Implementing Login Functionality in SUSI Web Chat

SUSI Web Chat is fully equipped with all the accounting features which are being provided by the SUSI.AI API. This blog discloses all the API features one needs to know to embed the Login functionality in SUSI Web Chat.

  1. To embed the Login feature, first we create a form using material-ui.com components with the followng fields
    1. Email
    2. Password
    3. Note: We can also chose a Custom Server while logging in, here I have used the Standard Server ie. http://api.susi.ai to make the user Login

The form can be made with the help of the following fields

  • TextField for Email, props to be passed
    • Name – email
    • Value – this.state.email which gets the value of the current email
    • floatingLabelText is Email,
    • errorText is the message which we want to show when the email does not match the regex or its empty.

Code Snippet –

<TextField name="email" value={this.state.email} onChange={this.handleChange} errorText={this.emailErrorMessage}    floatingLabelText="Email" />
  • PasswordField for Password
    • Name – password
    • Value – this.state.password which gets the value of the current email
    • floatingLabelText is Password,
    • errorText is the message which we want to show when the password is not filled.

Code Snippet-

<PasswordField name='password' value={this.state.password} onChange={this.handleChange} errorText={this.passwordErrorMessage}   floatingLabelText='Password' />
  • The next elements are RadioButton groups taken from material-ui.com. This ensures the user signs into a standard server or even to a custom server. This is not compulsory as of now.
  • And lastly we need a submit button, which is disabled until all the fields are filled.

Code Snippet –

<RaisedButton label="Login" type="submit" labelColor="#fff" disable={!this.state.validForm} />

For the full form, check out this file at Login.react.js

  1. A Sample UI could be as shown in the image
  2. Next after creating the Login Screen, we make the onSubmit prop which is to be hooked up with another function called handleSubmit. An example code snippet from Login.react.js
 handleSubmit = (e) => {
        e.preventDefault();
        // Get the trimmed values from the fields
        var email = this.state.email.trim();
        var password = this.state.password.trim();
        // Set the default server to login
        let BASE_URL = defaults.Server;
            // handle all the details of the chosen server
        let serverUrl = this.state.serverUrl;
        if(serverUrl.slice(-1) === '/'){
            serverUrl = serverUrl.slice(0,-1);
        }
        if(serverUrl !== ''){
            BASE_URL = serverUrl;
        }
// if email and password is filled return true
        if (!email || !password) { return this.state.isFilled; }
// Check the regex of email
        let validEmail = /^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i.test(email); 
// Pass the parameters to the loginEndPoint
        let loginEndPoint =
            BASE_URL+'/aaa/login.json?type=access-token&login=' +
            this.state.email + '&password=' + this.state.password;
        // If email and password is filled and valid call AJAX
        if (email && validEmail) {
            // AJAX Calls
        }
    }
    1. Then we make the Ajax Calls and store the created token from hitting the URL at http://api.susi.ai/aaa/login.json?type=access-token&login=EMAIL&password=PASSWORD. We store the cookie in browser and generate a session for the user using a package ‘universal-cookies’.
$.ajax({
    url: loginEndPoint,
    dataType: 'jsonp',
    jsonpCallback: 'p',
    jsonp: 'callback',
    crossDomain: true,
    success: function (response) {
        cookies.set('serverUrl', BASE_URL, { path: '/' });
        let accessToken = response.access_token;
        let state = this.state;// Adding the current State
        let time = response.valid_seconds; // Get the valid time of the cookie
        state.isFilled = true; // Set isFilled to true
        state.accessToken = accessToken; // Get the token
        state.success = true; // Set Success to true
        state.msg = response.message; // Get the server message
        state.time = time; // Get the time in the state
        this.setState(state); // Set the  state with the values
/* Pass the token to the binding function handleOnSubmit passing the arguments - token and the valid time */
        this.handleOnSubmit(accessToken, time);
    }.bind(this),
    error: function (errorThrown) {
        let msg = 'Login Failed. Try Again';
        let state = this.state;
        state.msg = msg;
        this.setState(state);
    }.bind(this)
});

 

    1. We then fire up the handleOnSubmit(accessToken, time) which saves the token for the given expiration time from the server.

Here’s the sample code

handleOnSubmit = (loggedIn, time) => {
        let state = this.state;
        if (state.success) {
            cookies.set('loggedIn', loggedIn, { path: '/', maxAge: time }); // set the cookie in the browser to maintain the loggedIn state
            this.props.history.push('/', { showLogin: false });
            window.location.reload();// reload after the loggedIn cookie creation
        }
        else {
            this.setState({
                error: true,
                accessToken: '',
                success: false
            });
        }
    }
  1. We then check the access token and redirect him based on his login state. This is handled in MessageSection.react.js
import Cookies from 'universal-cookie';
const cookies = new Cookies();
if (cookies.get('loggedIn')) {
    //Show all functionalities of loggedIn state
}
else {
//Redirect user to login page
}

 

To have a look at the full project, visit https://github.com/fossasia/chat.susi.ai and feel free to contribute. To test the project visit http://chat.susi.ai

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Image Cropper On Ember JS Open Event Frontend

In Open Event Front-end, we have a profile page for every user who is signed in where they can edit their personal details and profile picture. To provide better control over profile editing to the user, we need an image cropper which allows the user to crop the image before uploading it as their profile picture. For this purpose, we are using a plugin called Croppie. Let us see how we configure Croppie in the Ember JS front-end to serve our purpose.

