Use of ViewPager in Phimpme

Previously GalleryView was used in phimpme android app but as it is now deprecated, I decided to use ViewPager instead of GalleryView.

ViewPager allows us to view data with a horizontal swipe with the help of layoutManager.

Steps to implement the viewPager:

  1. First, add the ViewPager in Activity.xml file where you want to implement the ViewPager. This can be done using the line of code below:
<android.support.v4.view.ViewPager
             android:id="@+id/view_pager"
                android:layout_width="match_parent"
               android:layout_height="match_parent">

</android.support.v4.view.ViewPager>
  1.  To display the content of viewPager we use the viewPagerAdapter. Create new java file ViewPagerAdapter and extends it to PagerAdapter.

ViewPagerAdapter.java

public class ViewPagerAdapter extends PagerAdapter {
}
  1. After extending to PagerAdaper we have to override the two basic methods of PagerAdapter.

First, implement the constructor which helps us to provide the context of activity to ViewPagerAdapter.

You can override by pressing Alt+enter combination, click on “implement methods” and then selects these two methods.

It will implement two methods  

  • getCount()
  • isViewFromObject()

getCount will return the number of items in view pager.

  1. Now we override the few methods which are required to inflate and destroy view in viewPager.

First,

Override the instantiateItem() method it creates the page for given position.

@Override

public Object instantiateItem(ViewGroup container, int position) {
 return super.instantiateItem(container, position);
}

Now we will modify this method to inflate the view for viewPager.

As we want to display imageView in viewPager first we have to inflate the imageView and set Image according to the position of ViewPager.

Next steps,

  • Implement the customView for imageView.
  • And provide the data for  ViewPager i.e Array of images.

Create new custom_layout.xml and add ImageView in it.

<ImageView

   android:layout_width="match_parent"

   android:id="@+id/image_view"

   android:layout_height="match_parent" />

And create an array for images if you want to show images from the local memory so collect path of the images which you want to show with the array name Images.

Now we will use custom_layout layout in our ViewPager instantiateItem() method.

@Override

public Object instantiateItem(ViewGroup container, int position) {

   LayoutInflater layoutInflater = (LayoutInflater)  context.getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);

   View view=  layoutInflater.inflate(R.layout.custom_view,null);

   ImageView imageView = (ImageView)view.findViewById(R.id.image_view);

   imageView.setBackgroundResource(images[position]);

   container.addView(view,0);

   return view;

}

The above code inflates the imageView in ViewPager.

Now we have to override destroyItem() method.  This method will destroy the content of viewPager from given position.

The below code will remove the view which we added in instantiateItem() method.

@Override

public void destroyItem(ViewGroup container, int position, Object object) {
  container.removeView((View) object);
}

Now PagerAdapter is ready, we can use this in our Activity.

  1. Reference the viewPager and set the ViewPagerAdapter to ViewPager.

Activity.java

@Override

protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

   super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

   setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

   ViewPager viewPager = (ViewPager) findViewById(R.id.view_pager);

   viewPager.setAdapter(new ViewPagerAdapter(this));

}

The above code will set the pagerAdapter to our viewPager and display the content which we defined in instantiateItem() method of pagerAdapter.

 

This is how viewPager will allow viewing images by swiping horizontally in Phimpme.

Resources:

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/v4/view/PagerAdapter.html

https://github.com/fossasia/phimpme-android/pull/407/files

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Implementing a chatbot using the SUSI.AI API

SUSI AI is an intelligent Open Source personal assistant. It is a server application which is able to interact with humans as a personal assistant. The first step in implementing a bot using SUSI AI is to specify the pathway for query response from SUSI AI server.

The steps mentioned below provide a step-by-step guide to establish communication with SUSI AI server:

    1. Given below is HTML code that demonstrates how to connect with SUSI API through an AJAX call. To put this file on a Node Js server, see Step 2.  To view the response of this call, follow Step 4.

      <!DOCTYPE html>
      <body>
      <h1>My Header</h1>
      <p>My paragraph.</p>
      //Script with source here 
      //Script to be written here 
      </body>
      </html>
      

      In above code add scripts given below and end each script with closing tag </script>. In the second script we are calling SUSI API with hello query and showing data that we are receiving through call on console.

