For more information on how to install and configure the plugin, visit the plugin’s homepage. The source code for the plugin is hosted at wordpress.org.

Soon after I published this data, however, I was told by a number of people that the data would be more useful if presented in another format. At first I just started creating a bunch of command line python scripts that would suck in these csv files, and spit them out in different formats. I quickly realized that I could accumulate these scripts and create a quick and dirty web application.

Over a few train rides I created an application called DataIO, and today, I finally got a chance to upload it to Google App Engine. The application is pretty simple to interact with; instructions are located on its front page.

Currently the application can only transpose data and multiply the data set by a given factor. I hope to soon add a jsonp api that will make it trivial to convert a given data set into a format that plays nice with google charts and flot.

The code for this application is hosted at bitbucket.

Just for fun, here is some data from data.topplabs.org, sent through dataIO.

Operating Revenue (transposed and multiplied by 1000000):

http://www.dataio.org/data/f?transpose=true&multiplication_factor=1000000&multiplication_start_row=1

Total Receipts by Agency (transposed and returned in json):

http://www.dataio.org/data/Bt?format=json&transpose=true

Bridges and Tunnels Summary of Total Budgeted Debt Service (multiplied by 100 and returned in csv):

http://www.dataio.org/data/IM?multiplication_factor=100&multiplication_start_row=1&format=csv

1. Install Ant. Instructions for this can be found here
2. Download Adobe Flex 3 SDK. You can download this here.
3. Unzip the Flex 3 SDK that you just downloaded.

   % unzip flex_sdk_3.zip
   

4. Download the Flowplayer development kit. The latest version of the development kit can be found here.
5. Unzip the Flowplayer development kit.

   % upzip flowplayer.devkit-3.0.3.zip

6. Edit the plugin-build.properties file in the Flowplayer development kit. Specifically edit the line that says:

flex3dir=/Users/api/flex3sdk

to point to the location to which you unzipped the Flex 3 SDK. After editing my file looks like this:

flex3dir=/Users/anil/Desktop/flex_sdk_3

7. Navigate to the example plugin that is contained within the Flowplayer development kit. For me this is located here:

   /Users/anil/Desktop/flowplayer.devkit/example

8. Finally, type:

   % ant

   The output should look like this:

   Buildfile: build.xml
   
   build:
        [echo] ++ flowplayer.helloworld.swf +++
        [echo]
        [echo] checking if flowplayer.helloworld.swf is uptodate
        [echo] main up-to-date: ${uptodate.main}
   
   prepare:
       [unzip] Expanding: /Users/anil/env/flowplayer.devkit/flowplayer.swc into
       /Users/anil/env/flowplayer.devkit/example/build
   
   check-compile-dirs:
   
   check-compile-dirs2:
   
   compile:
        [exec] Loading configuration file
              /Users/anil/Desktop/flex_sdk_3/frameworks/flex-config.xml
        [exec] /Users/anil/env/flowplayer.devkit/example/build
   /flowplayer.helloworld.swf (1304 bytes)
        [copy] Copying 1 file to /Users/anil/env/flowplayer.devkit/example/build
   
   BUILD SUCCESSFUL
   Total time: 3 seconds
   

Congratulations! You have compiled a flash plugin for Flowplayer!

• Learn a functional programming language. Any suggestions on which one to try out first?
• Make fewer mockups and write more code. Web frameworks these days allow for such quick development that I think I would be more productive if I just skipped the Omnigraffle/Photoshop step.
• Learn how to engage in effective Test Driven Development. I have heard of the benefits, but I have never seen a good tutorial on how to do this effectively. Maybe I just need to look a bit harder.
• Don’t think about work while I am playing and don’t think about playing when I am working. Focus is always good. I am sure at least one person will be happy with this resolution.
• Make a daily to do list with no more than three items. This was suggested by some lifehacker post and it seems like a great idea.
• Recycle more at home. I recycle consistently at work because we have containers for different type of containers, but since I do not at home, I get lazy more often.
• Contribute more back to the open source community. I have written a bunch of code recently that I haven’t yet checked in to a public repository. I have to make contributing back a higher priority.
]]> http://anilmakhijani.com/2009/01/02/new-years-resolutions/feed/ 9 http://anilmakhijani.com/2008/12/30/exporting-posts-from-wordpress-25/ http://anilmakhijani.com/2008/12/30/exporting-posts-from-wordpress-25/#comments Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:06:59 +0000 Anil http://anilmakhijani.com/?p=141 Recently I tried exporting some posts from one Wordpress 2.5 blog to another Wordpress 2.5 blog. The import worked perfectly, but then I realized that I had forgotten to import one of the posts. Rather than doing to the whole import again, I decided to just import the post that I had forgotten. Unfortunately, Wordpress brought over all of my categories again, leaving me with duplicates of all of my categories. Ugg.