All the configuration related to Croppie lies in a model called cropp-model.js.

 onVisible() {
    this.$('.content').css('height', '300px');
    this.$('img').croppie({
      customClass : 'croppie',
      viewport    : {
        width  : 400,
        height : 200,
        type   : 'square'
      },
      boundary: {
        width  : 600,
        height : 300
      }
    });
  },

  onHide() {
    this.$('img').croppie('destroy');
    const $img = this.$('img');
    if ($img.parent().is('div.croppie')) {
      $img.unwrap();
    }
  },

  actions: {
    resetImage() {
      this.onHide();
      this.onVisible();
    },
    cropImage() {
      this.$('img').croppie('result', 'base64', 'original', 'jpeg').then(result => {
        if (this.get('onImageCrop')) {
          this.onImageCrop(result);
        }
      });
    }

There are two functions: onVisible() and onHide(), which are called every time when we hit reset button in our image cropper model.

  • When a user pushes reset button, the onHide() function fires first which basically destroys a croppie instance and removes it from the DOM.
  • onVisible(), which fires next, sets the height of the content div. This content div contains our viewport and zoom control. We also add a customClass of croppie to the container in case we are required to add some custom styling. Next, we set the dimensions and the type of viewport which should be equal to the dimensions of the cropped image. We define type of cropper as ‘square’ (available choices are ‘square’ and ‘circle’). We set the dimensions of our boundary. The interesting thing to notice here is that we are setting only the height of the boundary because if we pass only the height of the boundary, the width will be will be calculated using the viewport aspect ratio. So it will fit in all the screen sizes without overflowing.

The above two functions are invoked when we hit the reset button. When the user is satisfied with the image and hits ‘looks good’ button, cropImage() function is called where we are get the resulting image by passing some custom options provided by croppie like base64 bit encoding and size of cropped image which we are set to ‘original’ here and the extension of image which is we set here as ‘.jpeg’. This function returns the image of desired format which we use to set profile image.

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Enhancing Images using Native functions in Phimpme Android

Enhancing the image can be performed by adjusting the brightness, contrast, saturation etc. of that image. In the Phimpme Android Image Application, we implemented many enhancement operations. All these image enhancement operations are performed by the native image processing functions.

An image is made up of color channels. A gray-scale image has a single channel, colored opaque image has three channels and colored image with transparency has four channels. Each color channel of an image represents a two dimensional matrix of integer values. An image of resolution 1920×1080 has 1920 elements in its row and 1080 such rows. The integer values present in the matrices will be ranging from 0 to 255. For a grayscale image there will be a single channel. So, for that image, 0 corresponds to black color and 255 corresponds to white color. By changing the value present in the matrices, the image can be modified.

The implementation of the enhancement functions in Phimpme Application are given below.

Brightness

Brightness adjustment is the easiest of the image processing functions in Phimpme. Brightness can be adjusted by increasing or decreasing the values of all elements in all color channel matrices. Its implementation is given below.

void tuneBrightness(Bitmap* bitmap, int val) {
  register unsigned int i;
  unsigned int length = (*bitmap).width * (*bitmap).height;
  unsigned char* red = (*bitmap).red;
  unsigned char* green = (*bitmap).green;
  unsigned char* blue = (*bitmap).blue;
  signed char bright = (signed char)(((float)(val-50)/100)*127);
  for (i = length; i--; ) {
       red[i] =  truncate(red[i]+bright);
       green[i] = truncate(green[i]+bright);
       blue[i] = truncate(blue[i]+bright);
  }
}

  

low brightness, normal, high brightness(in the order) images are shown above

For the above function, the argument val is given by the seekbar implemented in java activity. Its value ranges from 0 – 100, so a new variable is introduced to change the range of the input argument in the function. You can see that in the for loop there is function named truncate. As the name suggests it truncates the input argument’s value to accepted range. It is added to the top of the c file as below

#define truncate(x) ((x > 255) ? 255 : (x < 0) ? 0 : x)

Contrast

Contrast of an image is adjusted in Phimpme application by increasing the brightness of the brighter pixel and decreasing value of the darker pixel. This is achieved by using the following formula for the adjustment contrast in editor of phimpme application.

pixel[i] = {(259 x (C + 255))/(255 x (259 - C))} x (pixel[i] - 128)

In the above formula, C is the contrast value and pixel[i] is the value of the element in the image matrix that we are modifying for changing the contrast.

 

low contrast, normal, high contrast(in the order) images are shown above

So, after this formula for modifying every pixel value, the function looks like below

void tuneContrast(Bitmap* bitmap, int val) {
  register unsigned int i;
  unsigned int length = (*bitmap).width * (*bitmap).height;
  unsigned char* red = (*bitmap).red;
  unsigned char* green = (*bitmap).green;
  unsigned char* blue = (*bitmap).blue;
  int contrast = (int)(((float)(val-50)/100)*255);
  float factor = (float)(259*(contrast + 255))/(255*(259-contrast));

  for (i = length; i--; ) {
       red[i] = truncate((int)(factor*(red[i]-128))+128);
       green[i] = truncate((int)(factor*(green[i]-128))+128);
       blue[i] = truncate((int)(factor*(blue[i]-128))+128);
  }
}

Hue

The below image explains hue shift by showing what happens when shift in hue takes place over time. The image with hue 0 looks identical with image with hue 360. Hue shift is cyclic. The definition and formulae corresponding hue is found in wikipedia page here. Using that formulae and converting them back, i.e we got rgb values from hue in Phimpme application. Its implementation is shown below.

