Raible Designs

No Dice on Comments

I tried Dave's suggestion for comments, but no dice. Here's what I have:

   #set( $comments = $entry.comments )
   <comments>
   #foreach( $comment in $comments )
   <comment id="$comment.id">
      <author>$comment.name</author> 
      <email />
      <url />
      <timestamp>$comment.postTime</timestamp>
      <body>
         $comment.content
      </body>
   </comment>
   #end
   </comments>

It looks like this Velocity template expects to be a part of something great that exposes the $entry variable. Is it possible to simply pass in an entryid and have the XML generated for that. That's what I really want.

BTW, isn't it lovely how it tries to process the template above? Doesn't seem to for Dave - oh well.

Posted in Roller at Apr 18 2003, 02:43:21 PM MDT 2 Comments

Joe Hewitt Comments

I did a bit of research today and it looks fairly simple to incorporate Joe Hewitt-style comments into Roller. The hard part will be figuring out a way to convert an entry's comments into XML. For instance, Joe loads an XML document (sample) that contains all the comments for a given post. This document has a DTD which will hopefully make things easier. Here's what a sample XML-based comment entry looks like:

<comment id="000178">
  <author>Joe Hewitt</author> 
  <email />
  <url />
  <timestamp>April 3, 2003 04:14 PM</timestamp>
  <body>
  <p>I have readers??</p>
  </body>
</comment>

Looks pretty simple eh? So how do we convert comments to XML? Since they're already (or supposed to be) XHTML, should we just use a JSP and JSTL's "x" tag to do a little XSL? That sounds like an easy solution. Or should we figure out a way that we can hit the RSS feed (which could be enhanced to include comments)? Once we've done this, there's some JavaScript to load this document.

  // Make url unique to prevent loading it from cache
  var cacheKiller = new Date().getTime(); 
  // replace this with a link to a JSP or something
  var url = "/content/blog/comments/" + aEntryId + ".xml?" + cacheKiller; 
  loadXMLDocument(url, onCommentsLoaded);

Please comment with any ideas for the comments-to-XML conversion.

Posted in Roller at Apr 17 2003, 01:00:34 PM MDT 3 Comments

My Roller To Do List

I'd like to add some additional features to Roller. Don't worry, I won't add them for a couple weeks (if I add them at all - being a Dad and husband is way more fun and satisfying than being a developer). Dave is imposing a code freeze this weekend and I don't want to mess anything up for the 0.9.7 release. Especially since we really need to get a release out - there hasn't been one since November 2002! Here's what I want to add after the release:

Joe Hewitt-style comments. Big surprise - it doesn't work in Opera 6/7. I'm not surprised as I despise that browser and pity anyone that uses it.
Use Tiles for the Editor layout and implement the Validator for validating fields. With the latest XDoclet, this will be a breeze, but could cause issues with the UI, so a good idea to implement after the release. A good strategy for implementing this would be to write a bunch of test cases with StrutsTestCase for Actions and Canoo's WebTest for JSPs.
Possibly this idea for highlighting entries added in the last few hours.
Implement struts-menu as an optional menu in the Editor to reduce the number of clicks to get to a page.

Unfortunately, none of these are on the fix me, I'm a popular bug list. Aaaahhh, the beauty of open source development: 1) you don't have to work on it at all if you don't want to, 2) you only have to implement the features you want, and 3) there are no deadlines.

Of course, if Roller's goal is to be the most popular Java-based blogging software, then squashing the bugs on the popular list is probably the best thing to do, but I don't think that's Roller's goal. I believe Roller's goal is to provide a learning environment for Java developers to tinker with. Besides, I think blojsom will win the popularity contest. Why? Because it's easy to setup and Roller isn't. Roller doesn't have chance until it can be setup in 5 minutes or less.

Posted in Roller at Apr 16 2003, 10:24:32 AM MDT 2 Comments

Blogging from Starbucks

I finally finished the re-design for OnPoint Digital and now I'm at Starbuck's, uploading the release. My dad bought a subscription to T-Mobile's wireless network - and this is the first time he's had an opportunity to use it. He gets 24 hours free, and then $3/hour after that. Not a bad deal. It sucked that I had to put in 40 hours during my vacation, while my parents where in town - but oh well, it's good to be done. Our ISP is sending someone out on Thursday, so hopefully they'll fix everything at that time - and I can start blogging more - or maybe I'll be lucky enough to find satisfaction in being non-productive for awhile. ;-)

Posted in Roller at Apr 14 2003, 01:52:22 PM MDT 3 Comments

Roller going into Hibernation?

