WPBook 2.3 is released. This uses the same Facebook SDK (3.1.1) as WPBook Lite which I just released last weekend – this will make it easier to manage both.

It will also let me start work on adding more features to the plugin- a more stable base to work from.

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Third test. Should publish just to WPBook page.
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Oops. That’s why we test. Typo in publish_to_facebook.php fixed.
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Sorry for the testing post. Just working on an update to WPBook 2.3, including an update to the Facebook SDK, and need to make sure in the process I haven’t busted anything.

This should post to personal profile and to page wall.
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Photo by Mike Johnston - http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikejsolutions/3078513728/

Just found this long overdue review of Ajax and PHP: Building Modern Web Applications – Second Edition sitting in a drafts folder – looks like I never published it. (Full disclosure – Packt sent me a review copy).

This is the successor to the wildly popular Ajax and PHP: Building Responsive Web Applications, which came out back in 2005. The authors of this edition are Bogdan Brinzarea-Iamandi, Christian Darie, and Audra Hendrix. (Brinzarea-Iamandi was also one of the authors of the first edition).

This is a really useful book for the right audience, covering:

• Simple PHP, including connecting to MySQL
• Basic MySQL and relational databases, including some basic queries
• JavaScript, including a discussion of object oriented JavaScript and the benefits thereof
• JQuery, which is rapidly becoming the dominant JavaScript framework (and is now included in applications like WordPress and Drupal)
• Debugging approaches and techniques, including profiling
• Cross-site scripting exploits and how to mitigate them
• Cross-domain ajax calls using server proxies, Flash, iFrames, and JSONP

In other words, although it does use Ajax as the ostensible subject at hand, in order to explain how Ajax works in the context of real web applications, the book ends up covering a wide ground in a rapid fashion. The book culminates in two practical examples: a chat application and a data grid, both using JQuery, PHP, and MySQL together in familiar patterns.

More experienced readers might be frustrated by how quickly the book moves through these topics. Trying to cover, for example, “Object oriented programming concepts” in four pages requires a very concise definition and not a huge set of examples or illustrative excercises. The book also doesn’t stray outside the LAMP stack, to talk about Ajax in Microsoft.NET, Java, Python, or Ruby applications, and doesn’t address other relational databases, let alone the whole NoSQL movement. There’s also no HTML5 discussion, but you have to remember the book was published in December of 2009.

One decision which struck me as odd, but may be a reflection of my personal experience, is that they cover (in an appendix) setting up XAMPP for Windows and Linux, but for Mac OS they send you to a web tutorial. Have you been to a web dev conference lately and seen how prevalent the Apple logo is? I get why you’d want to focus in and not try to cover all the cases, but I think based on my experience I might out Mac instructions first.

But coming to this book expecting detailed architectural discussions across multiple platforms is looking for wisdom in all the wrong places. Peruse the table of contents at the PACKT site and see which category you (or whomever you’re buying the book for) might fit in.

Retweet Shirt Photo by Deb Hanson - http://www.flickr.com/photos/debspace/3766841512/

Just released an update to ReTweeter (1.1), which now uses the Twitter API for Retweeting. This means that instead of the traditional “RT: @username” syntax, the retweeted tweets will now show Twitter’s little retweet icon and the link to the original tweet (where it says “about 4 hrs ago”) preserved, and the retweeting user’s name at the bottom, like so:

Screencap by Jeronimo Palacios - http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeronimo_palacios/4093181811/

Instead of what Retweeter used to produce, which looked more like this (rt: @username):

Or this (username: tweet):

Thanks to Cody Wilson at QC Co-Lab (@qccoloab) for the patch for this. Of course, if you’d like to keep the old format, you can just set ‘USE_OLD_FORMAT’ to true in the configuration section, and retweeter will keep using the older format.

I’ve also started storing the md5 hash (required for OAuth) in the database instead of recalculating it each time retweeter gets called. (If you ever need to change your md5 hash, say because you’ve regenerated your OAuth token at Twitter, just delete the row in the ‘conf’ table and retweeter will create a new hash the next time it runs).

Note that you will have to alter database tables if you’ve previously used a version of ReTweeter from 1.0 or before – but I’ve included the necessary SQL statements in the README included with the download.