[img source:wikipedia]

void tuneHue(Bitmap* bitmap, int val) {
  register unsigned int i;
  unsigned int length = (*bitmap).width * (*bitmap).height;
  unsigned char* red = (*bitmap).red;
  unsigned char* green = (*bitmap).green;
  unsigned char* blue = (*bitmap).blue;
  double H = 3.6*val;
  double h_cos = cos(H*PI/180);
  double h_sin = sin(H*PI/180);
  double r,g,b;

  for (i = length; i--; ) {
       r = (double)red[i]/255;
       g = (double)green[i]/255;
       b = (double)blue[i]/255;
       red[i] = truncate((int)(255*((.299+.701*h_cos+.168*h_sin)*r +  (.587-.587*h_cos+.330*h_sin)*g + (.114-.114*h_cos-.497*h_sin)*b)));

       green[i] = truncate((int)(255*((.299-.299*h_cos-.328*h_sin)*r + (.587+.413*h_cos+.035*h_sin)*g + (.114-.114*h_cos+.292*h_sin)*b)));

       blue[i] = truncate((int)(255*((.299-.3*h_cos+1.25*h_sin)*r +  (.587-.588*h_cos-1.05*h_sin)*g + (.114+.886*h_cos-.203*h_sin)*b)));
  }
}

Saturation

Saturation is the colorfulness of the image. You can see the below null saturation, unmodified and high saturated images in the respective order. The technical definition and formulae for getting the saturation value from the rgb value is given in the wikipedia page here. In Phimpme application we used those formulae to get the rgb values from the saturation value.

Its implementation is given below.

  

low saturation, normal, high saturation(in the order) images are shown above

void tuneSaturation(Bitmap* bitmap, int val) {
  register unsigned int i;
  unsigned int length = (*bitmap).width * (*bitmap).height;
  unsigned char* red = (*bitmap).red;
  unsigned char* green = (*bitmap).green
  unsigned char* blue = (*bitmap).blue;
  double sat = 2*((double)val/100);
  double temp;
  double r_val = 0.299, g_val = 0.587, b_val = 0.114;
  double r,g,b;
  for (i = length; i--; ) {
      r = (double)red[i]/255;
      g = (double)green[i]/255;
      b = (double)blue[i]/255;
      temp = sqrt( r * r * r_val +
                     g * g * g_val +
                       b * b * b_val );
      red[i] = truncate((int)(255*(temp + (r - temp) * sat)));
      green[i] = truncate((int)(255*(temp + (g - temp) * sat)));
      blue[i] = truncate((int)(255*(temp + (b - temp) * sat)));
  }
}

Temperature

If the color temperature of the image is high, i.e the image with the warm temperature will be having more reds and less blues. For a cool temperature image reds are less and blues are more. So In Phimpme Application, we implemented this simply by adjusting the brightness of the red channel matrix and blue channel matrix as we did in brightness adjustment. We didn’t modify the green channel here.

  

low temperature, normal, high temperature(in the order) images are shown above

void tuneTemperature(Bitmap* bitmap, int val) {
  register unsigned int i;
  unsigned int length = (*bitmap).width * (*bitmap).height;
  unsigned char* red = (*bitmap).red;
  unsigned char* green = (*bitmap).green;
  unsigned char* blue = (*bitmap).blue;
  int temperature = (int)1.5*(val-50);
  for (i = length; i--; ) {
       red[i] = truncate(red[i] + temperature);
       blue[i] = truncate(blue[i] - temperature);
  }
}

Tint

In Phimpme application, we adjusted the tint of an image in the same way of adjusting the temperature. But in this instead of modifying the red and blue channels, we modified the green channel of the image. An image with more tint will have a tone of magenta color and if it is decreased the image will have a greenish tone. The below shown code shows how we implemented this function in image editor of Phimpme application.

  

low tint, normal, high tint(in the order) images are shown above

void tuneTint(Bitmap* bitmap, int val) {
  register unsigned int i;
  unsigned int length = (*bitmap).width * (*bitmap).height;
  unsigned char* red = (*bitmap).red;
  unsigned char* green = (*bitmap).green;
  unsigned char* blue = (*bitmap).blue;
  int tint = (int)(1.5*(val-50));

  for (i = length; i--; ) {
       green[i] = truncate(green[i] - tint);
  }
}

Vignette

Vignetting is the reduciton in the brightness of the image towards the edges than the center. It is applied to draw the attention of the viewer to the center of the image.

 

normal and vignetted images are shown above

For implementing vignette in Phimpme application, we reduced the brightness of the pixel corresponding to a radial gradient value which is generated based on the pixel’s distance from the corner and center. It’s function in Phimpme as is shown below.

double dist(int ax, int ay,int bx, int by){
   return sqrt(pow((double) (ax - bx), 2) + pow((double) (ay - by), 2));
}

void tuneVignette(Bitmap* bitmap, int val) {
  register unsigned int i,x,y;
  unsigned int width = (*bitmap).width, height = (*bitmap).height;
  unsigned int length = width * height;
  unsigned char* red = (*bitmap).red;
  unsigned char* green = (*bitmap).green;
  unsigned char* blue = (*bitmap).blue;
  double radius = 1.5-((double)val/100), power = 0.8;
  double cx = (double)width/2, cy = (double)height/2;
  double maxDis = radius * dist(0,0,cx,cy);
  double temp,temp_s;
   for (y = 0; y < height; y++){
       for (x = 0; x < width; x++ ) {
           temp = dist(cx, cy, x, y) / maxDis;
           temp = temp * power;
           temp_s = pow(cos(temp), 4);
           red[x+y*width] = truncate((int)(red[x+y*width]*temp_s));
           green[x+y*width] = truncate((int)(green[x+y*width]*temp_s));
           blue[x+y*width] = truncate((int)(blue[x+y*width]*temp_s));
       }
   }
}

All these above mentioned functions are called from main.c file by creating JNI functions corresponding to each. These JNI functions are further defined with proper name in Java and arguments are passed to it. If you are not clear with JNI, refer my previous posts.

