PDFs, not scanned documents. however the core features of Tabula are already great, and could help making lots of old documents reusable ! Released under a MIT License.

Sources : https://github.com/jazzido/tabula

Js-Sequence-Diagrams, Turns text into UML sequence diagrams

2013-03-25T22:02:49Z

Js-Sequence-Diagrams is a new javascript library to turn text into vector UML sequence diagrams. The library uses Jison to parse the text, and Raphaël to draw the image. The result is just amazing as you can edit and see diagrams changes accordingly.

Turn WordPress into a Mobile App Powered by Ajax

2013-03-11T18:07:48Z

On the wpmu.org, Harley Alexander wrote a great tutorial on turning wordpress into a mobile to-do application powered by Ajax. He used WordPress to create a simple TODO application by creating a custom theme optimized for mobile devices. You can check the Demo page (username: user, password: notes) where you can see and play with the created application, or you can download the source theme, and install it yourself.

WordPress is a good starting point because it provides a plethora of APIs for us to leverage. We’ve got Authentication, User Roles, Sanitisation, and Content Types out-of-the-box, to name a few. We don’t have to worry about admin screens. If you’re creating a complex app, you don’t even have to worry about meta boxes, taxonomies, or dealing with image upload.

Introducing Magix Illuminate, Open Source Ajax Framework for Mono

2013-03-09T19:52:07Z

Magix Illuminate is an open source web application framework for Mono and .Net. The framework is built upon active events, which is a much better polymorphism and encapsulation mechanism than traditional OOP, and hence helps you create much more solid, yet flexible and agile code. Magix is licensed as permissive open source/free software under the free software license of MIT License.

The video below is about hyper lisp, the front-end Magix programming language, where everything is a lambda, possibly sent between servers, effectuating map reduce. It also demonstrates how to polymorphistically override an active event to go to another server.

The second video is an introduction about the active event design pattern, conceptually, which is the facilitator in magix. active events is for magix, what the url was for the web. it is really nothing but a simple design pattern, yet still so powerful. Magix is Magic !

To use Magix you will need Mono, Mono Develop and db4o installed on your system. Below some useful links about Magix :

Download Magix from : http://code.google.com/p/magix-illuminate-2/

Web Cryptography API on Securing JavaScript

2013-02-28T11:19:54Z

One of the latest development for a more secure JavaScript, is the Web Cryptography API by the W3C. The latest working draft released on January 8th, 2013, describes a JavaScript API for performing basic cryptographic operations in web applications, such as hashing, signature generation and verification, and encryption and decryption. Additionally, it describes an API for applications to generate and/or manage the keying material necessary to perform these operations. Uses for this API range from user or service authentication, document or code signing, and the confidentiality and integrity of communications.

Some Web Cryptography API Use Cases have been developed to represent some of the set of expected functionality that may be achieved by the Web Cryptography API. Examples include Banking Transactions, Video services, Code Sanctity and Bandwidth Saver, Encrypted Communications via Webmail, and Off The Record Real Time Messaging.

According to the working group, the expected Candidate Recommendation is scheduled for August 2013. The Web Cryptography API is actually a working draft, and you are encouraged to send your comments or even join the working group.

HexagonalJS, Single Page Apps Clean Architecture

2013-02-22T19:54:19Z

This week a new JavaScript “idea” have been released, HexagonalJS, a Non-framework approach to JavaScript apps – it’s not even a library. Jan Filipowski explained the basic idea behind this library, and the philosophy behind it :

Business logic is software’s heart and have to be exposed properly.
Business logic is pure: uses only objects that represents domain in domain-valid state.
Client-side app is core of whole project, should be implemented as first.
Server-side API development should be driven by client-side needs.
Client-side and server-side are separated.
Both layers implements MVC.

HexagonalJS is not a framework according to its author, it’s mostly an architectural style adapted to JavaScript apps. The examples already available might give you a better idea on what is HexagonalJS is all about.

SVG.JS Lightweight library for manipulating and animating SVG.

2013-02-22T18:58:19Z

SVG.JS is a lightweight JavaScript library for manipulating and animating SVG. SVG.js size is only 5k gzipped, it came with an easy readable uncluttered syntax. Animating elements is very much the same as manipulating elements, the only difference is you have to include the animate() method. Thanks to its modular structure, the library could be easily extended, and there are some available plugins such as Shapes, Easing, import raw SVG data, make elements draggable…

// create svg drawing paper
        var draw = svg('paper');
        // create image
        var image = draw.image('images/shade.jpg');
        image.size(600, 600).move(0, -150);
        // create text
        var text = draw.text('SVG.JS');
        text.move(300, 40).fill('#fff');
        text.font({
          family: 'Source Sans Pro',
          size: 180,
          anchor: 'middle',
          leading: 1
        });
        // mask image with text
        image.maskWith(text);

The code above is the the exact same code used to create the masked header at the top of home page of the library. With svg.js you have all the power of vector graphics at pocket size. See it in action here, Sources available on github https://github.com/wout/svg.js

appMobi’s HTML5 Development Tools Division Acquired by Intel

2013-02-22T14:02:54Z

Ongoing Relationship Promotes AppMobi’s Cloud Services

In a press release published February 21, 2013, Intel announced the acquisition of appMobi’s HTML5 developer tools and build system and hired the tools-related technical staff. appMobi continues as a strong, high growth company, operating its existing mobileapp cloud services business.

The agreement between the companies establishes a relationship which leveragesthe tight integration of the HTML5 development tools, now owned and managed by Intel, and appMobi’s cloud services, which appMobi will continue to provide todevelopers.

Developers who currently use appMobi’s tools will not be impacted in any way, other than a one-time re-registration the first time they use the Intel version of thetools.

appMobi now becomes a “Pure Play” cloud services company, focused on delivering cross platform solutions for mobile app engagement and monetization on allplatforms – native iOS, Android, Windows 8, and of course HTML5 on desktop andmobile. With this agreement, Intel and appMobi demonstrate their commitment to the continuing deployment, improvement, and ultimate success of HTML5.

Using YConnect with Node.js and YQL

2013-02-21T20:36:10Z

Ryuichi Okumura have written an interesting piece on using YConnect with Node.js and YQL. YConnect is a new authorization system that is compatible with OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect, released last November by Yahoo! Japan.

YConnect anticipates client-side applications such as native applications and can support many cases of use. This time, I would like to introduce examples that uses UserInfo API, supplied by YConnect, from Node.js and YQL.