All was well and good until the OAuthpocalypse arrived:

The OAuthpocalypse was the end of basic auth, the mechanism involving storing your username and password, which earlier versions of ReTweeter used. Well, Twitter did shut off basic authentication, though in reality it took a bit longer than the announced August 31:

Photo by Bruno Pedro http://www.flickr.com/photos/bpedro/4951321821/

Luckily this weekend I found time to update ReTweeter to accomodate OAuth – get the new ReTweeter 1.0 and give it a try. I’ve used Abraham Williams’ OAuth for Twitter library, which itself relies on Andy Smith’s OAuth library for PHP. Both are MIT licensed and are included in the download.

You’ll need to register your retweeter with Twitter at the register an application page, which will give you a “Consumer Key” and a “Consumer Secret” – you’ll need to copy these values into the configuration section at the top of retweeter.php.

Twitter Application Settings (Click for Full Size)

Then, making sure you are logged in to Twitter as the username for which you will run Twitter (the account which will follow people and where the retweets will be posted), click on the “My Access Token” button in the right rail of the Application Settings page. Here you’ll need to copy the Access Token and Access Token Secret to the appropriate places in retweeter.php:

OAuth Tokens for ReTweeter

Now that you’ve got all the info, open retweeter.php and (in addition to the existing configuration like username, database username, database password, database host, and database name) fill out the OAuth section of the configuration:

// we'll need some OAuth stuff here
// register your retweeter at http://dev.twitter.com/apps/new
$consumer_key = 'Consumer Key';
$consumer_request = 'Consumer Secret';

And:

// then click on "my token" on the resulting page and get these (make sure
// you are logged in AS THE USERNAME you intend to use, as these keys are
// specific to the user:
$retweeter_oauth_token = 'Access Token';
$retweeter_oauth_secret = 'Access Token Secret';

That should do it!

I’ve also updated Retweeter to follow the RT convention, so retweeted tweets will now look like this:

(@drunkjeckman is an old account which I no longer use except for testing. I expect my twitter followers to determine my level of sobriety based on the content of my tweets, not my username).

The focus was quite technical – not sure if the “suits” in the room (there aren’t normally many at a BostonPHP meeting, but there were a few this time) really expected such a deep dive – and made you appreciate the herculean effort it takes to mount a sustained campaign like that one.

You can listen to the podcast version of the presentation, see some photos and check out Elena’s notes – she managed to capture the great majority of the details they shared.

The topic was MediaWiki in production, with presentations by Greg Rundlett of Harvard’s Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC) and Daniel Barrett, who wrote the (O’Reilly) book on MediaWiki, and uses it in production at VistaPrint.

Greg Rundlett presents at BostonPHP

Dan Barrett gets ready to present at BostonPHP

Greg’s presentation, appropriately enough, is in the format of a MediaWiki page. He provided an overview of wikis in general as well as some of the other activites of the MediaWiki Foundation, then got right into details of MedaWiki syntax, built in features, and plugins.

Daniel Barrett’s presentation (which he was kind enough to send to me and allow me to post – thanks Dan) focused more on how to deploy a successful wiki, including six lessons:

1. It’s not about the technology
2. Know the strengths and weaknesses of the platform
3. Know the culture of the enterprise
4. Pre-structure the wiki and write stubs
5. Integrate with legacy systems
6. Measure your results

There was also good time for Q & A at the end, including a number of questions that were as much about corporate culture as technology: how to handle “potentially dangerous” procedures, how to deal with employees who horde information in search of job security, and the like.

Looking forward to next month’s BostonPHP which will be Jesse Burns facilitating a “PHP IDE Bakeoff” – February 11th, 6:30 pm, at Optaros Boston (More detail on Meetup.com – please RSVP if you plan to attend).

Updated for 0.9.2. (Jan 7 2009)
Updated for 0.9.1 (Jan 2 2009)

I’ve been working on an update to WPBook, the WordPress to Facebook plugin I co-developed.

I haven’t yet released this version on the WordPress plugin site, but I do think it’s stable enough for use – try it out and let me know what you think.

I’m using it here: http://apps.facebook.com/openparenthesis/.

This version allows an “add to profile” button inside the app, which presents the five most recent posts in a profile box – can be on the user’s main profile or inside the “boxes” tab.

It also enables – if the “application settings” inside Facebook are set – for the blog app to be added to FaceBook “pages.”

Download: WPBook 0.9.3

What remains to be done is testing – especially testing with multiple user accounts when you publish new blog posts – does the new blog post show up in other people’s “recent posts” profile box?