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Sorting Events in Open Event Organizer Android App

While working on Open Event Organizer project, we had to display events in a single list in custom order with proper sub headings. Initially, we were thinking of using tabbed activity and showing events in respective tabs. But the thing with tabs is that it requires you to nest fragments and then each of them will have adapters. Also, we have used Model View Presenter pattern in the project, so this is another reason we did not use view pager as it would increase the number of presenter and view classes for the same feature. So we decided to display events in a single list instead. The custom order decided was that events would be divided into three categories – live, upcoming and past. In each category, a recent event will be at the top of another.

Adding SubHeadings support to the Recycler View

So the first thing was adding subheading support to the recycler view. We have used timehop’s sticky header decorators library for subheadings implementation. First, your adapter should implement the interface StickyRecyclerHeadersAdapter provided by the library. In our case the implemented methods look like:

@Override
public long getHeaderId(int position) {
  Event event = events.get(position);
  return DateService.getEventStatus(event).hashCode();
}

@Override
public EventsHeaderViewHolder onCreateHeaderViewHolder(ViewGroup viewGroup) {
  return new EventsHeaderViewHolder(EventSubheaderLayoutBinding.inflate(LayoutInflater.from(viewGroup.getContext()), viewGroup, false));
}

@Override
public void onBindHeaderViewHolder(EventsHeaderViewHolder holder, int position) {
  Event event = events.get(position);
  holder.bindHeader(DateService.getEventStatus(event));
}

@Override
public int getItemCount() {
  return events.size();
}

 

The first one is getHeaderId which returns a unique id for a group of items which should appear under a single subheading. In this case, DateService.getEventStatus returns status of an event (either live, past or upcoming) and so hashcode of it is returned as a unique id for that header. OnCreateHeaderViewHolder is same as onCreateViewHolder of your adapter. Return your header view here. Similarly in onBindViewHolder, bind data to the header. getItemCount returns total number of items.

Sorting Events

The important thing to do was sorting events in the order decided. We had to implement the Comparable interface to Event model which will compare any two events using our custom rules such that after sorting we get events in the order – Live, Upcoming and Past with recent one at the top in each category. The compareTo method of Event model looks like:

public int compareTo(@NonNull Event otherEvent) {
  Date now = new Date();
  try {
     Date startDate = DateUtils.getDate(getStartTime());
     Date endDate = DateUtils.getDate(getEndTime());
     Date otherStartDate = DateUtils.getDate(otherEvent.getStartTime());
     Date otherEndDate = DateUtils.getDate(otherEvent.getEndTime());
     if (endDate.before(now) || otherEndDate.before(now)) {
         // one of them is past and other can be past or live or upcoming
         return endDate.after(otherEndDate) ? -1 : 1;
     } else {
         if (startDate.after(now) || otherStartDate.after(now)) {
             // one of them is upcoming other can be upcoming or live
             return startDate.before(otherStartDate) ? -1 : 1;
         } else {
             // both are live
             return startDate.after(otherStartDate) ? -1 : 1;
         }
     }
  } catch (ParseException e) {
  e.printStackTrace();
  }
  return 1;
}

 

The compareTo method returns a positive integer value for greater than, the negative integer value for less than and 0 if equal. Accordingly, we have implemented the method as per our need. At first case, we check if one of the events is past by comparing end dates with now. So the other event can be past, live or upcoming. In all the cases we will need to have an event top of another if an end date of the event is before the end date of another. In next case, only live and upcoming events pair will reach to this case. So, in this case, we check if one of them is upcoming so that other can be either upcoming or live. In both the cases, we need to have an event with start date before another’s start date at the top. Hence just comparing start dates of them will do the trick. For the last case, we are left with both live events. So here we need an event with start date after another event at the top. Hence just comparing start date if it is after other’s start date then it comes on top of another.

Using this method, events are sorted and supplied to the adapter which implements StickyRecyclerHeadersAdapter. Hence in the list, events are displayed in Live, Upcoming and Past categories as expected with respective section headers and in each category, a recent event comes on top of another.

Links:
Sticky headers decorator library- https://github.com/timehop/sticky-headers-recyclerview

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How to use Digital Ocean and Docker to setup Test CMS for Phimpme

One of the core feature of Phimpme app is sharing images to other different accounts, including various open source CMS such as WordPress, Drupal etc and other open source data storage account such as OwnCloud, NextCloud etc.

One can not have everything at place, but for development and testing purpose it is required in our end. So problem I was facing to get things done in most optimize way. I thought setting things on hosted server would be good, because it saves lots of time in setting locally in our system, adding all the dependencies. And also we cannot share the account as it is limited to our local environment.

Digital Ocean caught my attention in providing hosting service. It is very easy to use with their droplet creation. Select as per your system requirement and service requirement, the droplet will be ready in few moments and we can use it anywhere.

Note: DigitalOcean is a paid service. Student can use Github Education Pack for free credits on Digital Ocean. I used the same.

I currently worked on Nextcloud integration so here in this blog I will tell how to quickly create nextcloud server using Digital Ocean and Docker.