      <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.2.1/jquery.min.js">
    2. <script>
      $(function (){ 
          $.ajax({ 
              dataType: 'jsonp', 
              type:'GET', url: 'http://api.susi.ai/susi/chat.json? timezoneOffset=-300&q=hello', 
               success: function(data){ 
                   console.log('success', data); 
               } 
          }); 
      });
    3. Code below is in node js to setup localhost and getting the same above result on browser. Below is Node Js code to setup a server at localhost for the above created HTML file.

      var http = require('http');
       var fs = require('fs');
       http.createServer(function (req, res) {
        fs.readFile('YOURFILENAME.html', function(err, data) {
          res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'});
          res.write(data);
          res.end();
        });
       }).listen(9000);
    4. We will get following response by running this Node js code and checking results on http://localhost:9000/ To run this code install Node Js and write “node filename.js” in command line.
    5. You can open above window by right clicking on page and selecting Inspect. Go to the Network option and select the relevant api call from left section of Inspect window.

We have successfully got response from SUSI API and now we can use this response for building bots for receiving replies for user.

Continue ReadingImplementing a chatbot using the SUSI.AI API

Advanced customization of the Yaydoc Build Process

Although, Yaydoc exposes many environment variables which can be used to configure various aspects of the build process, there may be cases where a user needs much more finer control over the build process. Yaydoc uses sphinx under the hood which uses a file named conf.py to allow users to customize the build. As part of the build process, Yaydoc generates a file named conf.py from a custom made jinja2 template. With this week’s update, now a user can extend the generated conf.py by providing their own conf.py whose content would be appended to the generated conf.py.

Why append you may ask. Why not just overwrite? This is because the generated conf.py has a lot of boilerplate code which when overwritten will need to be rewritten by the user. That is why the contents are appended so that the user will only need to specify any extra configuration options they may wish to add or override. This approach has the following advantages:

  • Ability to override or add any configuration option during build.
  • Since the conf.py file is execfile`d by sphinx during build, the user has the ability to execute arbitrary code to customize any part of the build process.

The following block of code implements this feature.

if [ -f $DOCPATH/conf.py ]; then
  echo >> BUILD_DIR/conf.py
  cat $DOCPATH/conf.py >> BUILD_DIR/conf.py
  rsync -a $DOCPATH. BUILD_DIR/ --exclude=conf.py
else
  cp -a $DOCPATH. BUILD_DIR/
fi

Here we check if user has provided a conf.py, we append it to the generated conf.py. To append we used the >> shell redirection feature. It redirects stdout to a file similar to > but instead of overwriting the file, it appends to it.

This brings us on parity with sphinx as  far as customization goes. We may expose some more configuration variables for easier setup in the future, but now you can always modify any aspects of the build process even if it is not exposed via a variable. This should be enough for most use cases. More changes are on the way. Stay tuned for more updates.

Continue ReadingAdvanced customization of the Yaydoc Build Process

Adding support for Markdown in Yaydoc

Yaydoc being based on sphinx natively supports reStructuredText. From the official docs:

reStructuredText is an easy-to-read, what-you-see-is-what-you-get plaintext markup syntax and parser system. It is useful for quickly creating simple web pages, and for standalone documents. reStructuredText is designed for extensibility for specific application domains.

Although it being superior to markdown in terms of features, Markdown is still the most heavily used markup language out there. This week we added support for markdown into Yaydoc. Now you can use Markdown to document your project and Yaydoc would create a site with no changes required from your end. To achieve this, we used recommonmark, which enables sphinx to parse CommonMark, a strongly defined, highly compatible specification of Markdown. It solved most of the problem with 3 lines of code in our customized conf.py .

from recommonmark.parser import CommonMarkParser

source_parsers = {
'.md': CommonMarkParser,
}

source_suffix = ['.rst', '.md']

With this addition, sphinx can now use recommonmark to convert markdown to html. But not everything has been solved. Here is an excerpt from a previous blogpost which explains a problem yet to be solved.

