James Coleman

There's not much info on this one, other than "use spotify-api-server" or "learn objective c and use the coca wrapper" (which I didn't have time to do).

We saw yet another Australian Facebook campaign using Spotify (this time it was Jagermeister) - and the question was proposed "why can't we?" (and so I thought, why not?). I did a little digging, and even though Spotify had their main api (libspotify) in C, the Jagermeister campaign was hitting a PHP page for a response. Apart from the fact it was done by F# (which means they're well versed in Spotify/Facebook/probably have a bunch of programmers etc.) there really was not a lot of information about how to replicate Jagermeisters functionality through PHP. So I gave it a shot, and this is what I've come up with.

Because the link to the campaign will probably be down in the future, below is a really rash explanation of what the Jagermeister Facebook campaign achieved: 

So basically what it came down to was a few simple steps:

Choose a 'playlist type'

Search for a track

Compile that track with others into a Spotify playlist

Share the Spotify playlist with the user

To do this we need two different APIs, though it could have been done with only libsharp had we been able to do this in C.

Metatune by mikaelbr (github) This is basically a php wrapper to search/lookup Spotify tracks, albums and artists. Yes, this could have been done with Spotify's HTTP request service, but then you need to figure out how to cache the response (as Spotify are big on caching) and I didn't have the time nor the resources to do so (I'm doing this on a Mac, whereas our servers are Linux boxes).

spotify-api-server by liesen (github) This is our saviour. Essentially another PHP wrapper (which doesn't allow song lookup etc.), liesen has pretty much given us the key to Spotify with this one. spotify-api-server allows us to create, modify and lookup details about playlists.

Install

Installing metatune is really easy, it's drag and drop. Installing spotify-api-server gave me a few headaches, though it was my inexperience which let me down. Use homebrew to install the required libraries (make sure you pull the most recent version of homebrews branch first!), something like this:

brew install libevent jannson libspotify

You'll run into a few warnings, but they're harmless. Then start your spotify api server, which will be running through port 1337. We have our metatune running on MAMP through port 8888 (the default) so we can cURL to localhost:1337/ to hit the api server.

Here is my code for metatune which also hits spotify-api-server. It should be drag and drop (into localhost:8888 directory) - the only thing you'll need to modify is line 27 in script.js:

http://open.spotify.com/user/{YOUR USERNAME}/playlist/

DOWNLOAD

Please note: this is not, in any way, shippable code. the css is quite average (even mikaelbr admits this), the js moreso, and the php is probably the worst you've seen. It's a proof of concept, to try and help you out. I wouldn't really take this project and modify it for a product. Start again, with this as a guide. I'll clean it up one day.

I recently had to fix a bug with Lotto Mate where a user could not view a saved ticket in iOS6. When I was building Lotto Mate (for the second time around) it was in 1.7.x, and frankly I never thought I'd need to update Cordova.

Somewhere along the line, something changed in the way Cordova handled open/read/write with files (txt in my case), which allowed iOS6 to respond correctly. After some basic research, I couldn't guarantee a Cordova update would solve my problem, but it was a pretty safe bet, considering I was 3 sub releases behind.

One look at the process outlined by Apache turned me off. The upgrade process was typically minimal between 1.6.x and 1.9.x, but the leap between 1.9.x and 2.1.x was far grater, and to my Sunday afternoon mind, more prone to mistake.

The worst part of the upgrade process is (understandably) that you have to go chronically through the updates, you can't just jump from 1.9.x to 2.1.x, you have to go through 2.0.x first (which alone, is 35 steps). I did this process 4 times, from 1.9 to 2.1, and failed. Whether it was a missing file (CD rings a bell) or it couldn't compile for the right architecture (even Stack Overflows solution didn't work) I just could not get a clean upgrade.

The easiest way to upgrade from 1.x.x to 2.1.x is manually. Install the latest version of Cordova/Phonegap, create the new project (through Terminal), and drag all of your files in, making sure you change your build settings (and you have the same bundle id - Apple doesn't care if the app ID is different, as long as your bundle ID remains constant, it will recognise it as the existing app), update your plugins and so on.

It was quicker for me to manually do this, than to go through the 50+ steps to upgrade. It was less of a headache, I have a cleaner project that I know my way around better now too (granted, I haven't even pushed a real update yet). It also gave me a chance to update Tesseract - so you could update your plugins too (if you've forgotten, which, like me, you probably have).

Please remember to archive your original project before you try updating everything, so you always have an original copy. The XCode revert fails horribly in multiple instances.

If you're getting an EHCP Error with code 28, regardless of whether your login credentials are correct, it would look something like this:

Some Error Occured. Error Occured (source:query, caller: ) err: query: SHOW COLUMNS FROM panelusers (Got error 28 from storage engine) Got error 28 from storage engine last db error:Got error 28 from storage engine  If you just upgraded your ehcp, try to logout, login back.

Ryan Fait has done a really good write up with a pretty solid chunk of code for customising checkboxes, radio buttons and dropdowns using javascript/css. The one thing that bugged me was if you needed more than one class on your input (in my case, i needed both the 'styled' class and a 'required' class to use jQuery Validate with Custom Inputs), but if you had more than one class on your input the script wouldn't fire.

Change this:

inputs[a].className == "styled"

To this:

inputs[a].className.indexOf("styled") != -1

Using a new language file in the Tesseract plugin for Phonegap/Cordova (jcesarmobile on github) follows most of the same rules for a stand alone Tesseract build.

Compile your new lang.tessddata file in an external Tesseract build (follow steps by someone like Michael Lissner).

Copy the lang.traineddata file into the tessdata directory of your Xcode project (you'll have to do this in Finder).

Convert the lang.traneddata to a Unix Executable file by opening up Terminal, typing in chmod +x (do not hit enter)

Drag your lang.traineddata file to the terminal window (it should update the filepath in Terminal) and press enter.

In Xcode, navigate to Plugins -> claseAuxiliar.mm

Edit this line: 

tesseract->Init([dataPath cStringUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding], "eng");

To read this:

tesseract->Init([dataPath cStringUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding], "THE PREFIX OF YOUR TRAINEDDATA FILE (WHATEVER IS BEFORE THE .TRAINEDDATA)");

Clear your build in Xcode (cmd + shift + K), remove the app from your iPhone, reboot your iPhone and build the app. 

This is a pretty specific solution for a pretty specific install. When compiling Tesseract 2.x, a workaround was needed to point ldconfig in the correct place: export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib. However, if you try and build Tesseract 3.00 and up, you'll get this when running sudo ldconfig:

/usr/local/lib is not a known library type

Solution:

cd etc (must be at disk level)

sudo vi ld.so.conf

Remove the following line (pressing i to start editing):

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib

Save and quit by pressing :x and then enter. Read more on the editing commands here.

You should be able to run sudo ldconfig now without an issue.

It may be blatantly obvious to some, but you can check which version of Tesseract you're running with the following:

tesseract -v

or

tesseract --version

Link Assets in Squiz Matrix can be useful for a variety of reasons, but some situations require the link to be rectified and behave like a Redirect Asset. By default, if you click a Link Asset on the front end, it will take you to a page with the link displayed, where a user can click on the actual link and then be redirected away.

Apply a paint layout to the link asset

Create a redirect asset, and make the URL link to the keyword %globals_asset_link_url%

Nest the redirect asset into the paint layout

When you hit the Link, the redirect asset looks for the URL it points to, loads it within itself and redirects the user. In the blink of an eye, which trumps any nested JS method.