Step 1: Creating Droplet

DigitalOcean completely work on droplets and one can anytime create and destroy different droplets associated with their account.

Choose an Image

So there are three options of choosing the image of Droplet.

Distributions : Which is other operating systems you want to use

One Click app: It is a very good feature as it creates everything for use in just one click. But again, it doesn’t provide everything, like there is no NextCloud. That’s why I used docker to take its image.

Snapshots: This is if you saved your droplet already, so it will pick it and creates similar to the saved image. Here I selected Docker from one-click apps section.

Selecting the size

This is for selecting the size of the server we are creating, For small development purpose $5 plan is good. There is a good thing in DigitalOcean as it didn’t charge on the monthly basis to the use. It works on hourly basis and charge according to that. Also providing the SSD Disk for fast IO operations.

Choose a datacenter Region

Add SSH

This is very important to add a ssh key. Otherwise you have to setup root password or used the shell they provide. To work on your computer terminal, its good that you setup an ssh key already and it to the account.

How to get ssh key in your system: https://help.github.com/

Rename the number of droplet and name of the droplet and create.

Now it will show there in your droplet section

Step 2: Access the Server

As we have already added the ssh key to our droplet. Now we can access it from our terminal. Open the terminal and type this

➜  ~ ssh root@<your IP> 

It will logged in to you

root@docker-512mb-blr1-01:~# 

Our objective is setting a NextCloud Account.

Here now I will use Docker. Firstly, What is Docker?

Go here to read: https://www.docker.com/what-docker

I will explain docker in other words. Like I setted up everything which I need. Now If I have to destroy this all and want to use it after some days. Or if my friends wants to use the setted platform. What is the option here?

Recreate and everything everytime? NO.

Just create docker image, save it pull the image when you want, and run it to serve on the serve. Your friends need, provide them the docker image.

Isn’t it cool and much time saving.

Browse the Docker Hub

In the hub we can find docker images for various platforms officially maintained by the authors.

Nextcloud have their official account on Docker to provide latest images to the developers.

Here is the link : https://hub.docker.com/_/nextcloud/

Pull the image in your server.

root@docker-512mb-blr1-01:~# docker pull nextcloud
Using default tag: latest
latest: Pulling from library/nextcloud
9f0706ba7422: Pull complete
4c407763908f: Pull complete
82e2bc3a45c1: Pull complete
c84e1013aed1: Pull complete
a3b5e03d7e24: Pull complete
917f836a88be: Pull complete
b2dc54431819: Pull complete
a60b574790b8: Pull complete
49ef0f1aff88: Pull complete
7773a865ee49: Pull complete
9e0e5cc56a9d: Pull complete
bfade1c7421e: Pull complete
ece8ceb33bed: Pull complete
c691d2747a3e: Pull complete
4b5e96bf54c9: Pull complete
6fbe30ae456b: Pull complete
e0c534b35a6b: Pull complete
4d2687f4b6f3: Pull complete
00197422846a: Pull complete
6ab57168c49c: Pull complete
9e1260db005f: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:1bb5c256f19dcec60d8468c00bc7dc74efdf93390666cb82e20bcacbbbd9746c
Status: Downloaded newer image for nextcloud:latest
root@docker-512mb-blr1-01:~#

Following the documentation

I need to run this command $ docker run -d -p 8080:80 nextcloud

It serves the account on localhost.

Check on your https://<IP>:8080

So in this way I easily setup different account for testing and integration purpose in Phimpme Android app. It really saves lots of time and speed up the process.

You can easily destroy the droplet after work is done.

Student can use the free credits from GitHub Education Pack.

Source:

 

Continue ReadingHow to use Digital Ocean and Docker to setup Test CMS for Phimpme

Using Semantic UI Modals in Open Event Frontend

Modals in semantic UI are used to display the content on the current view while temporarily blocking the interaction with the main view. In Open Event Frontend application, we’ve a ‘delete’ button which deletes the published event as soon as the button is pressed making all the data clean. Once the event is deleted by the user, it is not possible to restore it again. We encountered that this can create a whole lot of problem if the button is pressed unintentionally. So we thought of solving this by popping up a dialog box on button click with a warning and asking for user’s confirmation to delete the event. To implement the dialog box, we used semantic UI modals which helped in ensuring that the user correctly enters the name of the event in the given space to ensure that s/he wants to delete the event.

Since we want our modal to be customizable yet reusable so that it can be used anywhere in the project so we made it as the component called ‘event-delete-modal’. To do that we first need to start with the template.

The markup for the event-delete-modal looks like this:

<div class="content">
  <form class="ui form" autocomplete="off" {{action (optional formSubmit) on='submit' preventDefault=true}}>
    <div class="field">
      <div class="label">
        {{t 'Please enter the full name of the event to continue'}}
      </div>
      {{input type='text' name='confirm_name' value=confirmName required=true}}
    </div>
  </form>
</div>
<div class="actions">
  <button type="button" class="ui black button" {{action 'close'}}>
    {{t 'Cancel'}}
  </button>
  <button type="submit" class="ui red button" disabled={{isNameDifferent}} {{action deleteEvent}}>
    {{t 'Delete Event'}}
  </button>
</div>

The complete code for the template can be seen here.

