Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with internet and programming

Can you turn a website into a program?

Nonce — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 19:06:59 -0800

Is there a way to embed a rendering engine (like webkit), mysql, and php into a program that talks to itself, not the internet? I'm almost certainly using the wrong terms. But imagine a php script that reads the text "hello world" from a mysql database.

How do I turn that into an executable that launches an embedded rendering engine, runs the embedded php script, queries the embedded database, and opens a window to display it, all without ever trying to leave its sandbox/communicate with the OS via a port?

Is it possible? If so, is it possible with more complex pieces of work like a CMS or a gallery script (waving away any other dependencies) or an etc.?

Pimp my CSS please. Before I kill myself.

miss lynnster — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:34:41 -0800

I'm a designer and usually people do programming for me. I'm trying to teach myself how to customize Word Press themes all by myself though... and I thought I was doing pretty well. But then I had people look at it in other browsers. Yuck. Apparently it loads slowly for other people at times, the slideshow doesn't go all the way across, just all sorts of crap. I tried to do verification and there are a bunch of errors. I need to figure this out and move on!

I just really don't know how to fix any of these things. I was already proud of myself just for figuring out how to do the new stuff I've already done. My head hurts.

Can you help?

Oh, and the theme I customized for this was "Modularity" by Graph Paper Press.

Machine, point me to food

klangklangston — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:45:20 -0800

Where's my food? How to make a web ap that tells me how to find vegetarian food easily? Ok, so, first off—I'm not tremendously programming savvy, so don't be afraid to talk down to me in simple terms (seriously, don't assume I know anything).

Here is what I want: I want to be able to go to a page (either on a computer or a phone) and see where the nearest vegetarian food is (vegetarian restaurant or just a place that has veggie food). I would like to make this open, so that I don't have to find every vegetarian dish everywhere (crowdsource).

I assume that what I need will be some sort of database that accepts submissions easily, and that will work with google maps; and some server space to run it from.

Given that—if I want to build something that does this, what do I need and what do I need to know? Is this something that can be built by a programming novice (I haven't done any programming since high school and that was still mostly basic. I have a moderate grasp of HTML, but little CSS)? How hard will this be? What should I know when I start to build it?

Need to decide which computer skills I need

cherie72 — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 08:28:49 -0800

What computer skills should I acquire to be relevant today? Dreamweaver? HTML? Flash? I don't even know what the options are! I'm not old (30something), but I didn't grow up with computers. I taught myself Basic from a book as a kid, tested out of that class in high school, and never took another class like that again. I learned MS Office on the job and have always had admin jobs that didn't require any programming or more involved computer skills.

In order to be relevant, it seems employers want more knowledge than I have to offer. Everyone wants either design program experience (I'm not a designer, but nowadays they expect an office coordinator to get involved, it seems) like Adobe Creative Suite, or web-related experience.

My question: if I want to work in marketing, small-business sales, etc., should I take a class in web design? Which programs should I know? Do I need to know HTML? (I don't even know basic HTML tags)

Every business has a web site, Facebook page, Twitter account...I can use those things, but I can't create them. Is taking a class the way to go? Or are there books you can recommend that are better? I'm actually quite comfortable with computers and a pretty quick study. But I won't lie about my skills and try to fake it as I learn on the job.

Learning Ruby on Rails 2.0?

BoldStepDesign — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 23:02:51 -0800

Foreword: No ruby background aside from basic tutorials. Here's the deal. I've tired the Agile Web Dev (2nd edition) book for rails, very out of date. I need to learn something. I want to learn ruby on Rails. I've gone through the Rails guide on creating a rails blog (http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started_with_rails.html). So, rather then buy it now (3rd edition of book as beta) or just wait, I want to get on the fast track to learn rails 2.2 (soon to be release 2.3) . Basically I'm looking for a online resource super cheap or free that provides quality information relating to rails and ruby. Help and suggestions welcome

How do I access the drupal admin panel.

