I have an internal tool written in java. It would be useful to get a little
feedback on how much it is used by colleagues.
A simple solution would be to have the application display an image which it fetches from
a web hit counter like application and just look at how often the image is accessed.
So what I am looking for: a stand-alone application (i.e. no Apache modules, cgi scripts, etc),
which serves one or a couple of static images and and can log accesses, preferably with as
little as possible of support of everything else.
Searching for "hit counter" gave little relevant, "lightweight http server" was more relevant, although mostly overkill still. Any suggestions?
You could try using Google Analytics. Most of the time, people using Google Analytics are tracking pageviews on a web page, and Google Provides some javascript that you can place on your page and it will track the visits to that page as well as browser capabilities/etc. Behind the scenes, that javascript is placing an image tag on the page in the manner you describe.
However, since your application is java and not a web app (I assume it's a standalone and not an applet), you won't be able to include Google's javascript (unless you embed a javascript interpreter...yick). Fortunately, it is possible to use Google's analytics without javascript.
The trick is that Google's scripts use the image http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif and pass parameters via the query string. You can find a list of the parameters you can pass to the query string here. So all you'd have to do is figure out what the query string should be and have your client make the request to google's image (after setting up your google analytics account, of course).
Just use Google Analytics, it's really easy and requires a short script on your pages.
Michal Kebrt's simple UNIX HTTP server does exactly what I was looking for.
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.
Is it possible to do this? Ideally to return the report in the very same page with ajax?
Example the user adds www.mywebsite.com to the field and then the report of pagespeed is returned. If not possible then redirect to Pagespeed result page.
You have a few options here. Starting from easiest to hardest (and in my opinion "worst" to "best" solution).
Add the Page Speed Insights (PSI) test page to an iframe on your site. You can then change the URL of that iframe to https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=yourwebsite.com and manipulate the ?url=yourwebsite.com to be whatever you want.
This may be against Google's terms of service and is also a bad user experience but it is the easiest way to achieve it. I will leave you to investigate that option if you decide to do it.
Redirect users to a new tab. So just do <a target="_blank" href="https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=yourwebsite.com">view your report</a> or redirect via JS on a button click.
Yet again not a great option as people are leaving your site but at least this won't be against Google's terms of service.
Use the page speed insights API. https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/v5/get-started.
This is your best option in terms of time vs flexibility. You supply the API with the URL and it returns a JSON response with all of the metrics it gathers and the scoring.
Please note PSI is on version 6 of the API which should be available for general use soon.
Obviously this is a lot more work but well worth the effort as you can style everything as you please.
Install Lighthouse, the engine that drives PSI on your own server.
You can find the Lighthouse repository here. Please note you need to know how to use node, it is useful to understand puppeteer and you need a reasonable amount of server admin knowledge to get chromium (used as a headless web browser for running the tests) working and linked correctly.
At this stage you have complete control and can write your own test, scoring criteria etc. You can also run as many tests as your server will allow. If you want this level of control and freedom then this is the best option. However be prepared to sink a lot of hours into this solution!
I am very confused about the correct or recommended mechanism to use for accessing google fusion tables APIs in app scripts. There seem to be two methods with examples but no discussion about which is preferred or why. Is one of these interfaces newer and preferred while the other is dying? Is one obsolete or more restricted in what it can do?
Method 1 is the REST API described here
https://developers.google.com/fusiontables/docs/v2/sql-reference#Select
Method 2 is a set of library functions sort of described here under the Apps Script/Google Advanced Services:
https://developers.google.com/apps-script/advanced/fusion-tables
For example, using the REST api to do a dql query, we end up with something like this:
function runSQL(sql){
var getDataURL = 'https://www.googleapis.com/fusiontables/v1/query?sql='+sql;
var dataResponse = UrlFetchApp.fetch(getDataURL,getUrlFetchOptions()).getContentText();
return dataResponse;
}
And using the advanced API we use something like this:
result = FusionTables.Query.sql(sql, { hdrs: false });
The REST API seems much harder to use, requireing complex oAuth and developer keys to be configured in advance and coded into the application while the Advanced Services API harvests all this behind the scenes and makes for simple API calls like I show here.