I’m also working on cleaning up some of the admin UI – right now there’s a complicated set of steps one has to go through in order to get an “infinite session key” which basically lets WordPress update the list of recent posts whenever they change, regardless of whether any specific user is logged in to Facebook – I think I ought to be able to make that a “get infinite session key” button, which handles the whole thing in a jQuery modal popup or some such.

Anyway, try it out and see what you think – hopefully I can finalize a release shortly.

(Note: There’s an excellent tutorial here on how-to forge which greatly helped in getting this working – worth a look, though it is for a different kind of application).

Update: Looks like Facebook has deprecated infinite session keys, but they key Fbml.refreshRefURl method I need no longer requires a session key. Trying this path now. Yeah – it works.

Went better than the WordPress talk yesterday, in terms of time – easier to describe Twitter (which everyone already knows) than to try to cover the WordPress plugin API, the Facebook API, and the plugin I wrote to connect the two all in less than 30 minutes.

Drupalcon Boston 2008 takes place from March 3, 2008 to March 6, 2008 at the Boston Convention and Expo Center. There will also be a Drupal Code Sprint on March 7 at the Stata Center at MIT in Cambridge.

Drupalcon is the twice-yearly gathering of Drupalers to learn about, discuss & advance Drupal, and to network with other Drupal community members. With sessions targeted at everyone from novice to expert attendees, Drupalcon is where you go to advance your understanding and use of Drupal.

Note: Deadline is Today, Feb 11th, for submitting proposals.

AIIM Expo will be held at the same time and location, and Drupalcon attendees can visit the AIIM Expo Hall. For full access to AIIM Expo, separate registration is required.

Tracks & Sessions:

• Marketing and business
• Design and user experience
• Site building
• Community and core
• Showcase and case study contest

Review the conference program and submit your own session proposal.

Conference Events:

• Job fair
• Industry networking
• Conference Social at FELT

Cost & Registration:
The cost to attend Drupalcon Boston is $195. This covers four full days of intensive sessions and tutorials, networking and social events, lunch and a t-shirt.

To register for Drupalcon, sign-up at http://boston2008.drupalcon.org.

Sponsorship:
Affordable sponsorship packages are available for companies who would like to show their support of the Drupal Association and receive visibility in front of hundreds of Drupal developers and enthusiasts. To learn more about sponsorships visit http://boston2008.drupalcon.org.

Tuesday night Mike Krigsman (twitter.com/mkrigsman) organized a “tweetup” at the Boston Beer Works in the Fenway. I won’t try to list all the attendees, but a few notes on folks I talked to:

• Silona (twitter.com/silona) was in town from Austin (League of Technical Voters, Transparent Federal Budget, We Are All Actors)
• Met Laura “Pistachio” Fitton (twitter.com/pistachio) – now I won’t be just another face in the crowd of her ~1500 twitter followers
• Met David Fisher (twitter.com/tibbon) who works with Nate at Jazkarta
• Nathan Burke (BlogString, twitter.com/?), who works with Michelle at MatchMine
• Met Jack Vinson (twitter.com/jackvinson) from Aspen Technology, who lives in the Boston area despite his Twitter account saying he is in Evanston IL.

I also met Dan Bricklin, which is really a brush with greatness. (No offense to my fellow tweetup attendees, but dude basically invented the spreadsheet).

Not bad for a tweetup on Super Tuesday (also Mardi Gras, aka Fat Tuesday), in not so great Boston weather. Apologies in advance if I left anyone out – I did have to run out early to catch a train.

Last night (wednesday) was the February BostonPHP meeting, on “Choosing a FOSS License for your project.”

Karen Copenhaver and Ira Heffan presented, but it was less about formal presentation and was really a conversation with the whole group – we talked about different classes of licenses and degrees of reciprocity they encourage/require, GPLv3 versus Affero GPLv3, CPAL, etc. The audio was recorded and will probably turn up as a podcast shortly.

After the meeting Mark Withington, Ira Heffan, Greg Rundlett and I went out for drinks and talked about life, the universe, and everything. ;)

Tonight, I’m headed to the North Shore Web Geek Meetup in Newburyport – although this means missing out on Silona’s presentation to the Berkman Thursday Blog Group.

Sheesh. So much to do, so little time. Good to see a vibrant local community.