I've looked around the site to see if there are any people who have changed the CKAN API interface so that instead of uploading documents and databases, they can directly type onto the site, but I haven't found any use cases.
Currently, we have a page where people upload data sets through excel forms that they've filled out, but we want to make it a bit more user friendly by changing the API so that they can fill out a form on the page rather than downloading the template, filling it out and then uploading it.
Does CKAN have the ability to support this? If so, are there any examples or use cases of websites that have use forms rather than uploads?
This is certainly possible.
I'm not aware of any existing extensions that provide that functionality, but you can check the official list of CKAN extensions if there's anything that fulfills your needs.
If there is no existing extension that suits you then you could write your own, see the extension guide for details on how to do that.
Adding an API function to CKAN's API is possible, but probably not what you want in this case: the web UI usually does not interact with CKAN via the API but via Flask/Pylons controllers. Hence, you would add your add controller which first serves your form and then processes the submitted inputs.
You can take a look at the ckanext-pages extension, which does exactly that (for editing static pages instead of datasets, but your code would be similar).
Related
I am new to Squarespace and I was wondering if it can interact with an external Rest-API using JSON?
For example, say I have a Database being hosted privately and I want data from it to be shown via Squarespace and certain pages being restricted according to the user's privileges.
Is any of the above possible, and if so can you direct me to an example? I seem not to be able to find anything on the above via google.
Thanks
From Squarespace:
Squarespace doesn’t support server-side code, including PHP, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and SQL.
Therefore, the only way to connect to an external API (besides those supported by Squarespace's official 'extensions') is to use "client-side" (in-browser) JavaScript.
So, the database solution which you use must be capable of securely handling client-side connections (for example, Firebase can do that). To interface with it, you must add the JavaScript to your Squarespace site via code block or code injection. An example explanation of doing that can be found at this question.
As to allowing/disallowing content based on data returned from the database, it can be done, but only client-side. That means that, while you can make the site appear to restrict access and/or make it inconvenient for others to access certain pages based on information in the database, because it is all client-side, it could technically be circumvented by someone if they are familiar with web-development, web-inspector, etc. So it's not something you'd want to do if it is critical that the content be truly restricted.
Squarespace does have its own "Members Areas" which can be used to solve content access problems. However, it's extremely limited at the moment, and there are many scenarios it does not address.
I've been asked to create an app that will get data back from a database where the CMS will be Wordpress. I've never used a CMS so I'm trying to get a (overview)picture in my head of how it could all work and what each of the components would be. And what a CMS actually brings to the party.
Creating the app itself is pretty clear. I've done a few already. I've made a database before and shouldnt cause a problem.
But what is going to be in the middle between the app and the database?
Part A:
I'm guessing iphone apps typically would call some php file that's hosted on the server? The php then would make a call to the database and return the data somehow, maybe as xml. But this is really basic and wouldnt require a CMS. Just a database and a phpfile, or am I wrong?
Part B:
If i wanted to run a check on the database every minute to see if any of the data in database was no longer valid and remove it if needed, that would require somekind of program running on the server. So that program would be Wordpress, since it is managing the content, so a content management system is actually needed and is for these kind of taskes. Am i understanding the role of CMS?
Many Thanks,
-Code
Part A: Yes, that's definitely how it would normally work. Of course, you're not accessing "a" database, you're accessing the database WordPress creates, but otherwise, sure.
Part B: The role of a CMS is to provide a structured, easily-edited way of presenting information. It abstracts both the database and the user interface stuff, allowing the CMS administrator to CRUD data via the use of simple forms.
In your case, no, you wouldn't (usually) ask the WordPress software to provide information because it's not set up to provide data that's programmatically requested. Instead it's designed to display HTML pages with the data embedded. The WordPress software is specifically for humans to CRUD the data through a human-friendly interface. You'd write your own, as in Part A.
This article shows some basic PHP for retrieving blog entries and user comments, likely most of what you'd want. The WordPress database format is well-documented: here's an article that lays it out and provides more PHP examples for retrieving the information.
Have a look how the Wordpress for iOS team is doing it:
http://ios.wordpress.org/development/
I would not try to access the db directly or through some custom php-code, but use the official WordPress API (which uses xml-rpc) instead.
and this xml-rpc objective-c library might even make this a pretty straightforward exercise?
I'm considering Wordpress as my CMS platform for a client site I'm doing at the moment.
However, I need to create a couple of custom 'modules'. One of these modules is a form that people will be able to complete and have a quote, and once submitted, in a special place in the Wordpress panel (like a menu or something), there will be a listing of all the submitted quotes (just fetching it from a table in my database).
Another one is to manage a cafeteria menu, so the client can add a different meal to each day of the week.
I know perfectly how to do this kind of things using some kind of MVC framework and doing it 'by-hand', but I'm just wondering if this would be possible to do with WP and if yes, what kind of tools I'll have to use.
Thanks
Quite simply, yes, WordPress would be a more-than-capable asset to your criteria. But it's whether the learning curve in getting to know WP outweighs using a framework you're clearly already familiar with?
Personally, it sounds you like you're pretty solid with PHP, and considering the fact that, in my opinion, what you're planning on doing is relatively easy, I'd say WordPress is an excellent solution.
I'd recommend reading about WordPress 3.0's new custom post type API, and skimming the basics of hooks and filters in the Plugin API.
Submitted quotes would merely be a custom post type. You'd be better off writing the front-end code (like handling the form, UI etc.) yourself, either within a theme or plugin, then using wp_insert_post and let WordPress handle all the database administration. In fact, WP will go one step further and set up the entire admin for viewing, editing and deleting quotes.
