On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 11:50 PM, Pascal Voitot <[email protected]
wrote:
I agree with Vincent... Groovy is the easiest solution... In the past, I tried another "weird" solution consisting in integrating a JavaScript rendering engine on the serverside such as rhino... then manipulating a DOM in Javascript was quite natural and I could use great APIs such as prototype... It worked quite well but I'm not sure about the performance and memory issues but I found this idea funny: Javascript on serverside... This might seem a bit "heretic" to say that but there are some products on the market proposing to build websites with javascript on client and server side...
Belated thanks to Vincent and Pascal for their suggestions regarding "web scraping." in Xwiki. It turned out jQuery() is the easiest solution for what I needed, which is quick n' dirty. The suggestions to use groovy are appreciated: it is an implementation strategy I will need to look into in the future, I just don't want a tiny sub-project turning into a project in and of itself, lest I never finish .... Regarding Pascal's comment about the "heretic" notion of server-side-javascript: Please note http://freebaseapps.com/ example app: http://fmdb.freebaseapps.com/ "Introducing Acre: Freebase’s integrated app development and hosting environment" This all sounds very familiar, like Xwiki.org/Xwiki.com, combined with a product version of Exhibit <http://simile-widgets.org/exhibit/>. Which is exactly what I was alluding to here ( http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg09547.html ) as a very powerful development&delivery environment, and perhaps signalling a direction-shift in web-development: http://freebaseapps.com has lots of similarities to what Xwiki has provided for years:
- A Browser-based JavaScript IDEincluding syntax highlighting, file organzation and more - Open Code for Open Data all Acre files are stored in Freebase and code sharing is encouraged in a variety of ways
Here's the part that looks exactly like Exhibit -- right down to the syntax
(exhibit uses ex:if=, acre uses acre:if=). In fact, Acre source code, with their templating language, ends up looking suspiciously close to my Exhibit+Xwiki (Velocity) code, except they can't access all the rich Java functionality with their template language like you can in Xwiki. [image: an Acre script] <http://freebaseapps.com/wiki/index> Here's where the "heresy" starts. Xwiki uses Java on the server-side. Freebaseapps uses JavaScript:
- Server-side JavaScriptuse the same language on the server that you use in the client
This is basically a product version of Exhibit:
- Template Languagea built-in, simple yet powerful XHTML template language
There's been a good amount of Exhibit/Freebase semantic-web work in the
Simile project. Again, looks like a productization of MIT semantic web work:
- Built-in support for FreebaseMQL query integration, plus helper methods included for all Freebase APIs
And finally an application hosting solution. Similar to Xwiki SAS...
Hosted on freebaseapps.comno servers to maintain!
FYI, I found out about this here (also relevant to the topic of web-scraping in JavaScript)
Freebase Hack Day II: Return of Hack Day
You're invited to attend the Freebase Hack Day and Unconference on July 11th in San Francisco. This event is a great opportunity to learn about what Freebase is, find out about our developer platform, and chat to Freebase staff and experts. Some examples of what will be happening on the day:
- We'll be launching Acre 1.0 just a few days before Hack Day. Jason Douglas will be showing off the features of our hosted app development platform <http://freebaseapps.com/>, including the ability to share and clone apps, connect to other APIs with our keystore and OAuth, and build queries and templated web pages based on Freebase data more easily than ever before. Acre's come a long way since our last Hack Day, so don't miss this. (Read more about Acre.<http://blog.freebase.com/category/developer/acre/>)
- The MQL Boot Camp will be run this year by Bryan Culbertson. Learn how to query against Freebase's structured data about almost 6 million topics, and see the new features of our query editor, including tab-completion for syntax and schema. (Read more about MQL<http://blog.freebase.com/category/developers/mql/>and the query editor <http://blog.freebase.com/2009/04/22/query-editor-20/>). - Learn how to use Freebase to enhance your website with structured data, like the Wall Street Journal<http://blog.freebase.com/2009/06/25/freebase-data-now-on-wsj-com/>, or build entire apps and websites on Acre, like Tippify<http://tippify.com/>.
- Hack on apps like our Games With A Purpose<http://blog.freebase.com/tag/gwap/>, a TV program schedule mashup, and more. If you have a project and you're looking for partners, technical help, or ideas, bring it with you! We're also working on having a handful of projects ready for people to hack on who haven't brought one of their own.) - Find out about how Freebase's part in the Linked Open Data<http://linkeddata.org/>world, and how to use Semantic Web <http://blog.freebase.com/category/semantic-web/> techniques and tools to work with Freebase data.
Niels http://nielsmayer.com