ajaxlights

Creating HTML forms can be a drag. Validating the form input is even worse. I wrote up a javascript utility to demonstrate how easy and enjoyable it could (should) be to create forms. Check out the demo. You create a form with:

new FormLess('form-container-element-id', items);

where items is an array of objects. Each item requires at least a name and a type, but could also take an array of options or a validation function that gets called to validate the value of that item.

items = [{
  name : 'Gender',
  type : 'select',
  options : ['None of your business', 'Male', 'Female'],
  validate : function(data) {
    return data && data != 'None of your business'
  }
}]

Each time an item’s value changes, the validation function gets called for that item. If a validation function returns false, the item gets marked as invalid. Valid and invalid items can be styled however you please:

.valid {
  background-color : green;
}

.invalid {
  background-color : red;
}

When the form is submitted, each item gets has its validation function called. If all validation functions pass, the submit function gets called along with a key-value object containing the items names and values. This tool has not been tested across browsers - it’s mostly a demonstration of how easy it should be to gather and handle user-entered data. Check out the demo

“TCP sockets” in the browser:

1. var conn = new TCPSocket(hostname, port)
2. 
   
3. conn.onopen = function() { alert(‘connection opened!’) }
4. conn.onread = function(data) { alert(‘RECEIVE: ‘ + data) }
5. conn.onclose = function(data) { alert(‘connection closed!’) }
6. 
   
7. conn.send(‘Hello World’);

If you like Cocoa bindings, keep an eye out for the opening of http://objective-j.org/. Check out the demo app, 280 Slides.

jQuery UI is looking more and more promising. A recent file tree component looks great.

Resource/packet management is still a bit of a drag in javascript. Here are two great candidates: module.js and ensure. Alex Russel used similar techniques to push initial dojo load size down to 6k!

Javascript is on the verge of being typed. Ecmascript 4 can now be converted into 1.2 javascript with Mascara. On a related note, here’s a nice writeup/example on the potential usefulness of typed js.

Oh, and on an unrelated note: if you haven’t checked it out yet, go get jott.com. I now twitter only by talking

That’s right - I got to give a lightning talk at the downtown Chicago offices tonight! 

It was a flash 9 minute talk on my Google Summer of Code project gRavix with the Globus Alliance.

Thanks a bunch to Borja, Karl and Cord for organizing the event, as well as (of course) google.

Google is hosting another great treasurehunt at http://treasurehunt.appspot.com/. A good friend (and awesome upcoming coder) Lauren and I are working at the library together and we just had a go at it. It turns out there’s a beautiful connection between the answer for any given n*m grid and Pascal’s triangle. Keep your eyes open for those numbers!

Kudos to Lauren for spotting the connection: “Wait isn’t this those, whaddumacallit, triangle numbers?”

                             1
                         1       2
                     1       4       4
                 1       6       12      8
             1       8       24      32      16
         1       10      40      80      80       32
     1       12      60      160     240     192       64
 1       14      84      280     560     672      448       128

Update: After a few premature victory celebrations, we finally got the answer in the form of a short Ruby script. With the following methods…

class Fixnum
  def factorial
    if self <= 0
      return 1
    else
      return self * (self-1).factorial
    end
  end

  def choose n
    ((self.factorial)/(n.factorial*(self-n).factorial))
  end
end

The solution is a simple one-liner.

Google App Engine is awesome.

Repeat. Google App Engine is awesome.

A quick tutorial video, 30 minutes of tinkering and playing around, and I’ve got database code running on Google’s BigTable(!). Go check it out - leave a shout.

Oh, and it turns out - Ruby to Python isn’t that bad after all.

I finally registered for Google I/O, and was happy to see that it comes with an invitation to App Engine. Tonight I’m meeting up with a Python friend to show me the ropes.

I’m now intending to port ShareWithMe from rails to python and BigTable for its first, long overdue release.