I wrote a small python script that takes a wordpress export file and strips out information about categories and tags. It’s a pretty simple script, but I will share it anyway: script

]]> http://anilmakhijani.com/2008/12/30/exporting-posts-from-wordpress-25/feed/ 0 http://anilmakhijani.com/2008/12/03/streetsblognet-launch/ http://anilmakhijani.com/2008/12/03/streetsblognet-launch/#comments Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:29:25 +0000 Anil http://anilmakhijani.com/?p=120 A few coworkers and I launched Streetsblog.NET yesterday. The website is actually a vanilla install of Wordpress working in conjunction with a vanilla install of Planet with a bunch of custom Wordpress plugins. I will release the plugins when I get some time to clean them up.
]]> http://anilmakhijani.com/2008/12/03/streetsblognet-launch/feed/ 1 http://anilmakhijani.com/2008/11/28/quick-introduction-to-flow-player/ http://anilmakhijani.com/2008/11/28/quick-introduction-to-flow-player/#comments Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:10:58 +0000 Anil http://anilmakhijani.com/?p=105 At TOPP we have been considering switching Streetfilms over to using FlowPlayer. There are number of advantages to using FlowPlayer:
1. It is released under a GPL3 license.
2. It has a neat new jQuery interface.

As I learn more about the advanced features of FlowPlayer I will blog about them, but here is a quick introduction.

If you create a page with markup like this one (see this in action here):

<html>
  <body>
    <h2>Anil Tube</h2>
    <div class="player">
       <a href="http://www.streetfilms.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/chicanefinal16x9.flv">
            <img src="chicaneposter.jpg" />
       </a>
    </div>
    <br><br>
    <div class="player">
      <a href="http://www.streetfilms.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/jan-gehl-with-aaron_768k.flv">
          <img src="gehl-and-aaron-poster1.jpg" />
      </a>
    </div>

  </body>
</html>

You can make these FLV files playable with the following code (see this in action here):

<html>
  <head>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="http://anilmakhijani.com/flow_test/jquery-1.2.6.js">
  </script>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="http://anilmakhijani.com/flow_test/flowplayer-3.0.0.min.js">
  </script>
  <script type="text/javascript">
        $(document).ready( function () {
           $("div.player").each( function () {
                        var link = $(this).find("a");
                        var flv_file = link.attr("href");
                        var img_file = link.find("img").attr("src");
                        $(this).empty().flowplayer({src: "flowplayer-3.0.0.swf", width:560,
                                                                height:459}, {
                                playlist: [
                                    {
                                        url: img_file,
                                        scaling: 'fit'
                                    },
                                    {
                                        url : flv_file,
                                        autoPlay: false,
                                        scaling: 'fit'
                                    }
                                ]
                            });  //end the flowplayer command
                }); //ends the div.player.each

         }); //end the jquery document.ready
  </script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h2>Anil Tube</h2>
    <div class="player">
       <a href="http://www.streetfilms.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/chicanefinal16x9.flv">
           <img src="chicaneposter.jpg" />
       </a>
    </div>
    <br><br>
    <div class="player">
      <a href="http://www.streetfilms.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/jan-gehl-with-aaron_768k.flv">
         <img src="gehl-and-aaron-poster1.jpg" />
      </a>
    </div>                                                                                                                   

  </body>
</html>

I think that the code is pretty self explanatory.   I am using straight jQuery to get the source of the image and FLV file. I am then plugging these values into the FlowPlayer javascript API. Flow Player doesn’t have the concept of a poster frame for a video, so instead I create a play list where the image is the first item in the play list and the FLV file is the second.

To get this to work you obviously need to download the jQuery, FlowPlayer javascript file and the actual player itself.

Update:

I realised that the above code does not work in Internet Explorer 7. IE7 is apparently more strict in enforcing that the Javascript Objects have the correct syntax. I had extra comma’s in the “Playlist” array that I have now removed.

]]> http://anilmakhijani.com/2008/11/28/quick-introduction-to-flow-player/feed/ 0 http://anilmakhijani.com/2008/10/13/adding-meta-information-to-a-blogroll/ http://anilmakhijani.com/2008/10/13/adding-meta-information-to-a-blogroll/#comments Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:27:16 +0000 Anil http://anilmakhijani.com/?p=89 I found a useful blog post on how to add text fields to the “link management” admin menu in Wordpress:  http://planetozh.com/blog/2008/02/wordpress-snippet-add_meta_box/

But how do you save this information into your database?  This is a three step approach.