BoldStepDesign — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 14:56:44 -0800

Three drupal questions 1. I disabled the log in form on the main page, now how do I get to the admin panel? (Please note, I have a local install of drupal, php, MySQL and Apache for Dev purposes.) 2. How can I create drop down menus? 3. Is there a way I can change the layout for a certain page? Such as I want the main page to be two columns while others to be one with tables or something to that effect for grid data. How can I do this?

Ambitious? OH YES

Willie0248 — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:13:23 -0800

Due to my nitpicks with Drupal, Joomla, etc, I want to learn to program a custom web content management system. I have very little programming experience, so where do I go from here? Oh man isn't it annoying when some newbie says "I WANT TO PROGRAM" and expects you to point him to some magical book that will tell him exactly what to do... Well yes it is and here I am asking exactly that!

So what do I do now? What language do I need to learn? What other stuff? I guess what I'm looking for is a complete guide from idea to implementation with my limited skill set (a little php and other traditional site building skills)

I realize that a ground-up coding project is probably a little ambitious for a novice, so maybe a good, simple open source project to modify?

I dunno, you folks are the experts. Let's hear them ideas, hive mind!

PHP: How do I get the explode() function to work with multiple separators in a row?

kaozity — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 08:25:00 -0800

PHP: How do I get the explode() function to work with multiple separators in a row? I am using the explode Function on a string where there are multiple spaces after a word because it is tabbed. When I use explode as follows

$peices = explode(" ",$theData);

the $peices array does not record any of the data that comes after the section with multiples spaces. Any idea on how to get a complete array?

Screen scraping etiquette

NormandyJack — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:03:58 -0800

Looking to start a 20k+ request screen scraping project, what sort of guidelines (in addition to those I plan to implement) do I need to follow to avoid having the hounds sent out after me. A corporate site has a collection of about ~20k freely available pages that I'd like to download for a personal database. This database wouldn't be for anything but personal use. Their robots.txt lists only their sitemap url and User-agent: *. Their terms of service are the standard rigamaroll. Only two points make me think they'd have a problem with me scraping them....

"Other than connecting to Service Provider's servers by http requests using a Web browser, you may not attempt to gain access to Service Provider's servers by any means - including, without limitation, by using administrator passwords or by masquerading as an administrator while using the Service or otherwise. "

and

"You may not in any way make commercial or other unauthorized use, by publication, re-transmission, distribution, performance, caching, or otherwise, of material obtained through the Service, except as permitted by the Copyright Act or other law or as expressly permitted in writing by this Agreement, Service Provider or the Service." emphasis added.

So, while they want you to access the service with a web browser, there is no specific prohibition against automated methods, crawlers, spiders, robots etc. My other concern is the "caching" which I technically would be doing. Since Google has indexed and cached their site, it seems that this isn't really a problem though.

I've never scraped that many pages before, but my plan was to be nice about it. Put in a 15-30 sec delay between requests (i don't care if it takes a long time), only run the script during off peak hours, and set the user-agent to announce myself and contact info.

They don't have a "webmaster" e-mail address, only feedback. Should I bother sending them an email to "ask permission"? Also, might I be better off not announcing myself with the user-agent?

Make Apache recognize Perl!

kaozity — Wed, 28 May 2008 05:49:15 -0800

How can I get my web server to interpret perl I am playing around with perl for the first time in my life. I am using a fedora core 8 machine. It seems to ave all the essentials installed already (apache, php, mySQL, and perl). However, I make a file called perl.pl and it does not seem to translate correctly. Here is what is in the file:

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Content-type: text/html \n\n"; #HTTP HEADER

# DEFINE SOME SCALAR VARIABLES
$number = "5";
$exponent = "2 ** 8";
$string = "Hello, PERL!";
$stringpart_1 = "Hello, ";
$stringpart_2 = "PERL!";
$linebreak = "
"; #HTML LINEBREAK TAG

# PRINT THEM TO THE BROWSER
print $number;
print $linebreak;
print $exponent;
print $linebreak;
print $string.$linebreak;
print $stringpart_1.$stringpart_2;

When you go the the browser, you see the following
http://[ip address]/perl/perl.pl

As you can see, you prints out exactly what I type. Am I doing anything wrong? Am I suppose to enable a perl service or change a configuration file?