The above code for the modal window is very similar to the codes which we write for creating the main window. We can see that the semantic UI collection “form” has also been used here for creating the form where the user can input the name of the event along with delete and cancel buttons. The delete button remains disabled until the time correct name of the event been written by the user to ensure that user really wants to delete the event. To cancel the modal we have used close callback method of semantic UI modal which itself closes it. Since the ‘isNameDifferent’ action is uniquely associated to this particular modal hence it’s been declared in the ‘event-delete-modal.js’ file.

The code for the  ‘isNameDifferent’ in ‘event-delete-modal.js’ file looks like this.

export default ModalBase.extend({
  isSmall         : true,
  confirmName     : '',
  isNameDifferent : computed('confirmName', function() {
    return this.get('confirmName').toLowerCase() !== this.get('eventName').toLowerCase();
  })
});

The complete code for the.js file can be seen here.

In the above piece of code, we have isSmall variable to ensure that our modal size is small so it can fit for all screen sizes and we have the implementation isNameDifferent() function. We can also notice that our modal is extending the ‘ModelBase’ class which has all the semantic UI modal settings and the callback methods to perform show, hide, close and open actions along with settings which will help modal to look the way we want it to be.  

The modal-base.js class looks like this.

  openObserver: observer('isOpen', function() {
   close() {
     this.set('isOpen', false);
   },
   actions: {
    close() {
      this.close();
    }
  },
  willInitSemantic(settings) {
    const defaultOptions = {
      detachable     : false,
      duration       : testing ? 0 : 200,
      dimmerSettings : {
        dimmerName : `${this.get('elementId')}-modal-dimmer`,
        variation  : 'inverted'
      },
      onHide: () => {
        this.set('isOpen', false);
        if (this.get('onHide')) {
          this.onHide();
        }
      },
      onVisible: () => {
        this.set('isOpen', true);
        this.$('[data-content]').popup({
          inline: true
        });
     }

The complete code for the .js file can be seen here.

In the above code, we can see that at the top we’ve an ‘openObserver’ function where we’re observing the behaviour of the modal and setting the variables according to the behavioural changes. Now, later we’re checking the status of those variables and performing the actions based on their value. For example, to close the modal we have a boolean variable ‘isOpen’ which is set to false now close() action will be called which closes the modal.  Similarly, in ‘willInitSemantic(settings)’ function we’re setting the modal’s setting like the effects, length, the details modal will display on popping out etc.
We’re here overriding the semantic UI moda settings like detachable, dimmerSettings, duration etc along with the callback methods like onHide(), onVisible() etc. to get the required results.

Finally, our event-delete-modal will look something like this.

Fig: Modal to delete the event

So to conclude this post, we can easily say that the modals are of great use. They can solve the purpose of displaying some alert or to input some values without interrupting the flow of the main page depending upon the requirements.

Additional Resources:

Blog post about Awesome Ember.js Form Components of Alex Speller: http://alexspeller.com/simple-forms-with-ember/

Continue ReadingUsing Semantic UI Modals in Open Event Frontend

Using Hidden Attribute for Angular in Susper

In Angular, we can use the hidden attribute, to hide and show different components of the page. This blog explains what the hidden attribute is, how it works and how to use it for some common tasks.
In Susper, we used the [hidden] attribute for two kinds of tasks.

  1. To hide components of the page until all the search results load.
  2. To hide components of the page, if they were meant to appear only in particular cases (say only the first page of the search results etc).

Let us now see how we apply this in a html file.
Use the [hidden] attribute for the component, to specify a flag variable responsible for hiding it.
When this variable is set to true or 1, the component is hidden otherwise it is shown.
Here is an example of how the [hidden] attribute is used:

<app-infobox [hidden]=”hidefooter class=“infobox col-md-4” *ngIf=“Display(‘all’)”></app-infobox>

Note that [hidden] in a way simply sets the css of the component as { display: none }, whereas in *ngIf, the component is not loaded in the DOM.
So, in this case unless Display(‘all’) returns true the component is not even loaded to the DOM but if [hidden] is set to true, then the component is still present, only not displayed.
In the typescript files, here is how the two tasks are performed:
To hide components of the page, until all the search results load.

this.querychange$ = store.select(fromRoot.getquery);
this.querychange$.subscribe(res => {
this.hidefooter = 1;

this.responseTime$ = store.select(fromRoot.getResponseTime);
this.responseTime$.subscribe(responsetime => {
this.hidefooter = 0;

The component is hidden when the query request is just sent. It is then kept hidden until the results for the previously sent query are available.

2. To hide components of the page, if they were meant to appear only in particular cases.
For example, if you wish to show a component like Autocorrect only when you are on the first page of the search results, here is how you can do it:

if (this.presentPage === 1) {
this.hideAutoCorrect = 0;
} else {
this.hideAutoCorrect = 1;
}

This should hopefully give you a good idea on how to use the hidden attribute. These resources can be referred to for more information.

Continue ReadingUsing Hidden Attribute for Angular in Susper

How to Read PIC Data-Sheet and Add a New Functionality to PSLab Firmware

Reading data-sheets is not a fun task. Going through tens of hundreds of pages with numerical, mathematical and scientific data is not fun reading. This blog post attempts to simplify reading the available data-sheets related to PIC24 micro-controller used in the PSLab device to help reader with implementing a new feature in PSLab firmware.

There are many features available in the PSLab device, such as; UART, SPI, I2C, ADC and Basic I/O reading. The “basic” implementation techniques do not vary much from one feature to other. That being stated this blog will carry out the basic implementation techniques one should follow and basic knowledge on PIC micro-controller programming to save himself from the trouble going through the 500+ pages in PIC data-sheets.

PIC Basics:

Before go into implementation there are few facts one should know about PIC programming.