Now sphinx requires an index.rst file within docs directory  which it uses to generate the first page of the site. A very obvious way to fill it which helps us avoid unnecessary duplication is to use the include directive of reStructuredText to include the README file from the root of the repository. But the Include directive can only properly include a reStructuredText, not a markdown document. Given a markdown document, it tries to parse the markdown as  reStructuredText which leads to errors.

To solve this problem, a custom directive mdinclude was created. Directives are the primary extension mechanism of reStructuredText. Most of it’s implementation is a copy of the built in Include directive from the docutils package. Before including in the doctree, mdinclude converts the docs from markdown to reStructuredText using pypandoc. The implementation is similar to the one also discussed in a previous blogpost.

class MdInclude(rst.Directive):

required_arguments = 1
optional_arguments = 0

def run(self):
    if not self.state.document.settings.file_insertion_enabled:
        raise self.warning('"%s" directive disabled.' % self.name)
    source = self.state_machine.input_lines.source(
        self.lineno - self.state_machine.input_offset - 1)
    source_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(source))
    path = rst.directives.path(self.arguments[0])
    path = os.path.normpath(os.path.join(source_dir, path))
    path = utils.relative_path(None, path)
    path = nodes.reprunicode(path)

    encoding = self.options.get(
        'encoding', self.state.document.settings.input_encoding)
    e_handler = self.state.document.settings.input_encoding_error_handler
    tab_width = self.options.get(
        'tab-width', self.state.document.settings.tab_width)

    try:
        self.state.document.settings.record_dependencies.add(path)
        include_file = io.FileInput(source_path=path,
                                    encoding=encoding,
                                    error_handler=e_handler)
    except UnicodeEncodeError as error:
        raise self.severe('Problems with "%s" directive path:\n'
                          'Cannot encode input file path "%s" '
                          '(wrong locale?).' %
                          (self.name, SafeString(path)))
    except IOError as error:
        raise self.severe('Problems with "%s" directive path:\n%s.' %
                          (self.name, ErrorString(error)))

    try:
        rawtext = include_file.read()
    except UnicodeError as error:
        raise self.severe('Problem with "%s" directive:\n%s' %
                          (self.name, ErrorString(error)))

    output = md2rst(rawtext)
    include_lines = statemachine.string2lines(output,
                                              tab_width, 
                                              convert_whitespace=True)
    self.state_machine.insert_input(include_lines, path)
    return []

With this, Yaydoc can now be used on projects that exclusively use markdown. There are some more hurdles which we need to cross in the following weeks. Stay tuned for more updates.

Continue ReadingAdding support for Markdown in Yaydoc

ember.js – the right choice for the Open Event Front-end

With the development of the API server for the Open Event project we needed to decide which framework to choose for the new Open Event front-end. With the plethora of javascript frameworks available, it got really difficult to decide, which one is actually the right choice. Every month a new framework arrives, and the existing ones keep actively updating themselves often. We decided to go with Ember.js. This article covers the emberJS framework and highlights its advantages over others and  demonstrates its usefulness.

EmberJS is an open-source JavaScript application front end framework for creating web applications, and uses Model-View-Controller (MVC) approach. The framework provides universal data binding. It’s focus lies on scalability.

Why is Ember JS great?

Convention over configuration – It does all the heavy lifting.

Ember JS mandates best practices, enforces naming conventions and generates the boilerplate code for the various components and routes itself. This has advantages other than uniformity. It is easier for other developers to join the project and start working right away, instead of spending hours on existing codebase to understand it, as the core structure of all ember apps is similar. To get an ember app started with the basic route, user doesn’t has to do much, ember does all the heavy lifting.

ember new my-app
ember server

After installing this is all it takes to create your app.

Ember CLI

Similar to Ruby on Rails, ember has a powerful CLI. It can be used to generate boiler plate codes for components, routes, tests and much more. Testing is possible via the CLI as well.

ember generate component my-component
ember generate route my-route
ember test

These are some of the examples which show how easy it is to manage the code via the ember CLI.

Tests.Tests.Tests.