1.  Add the fields to you database:

add_action('activate_geo_blogroll.php','geo_blogroll_update_db');

function geo_blogroll_update_db(){
   global $wpdb;
   $wpdb->query("ALTER TABLE $wpdb->links ADD COLUMN link_city varchar(255);");
   $wpdb->query("ALTER TABLE $wpdb->links ADD COLUMN link_state varchar(255);");
}

2. Add text fields to the link admin screen:

add_action('admin_menu', 'add_geo_meta_to_links');

function add_geo_meta_to_links() {
   add_meta_box ('geo_link', 'Link Geography', 'geo_blogroll_form', 'link');
}

function geo_blogroll_form () {
  global $link;
?>

<table class="form-table" style="width: 100%;" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="5">
  <tr class="form-field">
       <th value="top" scope="row"><label for="blog_city"><?php _e('City'); ?></label></th>
       <td>
           <input name="blog_city" type="text" id="blog_city"
                  value="<?php echo $link->link_city; ?>" style="width: 95%" />
       </td>
  </tr>
  <tr class="form-field">
    <th value="top" scope="row"><label for="blog_state"><?php _e('State'); ?></label></th>
    <td>
      <input name="blog_state" type="text" id="blog_state"
             value="<?php echo $link->link_state; ?>"  style="width: 95%" />
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>

<?php } ?>

3. And finally save this information to the database every time someone saves a new link or updates an old link:

add_action('edit_link', 'geo_blogroll_save_meta');
add_action('add_link', 'geo_blogroll_save_meta');

function geo_blogroll_save_meta ($link_id){
  global $wpdb;
  $sql_statement =  "UPDATE wp_links SET link_city='".$_POST['blog_city'].
                              "', link_state='".$_POST['blog_state'].
                              "' WHERE link_id =".$link_id.";";
  $wpdb->query($sql_statement);
}

]]> http://anilmakhijani.com/2008/10/13/adding-meta-information-to-a-blogroll/feed/ 0 http://anilmakhijani.com/2008/08/11/developing-alt-law-on-mac-os-x/ http://anilmakhijani.com/2008/08/11/developing-alt-law-on-mac-os-x/#comments Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:30:28 +0000 Anil http://anilmakhijani.com/?p=65 There is a neat project that I have wanted to get involved with for a while called AltLaw. AltLaw is a free open source project developed by the Columbia Law and Technology program. Resources for the project are located at the Law Commons Trac Page.

I am trying to get the AltLaw “stack” working on my Mac OS X machine. So here we go:

1) Download the file http://anilmakhijani.com/altlaw-config.zip and unzip it. I will refer to the location of this unzipped file as {alt-law-config-directory} throughout the rest of this tutorial.

2) Next, we have to get the Rails front end working.

(Prerequisites: sqlite, git)

% git clone git://github.com/lawcommons/altlaw-websearch.gitInitialize altlaw-websearch/.git
% gem install -v=2.1.0 rails
% gem install htmlentities
% gem install BlueCloth
% gem install solr-ruby
% gem install ruby-debug
% gem install chronic
% gem install json
% cd altlaw-websearch
% mkdir log
% chmod -R 644 log/
% cp {alt-law-config-directory}/altlaw-config/rails-config/* config/database.yml
% rake db:migrate

In the file config/environment.rb, change the line:

SOLR = Solr::Connection.new("http://localhost:8196/v3/solr")

to:

SOLR = Solr::Connection.new("http://localhost:8983/solr/")

and:

ExceptionNotifier.exception_recipients = ['errors@altlaw.org']

to:

ExceptionNotifier.exception_recipients = ['myemail@example.com']

% ./script/server

This starts the Rails front end at http://localhost:3000

* To run the Rails front end in production mode do the following:

(Additional prerequisites: mysql)

update config/database.yml with the proper configuration for you database

% rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=production
% rake sass:update
% RAILS_ENV=production rake asset:packager:build_all
% ./script/server -e production

3) Finally, we need Solr:

The following tutorial seemed to work perfectly on my Mac OS X: http://lucene.apache.org/solr/tutorial.html

% wget http://mirror.x10.com/mirror/apache/lucene/solr/1.2/apache-solr-1.2.0.tgz
% tar xvfz apache-solr-1.2.0.tgz
% cd apache-solr-1.2.0
% cp -r example/ alt-law/
% cd alt-law/
% cp {alt-law-config-directory}/altlaw-config/solr-config/* solr/conf/
% java -jar start.jar

This starts solr at http://localhost:8983/solr/.

This set of instructions worked for me. I would love feedback on what it would take to get this to work on non Mac OS X system.

]]> http://anilmakhijani.com/2008/08/11/developing-alt-law-on-mac-os-x/feed/ 2