UI building blocks

mphuie — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:29:32 -0800

I want to build my own UI on a portable/embedded device. Where do I start? I want to build my own simple interface from scratch, preferably on a an device w/ touchscreen and internet. The less programming, the better.

I can live with very basic functionality, something like Samurize, where I can display text files/script out on a certain X,Y coordinate on the screen, or even images (possibly buttons?), or a dumbed down version of Kofab/Dashboard.

I know my options are pretty much linux only, and I am a linux noob. I've heard of GTK and QT, and thats the extent of my knowledge of those. I'm fairly proficient in Perl and Python, and wouldn't mind learning/doing a bit of programming to get something up and running.

I'm thinking one of the Nokia tablets, but I have no idea how to implement this idea.

As a side note, a small embedded linux PC with a VGA touchscreen and wifi would work. I just have no idea where to start- what distro and software combo and/or programming framework I should use.

What lies between my browser and the internet?

miniape — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 22:11:24 -0800

I have an idea for a simple piece of software. It would involve intercepting browser requests, checking the requested url (probably not ip address, so before that conversion takes place) testing the url and redirecting if it passes the test. The test will itself make a network connection. Probably a pretty simple problem, but my background is in web development, and I'm foggy about 'OS' stuff, if that's even what it's called.

How are some ways I can go about this? I'd ideally like to write the program in Java or Python, but I'm not really looking for code specific information. I'm looking for google terms, useful libraries, descriptions of what happens step by step between the time I press enter on the keyboard and the time the request leaves the computer, generally strategies.

I'm guessing it might be hard because this is what a lot of spyware does, but I would be happy even if installation required some configuration.

Replication in MySQL 5.0

kaozity — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:16:12 -0800

Does anyone know of a quick and clear guide to set up my MySQL Replication in MySQL 5.0? Does anyone know of a quick and clear guide to set up my MySQL Replication? I want a master and multiple slaves. All machines are on the same LAN. Must be for MySQL 5.0. Of course, I want it to automatically replicate itself.

Where can I get feedback on my programming?

giggleknickers — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 04:27:40 -0800

Is there some community where programmers can submit their work to each other and get feedback? I'm learning Java and rather new at it. I'd like some community where programmers can show what they've done and others will critique it. Your average java community probably wouldn't take too kindly to me making three threads a day saying "This is the latest thing I've done. Please give feedback!"

If there isn't such a community already, would anyone want to get together and make one?

Mark CF, I love you, but go away :P

divabat — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:58:43 -0800

What are some good (preferably experience-based) birthday gifts for a 21-year-old Australian programming geek who thinks he's Danish? My boyfriend's (whom you all so nicely wished Happy Birthday to in code) 21st birthday is coming up in February. It's going to be a big birthday for him so I want to make it special.

One thing he loves about me is that I'm always doing interesting things and that I often involve him in them - I've dragged him to the Gold Coast to help me stage manage a show, and I've brought him to damn near every multicultural festival that exists in Brisbane. We spent a weekend away in Redcliffe a few months ago and it was awesome. I would like to gift him with another awesome experience-style gift, but I'm at a loss for what to get him.