Ember JS makes it incredibly easy to use test-first approach. Integration tests, acceptance tests, and unit tests are in built into the framework. And can be generated from the CLI itself, the documentation on them is well written and it’s really easy to customise them.

ember generate acceptance-test my-test

This is all it takes to set up the entire boiler plate for the test, which you can customise

Excellent documentation and guides

Ember JS has one of the best possible documentations available for a framework. The guides are a breeze to follow. It is highly recommended that, if starting out on ember, make the demo app from the official ember Guides. That should be enough to get familiar with ember.

Ember Guides is all you need to get started.

Ember Data

It sports one of the best implemented API data fetching capabilities. Fetching and using data in your app is a breeze. Ember comes with an inbuilt data management library Ember Data.

To generate a data model via ember CLI , all you have to do is

ember generate model my-model

Where is it being used?

Ember has a huge community and is being used all around. This article focuses on it’s salient features via the example of Open Event Orga Server project of FOSSASIA. The organizer server is primarily based on FLASK with jinja2 being used for rendering templates. At the small scale, it was efficient to have both the front end and backend of the server together, but as it grew larger in size with more refined features it became tough to keep track of all the minor edits and customizations of the front end and the code started to become complex in nature. And that gave birth to the new project Open Event Front End which is based on ember JS which will be covered in the next week.

With the orga server being converted into a fully functional API, the back end and the front end will be decoupled thereby making the code much cleaner and easy to understand for the other developers that may wish to contribute in the future. Also, since the new front end is being designed with ember JS, it’s UI will have a lot of enhanced features and enforcing uniformity across the design would be much easier with the help of components in ember. For instance, instead of making multiple copies of the same code, components are used to avoid repetition and ensure uniformity (change in one place will reflect everywhere)

<.div class="{{if isWide 'event wide ui grid row'}}">
  {{#if isWide}}
    {{#unless device.isMobile}}
      <.div class="ui card three wide computer six wide tablet column">
        <.a class="image" href="{{href-to 'public' event.identifier}}">
          {{widgets/safe-image src=(if event.large event.large event.placeholderUrl)}}
        <./a>
      <./div>
    {{/unless}}
  {{/if}}
  <.div class="ui card {{unless isWide 'event fluid' 'thirteen wide computer ten wide tablet sixteen wide mobile column'}}">
    {{#unless isWide}}
      <.a class="image" href="{{href-to 'public' event.identifier}}">
        {{widgets/safe-image src=(if event.large event.large event.placeholderUrl)}}
      <./a>
    {{/unless}}
    <.div class="main content">
      <.a class="header" href="{{href-to 'public' event.identifier}}">
        <.span>{{event.name}}<./span>
      <./a>
      <.div class="meta">
        <.span class="date">
          {{moment-format event.startTime 'ddd, MMM DD HH:mm A'}}
        <./span>
      <./div>
      <.div class="description">
        {{event.shortLocationName}}
      <./div>
    <./div>
    <.div class="extra content small text">
      <.span class="right floated">
        <.i role="button" class="share alternate link icon" {{action shareEvent event}}><./i>
      <./span>
      <.span>
        {{#if isYield}}
          {{yield}}
        {{else}}
          {{#each tags as |tag|}}
            <.a>{{tag}}<./a>
          {{/each}}
        {{/if}}
      <./span>
    <./div>
  <./div>
<./div>

This is a perfect example of the power of components in ember, this is a component for event information display in a card format which in addition to being rendered differently for various screen sizes can act differently based on passed parameters, thereby reducing the redundancy of writing separate components for the same.

Ember is a step forward towards the future of the web. With the help of Babel.js it is possible to write ES6/2015 syntax and not worry about it’s compatibility with the browsers. It will take care of it.

This is perfectly valid and will be compatible with majority of the supported browsers.

actions: {
  submit() {
    this.onValid(()=> {
    });
  }
}

 

Some references used for the blog article:

  1. https://www.codeschool.com/blog/2015/10/26/7-reasons-to-use-ember-js/
  2. https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-advantages-of-using-Ember-js
  3. Official Ember Guides: https://guides.emberjs.com

 
This page/product/etc is unaffiliated with the Ember project. Ember is a trademark of Tilde Inc

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