– In the micro-controller values are saved in a memory block known as Registers. The values saved in these registers are volatile as they are all set to 0 regardless the value they were assigned when the power is off.

– Micro-controller configurations are made by setting values to these registers. Even turning on and off a whole feature like UART in PSLab device can be done using setting 0 to UARTEN register bit.

– When it comes to I/O ports, there are two different types of registers called TRIS and LAT/PORT. By setting 1 to TRIS ports will make the relevant pin an input pin. Setting it to 0 will make it an output pin. Easy way to remember this is think 1 as I in input and 0 as O in output. In UART implementation of PSLab, pin RP40 is set as an input pin to receive the data stream and pin RP39 is set as an output pin to send the data stream out. These settings are made using TRIS port settings. PORT registers save the value received by the relevant input pin attached to it.


The above figure extracted from mikroe learning materials, illustrates different stages an I/O pin can handle. As an extra point, ANSEL register makes the pin support digital signals or analog signals as per user requirements.

– In PIC, some registers such as PORT, TRIS and registers with similar functionalities are combined together. To access the value of each individual register can be done using dot notation. Assume the program requires to access the 8th register in TRISB register set. Note that the registers are indexed from zero. This implies that the 8th register will have the index 8 in the register sub-set. The following syntax is used to access the register;

TRISBbits.TRISB7

 

The above points cover the basic knowledge one should have when developing firmware to PSLab device.

How to implement a feature like UART in PSLab firmware?

The first thing to know when implementing a new feature is that the developer needs to be familiar with the relevant hardware protocols. As an example, to implement UART; relevant protocol is RS232. If the feature is I2C; one should know about the I2C protocol.

Once the feature is familiar, next step is to refer the PIC data-sheet and resources on how to implement it in firmware. As for demonstrative purposes, this blog will continue with UART implementation.

Download the latest data-sheet from MicroChip official website and browse to the table of content. It consists of a set of features supported by the micro-controller implemented in the PSLab device. Find the entry related to the feature being implemented. In this case it will be Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter (UART).

Each feature will contain a description following this format explaining what are the options it support and its constraints.

One must be aware of the fact that not every pin in the micro-controller can be used for any feature as he desires. The “PINOUT I/O DESCRIPTIONS” section in the data-sheet explains which pins are capable of the feature being implemented. According to these details, the pins should be initiated as Input/Output pins as well as Digital/Analog pins.

The next step is to refer to the control registers related to the feature. They are all mentioned in the data-sheet under the specific feature. There are some notations available in this section which resembles something like the following;

PDSEL<1:0>: Parity and Data Selection bits
11 = 9-bit data, no parity
10 = 8-bit data, odd parity
01 = 8-bit data, even parity
00 = 8-bit data, no parity

 

This represents a register with two bits. By setting either 11 or 10 or 01 or 00; different implementations can be achieved.

In PSLab firmware this is implemented as;

U1MODEbits.PDSEL = 0;

 

which implements UART feature with 8-bits stream having no parity bits for error correction.

In UART feature implemented in PSLab device, receiving bit stream is fetched by reading the register values in U1STAbits.URXDA and data is transmitted using U1TXREG. All these registers are mentioned in the control registers section in the feature.

Resources:

Continue ReadingHow to Read PIC Data-Sheet and Add a New Functionality to PSLab Firmware

Detecting password strength in SUSI.AI Web Chat SignUp

Every SignUp page contains a field to enter a password, but it should not be just a dumb component that takes input and saves it on server. A password field on a SignUp page should tell how weak or strong the password is. We decided to implement this in our SUSI.AI Web Chat SignUp Page.

Our SignUp page look like this:

After entering a valid email, user needs to enter the password. It shows that minimum 6 character are required:

We have the following div for our Password Field :

<PasswordField
  name="password"
  style={fieldStyle}
  value={this.state.passwordValue}
  onChange={this.handleChange}
  errorText={this.passwordErrorMessage}
  floatingLabelText="Password" />

In our OnChange Method we need to check the strength of password once the six character limit is crossed and display the strength visually.

We have used Dropbox’s zxcvbn library for the purpose of getting the strength of password.

Major reasons of choosing this library are :

  • Flexibility : It allows different passwords as long as certain level of complexity is matched.
  • Usability : It is very easy use and gives instant feedback. This helps user towards less guessable passwords.

For installing this library :

 npm -S install zxcvbn

For importing this:

import zxcvbn from 'zxcvbn';

Now in our OnChange Method:

handleChange = (event) => {
        let email;
        let password;
        let confirmPassword;
        let serverUrl;
        let state = this.state
      // Checking if event is password
        if (event.target.name === 'password') {
            password = event.target.value;
            let validPassword = password.length >= 6;
            state.passwordValue=password;
            state.passwordError = !(password && validPassword);
            if(validPassword) {
              //getting strength of password from zxcvbn
              let result = zxcvbn(password);
              state.passwordScore=result.score;
              let strength = [
                'Worst',
                'Bad',
                'Weak',
                'Good',
                'Strong'
              ];
              state.passwordStrength=strength[result.score];
            }
            else {
              state.passwordStrength='';
              state.passwordScore=-1;
            }
        }

Explanation:

In the above method result variable gets the strength of password and result.score gives us the score of password in terms of an integer and according to which we have made an array to get result in remarks corresponding to score. We have remarks like Good, Strong, etc.