Post meta (also known as custom fields) is also there for you if you need to store additional information about a quote that doesn't quite fit the post's table structure.
For the menu, this is even easier. I'd say just create a post category called 'Menu', and the client can publish 'dishes' to it as you would with a blog or any similar rolling format.
I've only licked the surface here. Get stuck in with the above, then check out some other goodies like meta boxes and custom taxonomies!
If you want to try a plugin instead of writing something yourself, Flutter might work. It's a little unpolished sometimes but it makes this sort of thing an absolute breeze.
I am in the process of building a website content management system for one of my clients. It's a highly customized system, so I cannot use any "of the shelve" solution.
I need to allow my client to add pages to the website on the fly. I have two options here:
(1) Create a database driven page in the format of www.mycompany.com/page.aspx?catID=5&pageID=3 (query the database with the category and page ID's, grab the data and show it on the page) - or -
(2) Allow the management system to create static pages, something like www.mycompany.com/company/aboutus.aspx and www.mycompany.com/company/company_history.aspx , etc.
I believe that, while the former is much easier to implement, the latter is a better both for the user AND for Google.
My questions are (finally): (1) Would you agree that the latter is a better solution, and (2) What is the best way to implement such a solution? Should I create and update each file using the FileSystem (i.e. - the site's management system requires the user to supply a page/file name, page title and content, and creates the page on the fly based on these parameters)? Is there a better way?
Thank you!
It's entirely possible to have database driven pages with nice URLs. StackOverflow itself is a great example - this question's URL is http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1119274/adding-pages-on-the-fly-with-a-cms-system, but the page is built from the database, not static HTML.
I would use the first solution, but mask the addresses using a custom request handler. Basically, give each of your pages a unique string ID (such as about-us) and then, with your request handler that takes all requests, find this particular page in the database and render it.
See this article for some additional info (found it when googling for custom http handlers in ASP.NET.) In that article, it has the following handler added:
<add verb="*" path="*.piechart" type="PieChartHandler"/>
You would probably want to catch all paths (*), excluding certain media paths used for CSS, images and JavaScript.
More resources:
Custom HTTP Handler
HttpHandler in ASP.Net
I'd stay clear of static pages if I where you. Dynamic Data, MVC and some good planning should take you a long way!
What you need to do is to create some or many templates that each view/controller in mvc can use. Let whoever is responsible for the content handle it through dynamic data entities.
I would use the first idea, but work out a better URL scheme. If the system doesn't provide nice URLs (without ?), you'll have trouble getting the search engines to parse the whole site. Also using numbers instead of words make it hard on users to pass around URLs.
If you start to have performance problems you could add caching that would generate static pages from time to time. I would avoid doing that until you have to; caching can cause many headaches along the way to getting it right.
Although the existing advice is more-or-less sound, the commentators have failed to consider one factor which, admittedly, you haven't given much detail on. Are these pages that they'll edit once they're built, or a they one-shot creations? If the latter, your plan of generating static pages isn't quite so bad as they suggest. Why bother even having to think about database schemas and caching, when you can just serve flat content.
It will probably make for pretty lifeless, end-of-the-road pages, but if that's what you want ...
I'm currently using the Jira SOAP interface within a C# (I suppose the language used here isn't terribly important).
Basically, I'm creating an API and a Winform that wraps some of the functionality of the soap service so that our Devs can programmaticly add bugs when something goes wrong in our application.
As part of this, I need to know the custom field IDs that are in use in Jira, rather than hardcoding them (as they are still prone to the occasional change) I used the GetCustomFields() method in the jira-rpc api then filtered it, so that all the developer needs to know is the name of the field, then the ID is filled in for them automagically.
This all works fine, but with one quite important proviso: that you login to the SOAP/RPC service as a user with administrative privaliges.
The Jira documentation indicates that the soap/rpc service follows the usual workflows and security schemes, however I can't find anything anywhere that would appear to remove this restriction on enumerating custom fields (and quite why in any instance you would want someone to HAVE to be an administrator to gain this access, especially as the custom field id's tend to be in Jira's HTML source is beyond me)
Does anyone know if I've missed a setting somewhere? Or if there is some sort of work-around for this, short of hardcoding the custom field id's?
Or is this a case of having to delve in to Jira's RPC plugin and modifying the source for it in order to give me the functionality I require?
Cheers
Edit for the sake of google/posterity
Wow, all this time on, and it looks like Atlassian still haven't changed this behavior.
Worked around this by creating a custom dictionary that logs in as an administrative user, grabs the custom fields and then logs out. Not ideal, but it should work 'til atlassian change things
You're not missing anything - there's no way to get custom fields via standard SOAP API.
In JIRA Client, we learn about custom fields in two ways:
We download issues via RSS view of the issue navigator, or via XML representation of a specific issue. If a custom field is set for an issue, the XML will have its id, class and value (values).
From time to time we inspect the content of IssueNavigator search page - looking for searchers for the custom fields. Screen-scraping the HTML gives us not only ids of the custom fields but also possible values for enum fields.
This is hackery, of course, and it may go wrong, so a good API would have been a lot better.
In your case, I can suggest two solutions:
Create your own SOAP (or REST) remote API plugin that will give you just that info that you miss from the standard API. Since you're seemingly in control of your JIRA, you can install anything there.
Screen-scrape the "New Bug" page for the project and type of issue you need to submit. You'll get all the info - fields, options, default values, which field is required.