Some facts about him:

* White Australian male; I'm the most exotic thing about him
* favourite motto is "You can't be young forever but you can be immature indefinitely!" (to him it means he doesn't have to be boring and serious all the time)
* Obsessed with Magic: The Gathering
* Studying IT (Web Services) in uni; currently in 1-year work experience with a performing arts company managing their Web stuff. Often programs stuff in Javascript as a hobby.
* Went to Denmark for a year on exchange and now thinks he's half-Danish. Can speak Danish reasonably fluently. He yearns for opportunities to speak with Danish people and re-experience Denmark. I think he's saving up for a trip to Denmark in a year or so.
* Likes pandas a lot and has assorted panda paraphernalia. (I tried adopting a panda from WWF for him but their web form broke.)
* Enjoys cycling a lot. Also somewhat sporty, but he often needs an excuse (like a school sports team) to play
* Introverted and shy, but quite open and friendly to people he's familiar with
* Says he misses going out drinking; hasn't been to a bar in about a year or so. Doesn't drink much however.
* Likes Indian food; sometimes is more Asian than I am
* Likes to read, especially crime thrillers; Harry Potter fan

I've looked at sites like RedBalloon but nothing there seems to fit. While he is techy, I don't want to get him an iPod or other presents of that nature because I think other relatives will cover that for him. He knows I'm coming so I can't surprise him like I did this year!

I also don't have a lot of money (otherwise I would have bought him a plane ticket) but I could try talking to his mum (whom I'm close to) to see if we can work together on something.

Thanks folks!

Does anyone know of a way to create a line graph using html or javascript?

kaozity — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 06:43:57 -0800

Does anyone know of a way to create a line graph using html or javascript? I need to create a line graph with html or jave script without paying a company $99 for their javascript it (e.g. swiftchart). The graph needs to handle multiple trends in the same graph... meaning that I would like to see 3 or more lines going accross in one graph.

Any Help?

Differing behavior from browser and java client program?

version control — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:18:39 -0800

I'm writing a little test program just to try out network programming in Java. However, some pages I GET from return the correct page, some return the standard 404 page (even when I can access the page from my browser), and some just hang without returning at all (again, from a page I can look at with my browser). Can someone more knowledgeable about network programming than me explain this? Basically, I'm confused about why certain pages produce certain behavior in the program when I try to connect to them: all I'm doing is creating/opening a socket to a website, getting index.html, and printing the contents to stdout. Should be simple right? For some pages, it is: the html ouputs to the console like it should. However, for other pages, attempting to read index.html causes my program to just hang until the connection resets, or I get a 404 back instead of the page (the html of the 404 pages is output to the console). I'm pretty confused about both of these behaviors, since I can access the domains and index.htmls just fine through a browser. Why is this happening?

In PHP, how do I search through a large string to see if it contains a smaller string?

kaozity — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 11:09:27 -0800

In PHP, how do I search through a large string to see if it contains a smaller string? In PHP, I am opening a html file and reading in one line at a time. The problem is that I want to seach through the line to find a specific part.

For example.... I read in the following line into a variable called "$theData"

" >td height="19" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" width="140"<>font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2<>a href="GenAvailGraph.php?id=510000054" target="_self"<5 10000054>/td<"

Now I want the search for "510000054" in $theData and return true or false depending on in the string has "510000054" contained in it.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to do this?

So I know HTML. What to learn next?

Robot Johnny — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 19:23:55 -0800

What web technology/language should I learn to make simple online apps and just generally enhance my bare-bones knowledge of HTML? I know my HTML and CSS, and am pretty comfortable making simple websites and having them look nice (and coded by hand), but I'm pretty clueless when it comes to anything more complicated than that.

I've been able to wrestle my way through simple modifications of existing code (like a WordPress or MT installation, for example) but I otherwise know little to nothing about PHP or MySQL.

Then there's AJAX this, and Ruby that, and all that other "Web 2.0" jargon that I know nothing about apart from having general idea of what it can do.

I also have absolutely NO programming experience beyond

10 PRINT "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10

So, with my limited knowledge, where should I begin, and what should I learn? I'm not too interested in anything too complex, but I think I'd have fun fooling around to create (relatively) simple things like Wordie or just beefing up my websites with a little more user interactivity.

Any good books, too?