Dave sent an e-mail to the roller-devel mailing list tonight. If I had a more stable internet connection, I'd be crazy enough to upgrade this site tonight. It's good its unstable as I have two releases deadlines in the next couple of days (one COB tomorrow, one COB Thursday) and I'd hate to get caught up in a Roller upgrade - especially if it didn't work. Anyway, here's Dave's e-mail:

Subject: [Roller-development] Warning - latest code from CVS may be unstable

In other words: Roller now uses Hibernate for persistence!

I am in the process of checking in my Hibernate changes and switching Roller over to Hibernate. The backend unit tests pass and I've tested most of the UI (see the Open Office spreadsheet docs/test-plan.sxc), but upgrading to current CVS is not recommended at this juncture... it wouldn't be prudent.

I'll probably upgrade my site to the latest CVS code tomorrow night. I'll let you know how it goes.

What I want to know is - How does it work? Are you pleased with the results? Is it faster? Either way (dud or wild success), I appreciate your hard work Dave and hope this change makes Roller the best weblogger ever!

Posted in Roller at Apr 08 2003, 11:01:03 PM MDT Add a Comment

Blogging motivated by Broadband?

It is my personal little theory that most bloggers have high-bandwidth internet connections. I am seriously de-motivated from surfing and blogging on a dial-up connection. Even worse, our dial-up connection has been on the fritz, and with no connection - I don't even try. I don't even care to read anyone's blogs and I'm starting to wonder if blogging is all that it's cracked up to be. java.blogs is not even interesting to me anymore. I've got to get my internet connection fixed! I'm talking like a crazy man! ;-)

The good news is our ISP called Julie this morning and we're scheduled for an upgrade on the 14th. They also (finally) admitted that there have been sporadic internet connection issues in our area. They've been so damn arrogant this whole time that it "wasn't their problem" - it's nice to see them admit fault. My mom is in town all week at a conference and my dad is flying in on Wednesday, so I'd expect a pretty light week of blogging until next Monday (the 14th).

Posted in Roller at Apr 07 2003, 11:25:33 AM MDT 1 Comment

FreeRoller gets a new home

FreeRoller is going to have a new home. The JavaLobby has offered to host FreeRoller on one of there servers which is significantly more powerful than "el crappo", the dinky box which currently hosts FreeRoller. In order to support the move FreeRoller will be going down for a little bit of time in the near future (probably today). Once FreeRoller is back up we will still be using "el crappo" until the DNS migration is complete, which will take a day or two. The DNS migration should be transparent though so the only outage will occur when we switch databases. [All Things Java]

Posted in Roller at Mar 27 2003, 02:02:58 PM MST Add a Comment

Blogging Software Idea

Since I often read blogs via a tabbed bookmark in Phoenix, I'd like to see the following feature.

A user preference (set via cookies) to highlight the entries for a given day (or number of hours). This would make it easy to spot if someone has updated their blog recently. Basically, it would involve checking a box on the author's site to mark from the current day with a red higlight (color might be an option). Kinda like this:

Highlight last entry with

You could simply use JavaScript to match the user's time up with your blog's time - and highlight entries according to the user's preferences. Cool idea? I just might implement it if folks are interested...

Posted in Roller at Mar 13 2003, 09:15:02 PM MST Add a Comment

RE: Blogging mainstream?

Tom Klaasen writes:

Articles like CNN.com - Blogging goes mainstream - Mar. 10, 2003 seem to indicate that the "business people" are starting to smell money in the blogging area. So enjoy it while it lasts, kids, because soon, you'll be slammed with ads like any Internet page nowadays.

Ads might pester your readers, unless you use and host your own weblog like Roller, MiniBlog, or Blojsom. So my advice is, be kind to your readers - if ads start showing up on your blog without your permission - it's time to move it.

Posted in Roller at Mar 10 2003, 07:10:07 AM MST 1 Comment

Roller Updates

I sat down this evening at 8 o'clock to make a few Roller updates. On my list was the following:

Update this site with the latest release.
Add ability to have comment's e-mailed to the website owner.
Add "Remember Me" feature for comment authors.
Add "Remember Me" feature to the Roller Editor - so you, the blogger, doesn't need to login anymore.

I'm happy to say I completed them all. I'm disappointed to say that it's now 3:30 AM and this site doesn't seem that stable. :( Oh well, hopefully it's better than before. I ended up removing a bunch of the sample apps I had hosted, as they might be contributing to my OutOfMemory errors (as far as I know).

Posted in Roller at Mar 04 2003, 03:30:10 AM MST Add a Comment