Initially we have set the score to -1 to know that user has not entered the password yet. Once user has entered password the score changes.
Then we made a wrapper class to help css format the color of remark and display a meter (determining password strength) with corresponding length and color. We have used template strings to make our wrapper class. This helps us in having different names of wrapper class according to the score of the password.

// using Template Strings(look at resources for more info)
const PasswordClass=[`is-strength-${this.state.passwordScore}`];

Then we wrapped our Password field in div with className = “PasswordClass”.

<div className={PasswordClass.join(' ')}>
        <PasswordField
            name="password"
            style={fieldStyle}
            value={this.state.passwordValue}
            onChange={this.handleChange}
            errorText={this.passwordErrorMessage}
            floatingLabelText="Password" />
            <div className="ReactPasswordStrength-strength-bar" />
<div>

All that was left to was add css code corresponding to every score. For example for score=3, the following css was made:

.is-strength-3 { color: #57B8FF; }

.ReactPasswordStrength-strength-bar {
  box-sizing: border-box;
  height: 2px;
  position: relative; top: 1px; right: 1px;
  transition: width 300ms ease-out;
}

.is-strength--1 .ReactPasswordStrength-strength-bar {
  background: #D1462F;
  display: none;
}
// if strength = -1 then setting display of block equals to none
.is-strength--1 .ReactPasswordStrength-strength-bar {
  background: #D1462F;
  display: none;
}

.is-strength-3 .ReactPasswordStrength-strength-bar {
  background: #57B8FF; //Changing color according to password’s strength
  width: 192px; //Changing width according to password’s strength
  display: block;
}

After successfully implementing all these features, We had following SignUP page:

Resources:

1)Dropbox’s library(ZXVBN): https://github.com/dropbox/zxcvbn

2)Template Strings(Used here for making wrapping class of Password Field): https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Template_literals

Test Link:

This can be tested here.

Continue ReadingDetecting password strength in SUSI.AI Web Chat SignUp

Adding Emoji Support in SUSI Web Chat

SUSI.AI web chat sometimes, renders responses which contains emojis. We cannot rely on browser’s capability to render these emojis. The Problem is, that the default support for emojis of browsers does not offer a great variety of emojis to be rendered. The solution we implemented in the SUSI.AI web chat is to make use of a npm package to support our need for displaying emojis.

There were many options to choose from. For example :

Comparison between emoji packages :

Property Twemoji React-easy-emoji React-twemoji React-emojione
Built by Twitter Appfigures ZxMYS Pladaria
Usage Can be used as an object with function parse: twemoji.parse() Can be used as function: emoji() It is a simple wrapper for Twemoji.Can be used as component: <Twemoji> Can be used as function: emojify() or component: <Emojify>
Conversion compatibility Provides standard Unicode emoji support across all platforms Parse only basic emojis.Doesn’t parse emoji names like 🙂 and emoticons like 🙂 Convert emoji characters to Twemoji images Converts shortnames, unicode and ASCII smileys into renderable emojis
Dependencies None loot-web-kit lodash, prop-types, twemoji None

After detailed analysis of the above mentioned packages, we decided to go with React-emojione.

The major reasons are :

  • It is very easy to use.
  • It has no dependencies.
  • It can convert shortnames, unicode and ASCII symbols properly.
  • It can be used as both function and component, which diversifies its usage.

Installation:

npm install -S react-emojione

Basic usage (as function)

import {emojify} from 'react-emojione';
 
ReactDOM.render(
    <div>
        {emojify(':p')}
    </div>,
    document.body
);

Basic usage (as component)

import Emojify from 'react-emojione';
 
ReactDOM.render(
    <Emojify>
        <span>:p</span>
    </Emojify>,
    document.body
);

Some notes about the <Emojify> component:

  • If it has a single child, it won’t be wrapped
  • Otherwise it will be wrapped with a <span>

Difference between component and function?

Functional Stateless Components are just a ‘dumb’ function that takes props as an input. They do not have any state or methods. Just (props) => { return <span>content</span>; }

Class components can have state, variables, methods etc.

Now we needed our react app to render emojis. Our component named MessageListItem.react renders all the text and images of response.

There is a function called imageParse in this component. We use this function to parse our emojis.

Screenshot of SUSI Web Chat

Emoji’s like (:p) are now rendered properly

The implementation is as follows :

function imageParse(stringWithLinks){
  let replacePattern = new RegExp([
                      '((?:https?:\\/\\/)(?:[a-zA-Z]{1}',
                      '(?:[\\w-]+\\.)+(?:[\\w]{2,5}))',
                      '(?::[\\d]{1,5})?\\/(?:[^\\s/]+\\/)',
                      '*(?:[^\\s]+\\.(?:jpe?g|gif|png))',
                      '(?:\\?\\w+=\\w+(?:&\\w+=\\w+)*)?)'
                      ].join(''),'gim');
  let splits = stringWithLinks.split(replacePattern);
  let result = [];
  splits.forEach((item,key)=>{
    let checkmatch = item.match(replacePattern);
    if(checkmatch){
      result.push(
        <img key={key} src={checkmatch}
            style={{width:'95%',height:'auto'}} alt=''/>)
    }
    else{
      result.push(<Emojify  key={key}>{item}</Emojify>);
    }
  });
  return result;
}

Here we put {item} inside <Emojify> tag to render all the emoji’s present inside {item}.

This parses all emojis regardless of browser support. This package fulfills all our needs in this case.

Resources:

react-emojione package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-emojione

Testing link: SUSI.AI (Web Chat): http://chat.susi.ai/

Continue ReadingAdding Emoji Support in SUSI Web Chat