Transforming RSS feeds into HTML, run an agent or use a JS Library?

2009-December-11 at 11:38 am · Filed under Discussion ·Tagged , , , , ,

A customer asked me if it would be easy to make (snippets of) RSS feeds from Notes blog applications visible on html pages (generated by Domino)?

Sure I said, but a search on Google brought me however no direct copy and paste result.

I played before with XML and transformation but I am just wondering what would most effective and more important easy for an Editor who maintains a page?

Just adding a little JavaScript on your page and providing the url of the feed, possibly the url of a stylesheet and a parameter how many items you want to have displayed maximum sounds the easiest for me. I am already using JQuery, could I take advantage of this?

How to tackle possible domain issues? Using an agent and do the transfarmation here? What about performance?

Right now I am still searching, but if you have some guidance your help is appreciated!

PS. I looked at services as RSS Include, would be great if there would be a generic solution in Notes for such a service.

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XPages development practices: developing a common Tree View Custom Controls

2009-December-11 at 9:11 am · Filed under XPages ·Tagged , , , ,

In an earlier article I wrote about displaying information from a Notes View in a Dojo tree dijit.

A scan via Google what others have been doing on this matter did not result in so much valuable information untill I found an article on IBM developerWorks … in chinese.

If you translate the page via Yahoo! Babel Fish you get some really odd result. However, if you translate the page via Google Translate you get a really good translation in a format that I can understand.

I wonder if IBM has ever released this article in English? I hope they do not find it a trouble if I make it available in a PDF format: developing a common Tree View Custom Controls…

Unfortunately I haven’t had the time to test the article in a demo database, but if you have, please let me know…

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Create breadcrumbs (Notes)

2009-December-3 at 9:00 am · Filed under Show N Tell Thursday, sntt ·Tagged ,

The following code lets you store breadcrumbs on a document, based upon the parent-child relation.

Function GetDocumentCategory(doc As notesdocument) As String
Dim session As New notessession
Dim db As notesdatabase
Dim node As notesdocument
Dim Category As String
Set node = doc

Set db = session.currentdatabase

Do While node.isResponse
If node.isvalid Then
Set node = db.getdocumentbyunid(node.parentdocumentunid)
If Category = “” Then
Category = node.Title(0)
Else
Category = node.Title(0) & “\” & Category
End If
End If
Loop

GetDocumentCategory = Category
End Function

Call the function somewhere, for example the querysave event on a form:

Sub Querysave(Source As Notesuidocument, Continue As Variant)
Dim doc As notesdocument
Set doc = source.document
Call doc.replaceitemvalue(“Path”, GetDocumentCategory(doc))
End Sub

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Mastering Dojo

2009-November-30 at 11:55 am · Filed under Dojo, JavaScript ·Tagged ,

I have just started with the following book ‘Mastering Dojo: JavaScript and Ajax Tools for Great Web Experiences‘ to understand the framework a bit more (I hope I have selected the right book to start with?).

For those who have already read the book which parts are the most interesting for you and why?

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Return to Mordor

2009-November-17 at 10:43 am · Filed under Fun ·Tagged , ,

Hej, I am back at the office in Sweden after a month of travelling through Australia. One clear difference between the 2 countries is obviously the seasons. While Australia was heading towards summer Sweden is heading towards winter. So the darker days make it feel a bit like being in Mordor.

Picture: Kunsgberget not ready for ski-ing.

I noticed quiet some requests on this site regarding previous works so I will try to answer you as soon as possible. In the meantime just let those job openings in Australia come in =)

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Demo Notes View in Dojo Dijit.Tree

2009-October-8 at 7:58 pm · Filed under XPages ·Tagged , , ,

I have been prototyping trying to squeeze a Notes View into the Dojo Tree Dijit, so far so good but what I do not understand is how to invoke a partial refresh to update one or two fields with data from a document in the background?

So I guess my chances will rise if I just post an example database and people could start it to work…

Notes View

What I got so far is the Notes View in the dijit.tree. The data for the store is collected by an Agent will runs through the View using a ViewNavigator. The data is in JSON format including the universalID as UNID.

I have added also an expand and collapse functions.

tree screen 1

If you click on an item in the tree the corresponding document will be loaded in the browser.

tree screen 2

The code for loading the dijit.tree and opening a underlying document is not so exciting:

<div dojoType=”dojo.data.ItemFileReadStore” url=”../(JSONAgent)?OpenAgent&amp;view=$v-treeview” jsid=”navigatorStore” />
<div dojoType=”dijit.Tree” id=”domJSONTree1″ store=”navigatorStore” labelAttr=”sname”>
<script type=”dojo/method” event=”onClick” args=”id”>
if(id){
window.location=navigatorStore.getValue(id,”unid”)+”?OpenDocument”;
} else{
alert(“No doc found.”);
}
</script>
</div>
</div>

Instructions how to enable everything you can read here.