I have seen numerous examples using each of the above with no hint as to why one author chose her mechanism instead of the other.
Your help is greatly appreciated.
The service within app-script is a work in progress, so the full functionality of the API might not be fully supported at the moment. As you mentioned though, the big advantage of the service over the REST API is that you do not have to handle the OAuth flow, as you only need to enable it on your script (as stated here).
The Apps Script "advanced service" implementation still lacks some advanced functionality (like alt=media format queries or multipart / resumable uploads) -- if it actually has those features, it lacks extremely basic documentation of them, to the point that the Apps Script editor autocomplete is unaware of them. The tradeoff of these functionality gaps is that you don't need to handle keys, request building, etc.
So, if you're doing simple sql select / importRows work, the Advanced Service should be able to cover almost all your needs. If you need to delete from your FusionTables, you might want to consider setting up the REST API - because deleting is 1 record per query, the better way to delete is to instead "download what you want to keep, then re-upload it back via replaceRows."
(This worked for me for a while, but eventually what I was keeping outgrew the Apps Script service's limitations and I began receiving Empty Response errors from the call to replaceRows. My remedy was to perform my record maintenance tasks via the REST API, where I can specify resumable uploads, timeouts, etc., while more "normal" interactions are done through the Advanced Service.)
A friend of mine has to fill online forms every day, and she wonders if there is a way to make this things automatically because she has all the data in a separate file. I showed her protractor, so she asked me if it is possible to use protractor for filling these forms. I think that one is able to use protractor when owns the project, but I don't really know if it is possible to use it when not. If it is not possible to do it, what can I do. I mean what she can do.
In some cases you could, but mostly no. Protractor only appears to work with websites built using AngularJS, however the website does not need to be served locally. The example on the Protractor homepage performs a test on the public/offical AngularJS website:
browser.get('http://www.angularjs.org');
From your own home computer, you can run automated Protractor/Jasmine tests (or other such things) on public websites built with AngularJS. However, you won't be able to perform a Google Search with this method for example, since http://www.google.com does not use Angular.
For more versatile browser automation, you could look at Greasemonkey for Firefox, or Tampermonkey for Chrome. These allow you to write JavaScript which will run in your browser, on top of a particular website, to modify that website's appearance or behaviour.
One other possibility is to write some kind of full automation script, using Python or BASH/curl. Deconstruct the web forms, treat the website effectively like an API, and use HTTP POST to submit form content. However, this would only be effective if your friend uses a select few web forms since it would need to be heavily custom-designed for each form. Also, it would not allow her to manually interact with the website or enter any values. That said, it is probably the most universal and commonly used method of achieving the automation you speak of. Additionally, the website(s) your friend uses might even publish some kind of official documented API, which would make this process far easier.
MapKit doesn't natively support local search results, so I'm looking for a way to get a list of local pizzerias (or coffee shops, or a specific retailer) via some http api call.
The default google maps api requires javascript, so it's not clear to me how to integrate this into an iPhone app (without displaying a UIWebView).
I have found that a url in a format such as this:
http://maps.google.com/maps?output=json&q=pizza&near=37.3,-122&num=10
Does return a JSON-like list of results, but my usual friendly JSON parser, json-framework, barfs when it tries to parse this (even if I do clever-sounding things like leaving out the "while(1);" at the start of the reply). I'm also not sure how legitimate this URL is to use for this purpose.
I'm on the same quest. It seems that one option would be to perform the local search using Google's AJAX Search API, then plug that data into the mapkit.
That said, it's not entirely clear to me yet that this approach is in the clear vis a vis google's terms of service. Let's see here. Alright, changed my mind because of this. It's a post on google's own ajax api blog including video of a native iPhone app. Looks like this is the approved solution.