Tag Archives: wallsplattr

Wallsplattr 0.4 out now

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After I spent some time working on the 0.3 version in isolation I then started talking to some people at work, mainly Stu, Gary and Dan. They all pointed out various things that actually started to bug me, so 0.4 addresses those issues. There is nothing visually different between the 0.3 and 0.4 releases, however you have much more control over the google map in version 0.4.

The newly created ChangeLog clearly indicates the changes for 0.4, but for those not wanting to venture off to another site, here it is:

  • Fixed GH-1 Moved maxMarkerCount to application.ini
  • Fixed GH-2 Make the location and Zoom of the Google map configurable in application.ini
  • Fixed GH-3 Markers are now removed on a rolling basis rather than all at once
  • Fixed GH-4 Now displays an Info Window rather than going direct to twitter.com
  • Added ChangeLog.markdown
  • Added docs/Map.markdown to help with map settings
  • docs/TweetStructure.markdown to help with understanding the data that is available in a tweet
  • Validation fixes for HTML and JavaScript
  • Moved phpunit.xml.dist file to top level, which was a comment I saw on twitter about checking out an application and running phpunit from root (Makes sense)
  • Allowed the configuration of the type of map to be viewed (application.ini)
  • Other general tidy up fixes

I quite like this version, and I’m starting to learn a lot more about JavaScript, which is really the goal of this project: To Learn. I think docs/Map.markdown is an interesting file to checkout as that talks about how you can configure the map, which is where all the changes for this release are located.

In this release I have tried to be more more verbose with what is going on, so you can see many new .markdown files have been created and I’ve tried to update the Docblocks as and where appropriate

0.4 version can be downloaded from here

Wallsplattr 0.3 out with google maps view

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I’ve finally managed to get a little time to work on Wallsplattr again, and decided to add a Google Maps view for the search criteria. It still has the standard RAG status for each tweet as defined by a marker on the map:

Wallsplattr-map

This is the first time I’ve worked with the Google Maps API, so it has been an interesting experience. There may be areas that could be improved, but it’s better to get it out there in the wild, than worry about the best way of doing things all the time. Having said that, I may try and get my JavaScript reviewed by some guys at work, who are wizards with it :-)

You now select on the front page which view you want to see: “List” or “Map

Wallsplattr-home-choice

The last thing to note is, you may end up seeing an empty map for a long time depending on your search critieria.. I haven’t managed to find out what percentage of tweets have geo location data embedded in them, so it might be a rather odd feature to have, but it’s been great building it.

So, you can download version 0.3 from here

Wallsplattr 0.1 Released – Twitter Wall Board client with RAG status

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I’ve mentioned previously on here about our wall boards at work. I love the wall boards, and I think we should be using them more and more, so wondered what else we could put on there. I’ve also been wanting to use Zend Framework more, as my experience with it has been minimal up until now, due to the use of the in house MVC Framework at work. So, put the two together and you now have Wallsplattr.

Wallsplattr is a web based twitter client with RAG status for a wall board written in Zend Framework (That’s a mouthful!). Currently if a tweet matches the RED words the background goes to red. If a tweet matches some GREEN words, you’ve guessed it, background goes to green. You can extend the application with whatever ‘decorators’ you want. If you want all tweets with the word purple in them to have a background color of purple, easy. You want all swearing removed, highlighted, censored? You want all tweets that have a timestamp between 5pm-9am to be removed from the wall board, done. All you have to do is write one class that implements an interface and you are done.

To configure what the current RED and GREEN decorators pick up on, all you need to do is edit the words in the corresponding json files:

  • application/configs/green.json
  • application/configs/red.json

The application is currently in an early stage, hence the 0.1 price tag. It has the basic functionality I wanted for our wall board at work, and therefore it won’t be mis-used at work either.. I’ve been working on this in my very scarce spare time, so it may be a little rough around the edges – but release early and often right? If you take a peak at the README.markdown file you can see my thoughts on the future, or more of what I should have actually done in the first place.

Wallsplattr in action on my stream:

Wallsplattr-1

One thing to note at the moment, is that it isn’t quite sure about sarcasm (!) or false positives.. I’ll get to that when I can, but for now it at least highlights tweets you may consider interesting to your search criteria. If someone wants to write some decorators then go for it.

To install Wallsplattr get the code from github and then

cd wallsplattr/
    ant install

This will download ZendFramework for you and explain about setting up a vhost to where you want to host the application

Oh, and before I forget, the awesome name credit has to go to the wife: Rebecca.. She is really happy about the name ;-)

Enjoy.