Partial refresh how-tp?

Instead of loading a complete new document I rather would do a partial refresh. But how? The partial refresh option is not available like for the build-in XPages controls:

partialrefresh

Perhaps IBM could extend the controls with some groovy Dojo Dijits?

The onclick event is however available (see code) but how I could initiate there the trigger to trigger another Control that might could do the job is a mystery to me? (like in pre-XPages days you would create a button which invokes an agent and you initiate the buttonvia the _doClick way) You tell me!

For anyone wanting to help here is an upload of an example database so you can work with it… Much appreciated!

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Looking for user manual / documentation IBM Blog template

2009-October-8 at 3:58 pm · Filed under Applications ·Tagged , ,

Hej,

I am wondering if someone took the time for writing a user friendly manual for beginning end-users of the  IBM Blog template?

The ‘using this application’ document does not support a good guidance for end-users.

For now I have just made an abstract of what is available in the Notes 8 Client Help.nsf ( Link ) and an abstract from posts on Steve Castledines Blog ( Link ), the last one is more for application administrators or (web) designers.

But in case you have a friendly description of the template including some screen-dumps I would be thankful if you sharing it!

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Now View This!

2009-October-6 at 9:08 pm · Filed under Lotus Domino, Lotus Notes ·Tagged ,

We are moving from office landscapes so I thought at least to place our The View collection into boxes.  I was surprised that I even found the first release of the magazine:

06102009(002)

06102009(003)

Time goes fast when you are having fun…

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Bildr – A photo sharing project

2009-October-1 at 7:15 am · Filed under Applications, Java, Lotus Domino, Show N Tell Thursday, UI, sntt ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Bildr is a prototype application that never received enough funding to become a full blown (internal) Notes template. The idea is to offer a place where teams can share high resolution images.

Bild is  the Swedish word for photo and Bildr refers ofcourse to Flickr.

Another reason why I stopped prototyping the database is that I started looking at XPages and the limitations I experience with pre-XPages development. To shorten it: it takes just too many design elements to build it in the old-fashioned way to be able to offer a Web 2.5 experience. Maybe after a long break I will move the idea behind the application into an XPages based solution.

For now you can download the application and use it as a start for your development project.

What’s in it?

1. Easy import and thumbnailing of images (Notes client)

Open any of the Picture views and select the New Upload button.

bildr01

The idea is that you can upload multiple images at once in a new or an existing category. You can add tags and a description to the to be created document(s). New uploads you may want to appear in the ImageFlow gallery in the startpage and you can enable commenting and read restrictions.

bildr02

When you select the Upload Images action button you can select the pictures you want to upload. The code behind this function is taken from the NSFTools site (I guess). After uploading you can select to include more images or just leave it as it is.

Behind the scenes each picture is included in a Notes document with also a mid-size image and a thumbnail:

bildr03

For the Notes client that is just it. Nothing more exciting here except some gaps in the completeness of the functionality (hey, I was talking about a prototype).

2. Presentation (Browser)

For the way of presenting different elements I guess I was so bold to use Jake Howlet’s DomBlog Template (for search, calendar, commenting, RSS etc.) which was for a long time a learning application for many Domino developer. I guess if you compare the layout with that of LinkedIn you will see some comparison.

bildr05

3. Tagcloud (Browser)

For the Tagcloud I got some help.

bildr04

4. ImageFlow Gallery

bildr06

5. Lightbox

I guess Lightbox alike functions are almost unthinkable when looking at high resolution images so this I also included when clicking on a mid-size or thumbnail image:

bildr07

What is it not?

You can not call this app a production ready application. Some things are not in place (like cleaning up categories and corresponding image documents). However it can be a nice starting point for a mature application. Untill now I experienced little or none errors so please give it a try and send me the end result of you modification.

Steal with pride and improve! (11 MB)

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Workflow in Notes applications

2009-September-23 at 10:57 am · Filed under Applications ·Tagged , , ,

Something I like about traveling is to be able to spend some time on reading larger documents than a couple of pages. For example publications / articles from The View magazine. This time I had printed out some old skool articles regarding OO development in LotusScript. Good stuff there!

So for another trip I was thinking reading some publications on creating workflow application in Lotus Notes. The results? Hmmm quiet disappointing. You would start to believe Notes is just not build for workflow.

I believe The View sends out a survey every now and then asking what the interest of their audience is but making this more transparent to the outside world via IdeaJam would that not be something for them? Just a thought (could be used also for IBM developerWorks).

In the meantime: If you know a good online source to read some tutorials, hints, tips, examples for creating workflow applications in Lotus Notes don’t hesitate to drop an URL here. Thanks!

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