Creating an online realtime Flash movie

Hartster — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 09:08:58 -0800

If I have a computer application that spits out data continually in the form of UDP datagrams, can I then take that data and plug it into a "live" Flash movie to be viewed online? Basically, it's for a type of race system. At the moment, at the end of the race, the race software produces a text file containing all the race data. This is then parsed, fed into an SWF and the race can then be replayed.

However; the appplication can broadcast the data as UDP packets throughout the course of the race. What would we need to create a Flash movie so that web users can view the race on the web in (near) real time?

What technology would we need, and how we would achieve it? Would the application need to run a web server? Is it insanely complicated or something that can be done easily through, say, Flash MX?

Need a little help with javascript and webpage dropdowns..

ascullion — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 04:26:48 -0800

Need a little help with javascript.. Say I have a page with multiple dropdown boxes, all of which contain exactly the same options. At the minute, I have to click on all of those dropdowns individually, which is very repetitive.

I was thinking that it might be possible to use javascript to add a button to that webpage that would select the same option on all the dropdowns on that page. But sadly I don't know how to do that, and google is no help.. so any help would be appreciated.

(by the way, it doesn't have to be javascript - I'm happy to do anything that would help do this.)

Python or Ruby for learning to program?

djgh — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 18:52:20 -0800

Python or Ruby? Help me decide! So, I'm aware that there are previous similar questions. However, I'm pretty sure I've narrowed it down to two - I just can't choose which!

I'd basically like to learn how to program, and in a way using best practices - I've heard object-oriented programming is good, for example, so would like to learn what it is and how to best program in that way. I've got a bit of experience with PHP, but have mostly forgotten it all by now (last time used? 6 months ago), and was never particularly proficient in the first place. Plus I've heard it's very difficult to write good code with PHP.

I'd mainly use whichever language on the web, although if it can do cool things with my computer (either my Mac (OSX) or PC), that would be a bonus. But learning good programming practices, writing clean code etc is my main priority. I'm not looking to learn a framework, I'd rather learn how to program and how to work with the language before doing so.

So, which one is best for me? And any recommended books for someone who will basically be an absolute beginner? Or is there a better language for what I want to do?

Is it possible make a browser window go full screen?

josh.ev9 — Tue, 30 May 2006 16:31:23 -0800

Is it possible make a browser window go full screen? Not "fake full screen," but full-on, PowerPoint style full screen mode? I'm trying to make a web-based presentation tool a la PowerPoint (except it won't encourage boring presentations), but I want to be able to have a full screen mode when the slide show is viewed.

I'd like to be able to do it in all the major browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, etc.), and be enabled at the click of a link or submit button.

Is it possible? If so, how?

How do I start making my own social bookmarking site, is it worthwhile?

MetaMonkey — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 19:18:54 -0800

I want to create my own social bookmarking site. I don't know much about coding, but I've got some good ideas. Is this possible? How do I begin? Am I insane/idiotic for even contemplating this? I've investigated the dozens of sites offering social bookmarking+ (del.icio.us, furl, shadows, myweb 2.0 etc. etc.). They are all very similar, simple variations on a theme.

I have lots of ideas about how this concept can be extended and improved, and if I knew how to do it, I'd be working on it right now, for the greater good of all the net. Unfortunately I know very little about coding.

So where do I go from here? Reveal my ideas and hope someone wants to help? Pay some indian programmers to sort it out for me? Or just forget the whole thing and wait until the big boys (google, yahoo, delicious) get their act together?

Any help/ideas would be greatly appreciated, as I need to know if driving myself nuts thinking about this is a big fat waste of time or not.

Need ASP ecommerce solution.

letterneversent — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 12:00:48 -0800

I need a good, cheap (free) ASP shopping cart application for Windows 2003 / IIS for a client website. Normally, I would use osCommerce, but for some reason they want everything ASP, etc. Any suggestions? Your help is fantastically appreciated. A search reveals a previous inquiry with the suggestion of OrangeCart. I would like to have other options as I was not altogether impressed with OC.