Confessions of a Programmer

10 / 04 / 2013 22:48

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 17:49:07 -0400

OK, might be an idea to start writing some goals for this application, before I get sucked into a black hole of endless development.

I can get a bit carried away sometimes.

10 / 04 / 2013 21:47

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:52:42 -0400

Success! Just did a quick test of the IMAP functionality in PHP. Everything looks pretty straightforward so far. Now I know it’s possible, it’s time to start planning out the application.

10 / 04 / 2013 20:47

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 15:54:03 -0400

Project time!

I have a plan. A grand plan. Basically I want to create a web app for my buddy Raz which will completely encapsulate his day-to-day business activities from a single point. Something along the lines of Salesforce, but more customised to his (and eventually my own) needs.

The first step, though, is to work out how to do webmail. It’s not that I want to create something that replaces, say, Outlook. More that I want something to work alongside Raz’s standard email application to organise important emails on the web. I want Raz to be able to select a client from his database, and view the entire email conversation history with that client.

Time to get reading.

06 / 04 / 2013 01:19

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 20:12:55 -0400

Database design is already getting ridiculously complex. So many relationships it’s looking like a piece of modern art.

Each user has multiple photo albums, which can be liked or commented on. Each photo within the album can also be liked or commented on. The same will need to be done for videos, and pretty much any other content.

The DBAs at Facebook must be mental…

06 / 04 / 2013 00:11

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 19:13:02 -0400

Interesting. I just had a quick read-up on foreign keys in MySQL. Turns out they can be implemented, but only using InnoDB tables (not the standard MyISAM).

Definitely worth looking into. I expect this site to have a shit-bunch of data being stored, so anything to help keep the integrity will help.

06 / 04 / 2013 00:03

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 19:05:03 -0400

This is an interesting conundrum. Do I separate user information into two tables - one for the basic info and one for profile data; or do I just stick it all in one table.

There’s a voice nagging in the back of my head that I should split the data, but that seems like it would require lots of unnecessary JOIN queries in the application.

Seems to be a case of optimisation vs. security.

05 / 04 / 2013 23:28

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 18:29:00 -0400

Just started on the database design. Obviously things are going to be changed along the way, but it helps to get a good start on these things.

05 / 04 / 2013 22:34

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 17:46:00 -0400

It’s Friday night. I’ve had a beer, and I’m ready to code.

It’s been an intense week with all of the OI Community, and after spending the day with a young mum whose daughter has OI, I’m now more convinced then ever that we need to set up a proper online support network. The information just isn’t readily available for new parents right now.

In terms of coding, it’s a hefty-sized project. Aside from all of the social networking features, there is also the issue of classifying users. Do we even need to classify them?

31 / 03 / 2013 15:18

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 10:19:31 -0400

Revoked Permissions now enabled.

Now I need a new task…

31 / 03 / 2013 15:04

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 10:05:31 -0400

Basic logout complete. I still need to add code to completely revoke permissions as well (as per Facebook T&Cs).

Should be fairly straightforward…

31 / 03 / 2013 14:43

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:45:43 -0400

Happy Easter everybody!

I’ve almost written the basics of the OAuth module. Just need to write the logout method, and then I’ll have a working Facebook authentication library. After that, I’m not sure if I’ll integrate Twitter yet, or move onto something else for a while.

25 / 03 / 2013 22:56

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 18:58:04 -0400

Scrapped the previous attempt at FB OAuth. Gone back to the basics outlined in the Facebook developers page.

Near as I can tell, it does everything I need (assuming I’ve understood how it works).

25 / 03 / 2013 21:00

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:03:36 -0400

Constructor written. Now I’m onto the getUser() function. The FB SDK has this function checking if a user object has already been created. If not, it calls a function called getUserFromAvailableData, which, if I read correctly, tries to get the user info from whatever data it has available (access token, signed request…).

I think for now we can get away with just using the access token, but we’ll see.

I’m not looking forward to debugging this. Already we’re getting into spaghetti code…

25 / 03 / 2013 20:18

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 16:21:58 -0400

Interesting so far. The constructor sets the app ID and secret before attempting to get a session variable called ‘state’…

25 / 03 / 2013 20:00

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 16:08:53 -0400

Wired in for tonight’s task. Start development of an OAuth2.0 library for PopMVC. We need to be able to log in with (at least) facebook and twitter accounts, maintain the session, and link either account to a user profile.

The Facebook SDK provides a couple of base classes to work with, but I need to include all of their function into a single OAuth library.

Basically it needs to come down to calling a single function to check if a user is logged in etc. That function should then be able to differentiate between a facebook authenticated user and a twitter one.

25 / 03 / 2013 00:32

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 20:38:14 -0400

It took me a while but I’ve now incorporated two different types of greyscale algorithm. You can choose which one to use by setting a flag in the function call. The default is luminosity, which works by using the following formula:

avg = 0.21R + 0.71G + 0.07B

24 / 03 / 2013 23:21

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 19:23:36 -0400

It took a bit of faffing with the numbers, but I’ve managed to get the image tint function working correctly. Basically we divide the tint RGB values by 255 and multiply the pixel RGB values by the result.

24 / 03 / 2013 22:12

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 18:19:15 -0400

I’m trying to work out how to do a basic colour tint. I’ve got a rough idea of how to do it, but I’d need to try it out.

I think the way to do it would be to calculate an average RGB value, like we would for greyscale, and multiply it by a factor for each component.

24 / 03 / 2013 21:54

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 17:59:13 -0400

I’ve transferred to my iPad. Had to take a shower, which means I gotta lie down to take the back brace off etc. It’s a pain in the arse, but necessary for another two weeks. Either way, I’m coding on an iPad whilst lying down. Not exactly a recipe for efficiency, but I’ll survive.

24 / 03 / 2013 20:19

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 16:19:46 -0400

Got it! The basic algorithm (massively simplified) is shown below:

alpha_increment = img_height / 127
running_alpha = 0
nth_row = 0

for (y = 0; y < reflection_height; y++)
{
    if (y == nth_row)
	{
		nth_row = round(alpha_increment + nth_row)
		running_alpha++
	}
	
	for (x = 0; x < image_width; x++)
	{
		setpixelalpha(x, y, running_alpha)
	}
}