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Szabolcs

01:03

Hi! How can I have only questions in the search results? Usually both answers and questions are returned.

Tim Yi Jiang

@Szabolcs Add is:question to your query

Szabolcs

thanks!

mootinator

01:40

@DanielFischer I would... :P

ThiefMaster

I think it's great :P

mootinator

02:00

Hahaha.

Okay, it's 8 Central in Canada.

Where's that guy?

;)

jcolebrand

02:56

@mootinator He got tied up ? >.<

mootinator

@jcolebrand Sounds kinky. Computer programmers don't do that. I'm skeptical.

jcolebrand

lol

Phone call I wasn't expecting to have

but some things you have to deal with

So did you see the controller model I posted earlier?

mootinator

I skimmed some of your links earlier.

Was that the gist you had posted?

jcolebrand

Yeah

mootinator

Okay.

jcolebrand

02:59

So you get that I'm doing an asp.net mvc3 inspired node framework, right?

so if someone is familiar with MVC3 they can mostly come right over

I'm doing stuff like named parameter stuffing, etc.

So what I'm trying to figure out is:

mootinator

Right.

jcolebrand

since there's no decorators in javascript, how do you do like [HttpGet]

Fosco

typically the router provides that... router.get(function(req,res) { });

jcolebrand

exports = module.exports = function _SomeController(models) { /* Notice that we are passing in a model here */
	var λ = this;
	λ.Index = function _index(id) {
		λ.ViewBag = {"cole":"is cool"};
		λ.ViewBag["id"] = id;
		return λ.View(models);
	}
}

exports.config = module.exports.config = {
	"Index": ["GET"]
};

@Fosco you have to configure the router

in traditional C# you would just decorate the method

Fosco

Because C# is magic. Doesn't seem much different to me.

mootinator

03:02

Trying to think of something not ugly.

jcolebrand

@Fosco also, I'm trying to make this all convention based, so you're never going to type router.get(function) in this app

You would if you were going to write middleware, sort of

but then again, I want to try and account for 90% of the middleware you might need and provide extensibility points for most things

So I have a thought on this, based on this article: strathweb.com/2013/01/…

This is an outdated directory structure, because I've added quite a bit, but it shows the gist of things

So in /Controllers I was thinking, I have two options:

You can either /controllers/indexcontroller/method.js or /controllers/indexcontroller.js or /controllers/indexcontroller/method/get.js

I don't mind wiring all this up, because it's just a matter of testing three different things

Everything else is already written, because I've got the auto-wire working for the router right now.

mootinator

You could add some ugly convention like .MethodName_GetAttribute = true ;P

Fosco

very cool.. glad to see stackchat is moving along )

jcolebrand

exports = module.exports = function _SomeController(models) { /* Notice that we are passing in a model here */
	var λ = this;
	λ.Index = {
          get: function _index(id) {
		λ.ViewBag = {"cole":"is cool"};
		λ.ViewBag["id"] = id;
		return λ.View(models);
          }
	}
}

So you could do this, right?

mootinator

Right.

jcolebrand

03:08

Or you could return one of the lower nested models, using the same structure

mootinator

I understand now.

jcolebrand

But I'm trying to decide if it's better to just have that exporters class I just removed (scroll up for the other) and just restrict inputs, or if I should like the article provide a way to have all the options.

And I'm not entirely happy with the λ requirements for the closure, I'm going to see if I can't do better than that

I have an idea of something I could do on that, but I've got to research it

Does it sound like I'm on the right track with the triple on the folder structure alternatives, and providing the http verbs being the last option on paths?

So obviously if you only defined index for get, like above, you only get HttpGet and no Post or Put on the Index view, right?

The problem is I then take all those verbs out of the loop for potential method names.

mootinator

Right.

jcolebrand

However, I've never once in my life said "Oh, I'll call this method 'put'"

Meaningful or gtfo

mootinator

I've said oh I'll call this method 'delete' ;)

jcolebrand

03:12

As a public method on an MVC3 Controller ?

Would you be ok having that restriction?

mootinator

Yes.

jcolebrand

So then the other question is parameter stuffing pattern

In that article, and sort of like what Fosco alluded to, there's patterns on URL matching, right?

> As an aside, as you guys can see, I'm trying to go balls out here and make a fricking framework for node, not just write my app. Mostly because I'm frustrated by Express overall. I may just have a shot at displacing them if I do the middleware right, or not so much displace, as provide a second alternative that some folks might like.

So like in the C# global.asax you can do router configs, and pass like:

/{controller}/{method}/{id}

mootinator

Yeap.

jcolebrand

I'm trying to avoid writing that complicated of a router, I just want to do conventions based and move on.

So the only thing I'm removing is the potential to:

mootinator

so /{controller}/{id}/{sub-object}/{id} like the article?

jcolebrand

03:17

Exactly, I'm not going to let you define that in my system

But what I will do is this:

GET /path/to/file/is/long/and/cumbersome?and=has&some=parameters HTTP/1.1

ok, given that URL

first things first, parse the /path/to/file/is/long/and/cumbersome out and do a split on /

then match path to a controller or static directory. Assuming I find a controller, then match to to a method. If there is no method named to, I assume that you want the index method (that's globally configurable per hosted site, you pick one convention for your site, not per effing route) and then I pass everything else as variables to your method.

So /controllers/pathcontroller/to.js:get = function(id,name,place,time,thing,and,some){

Fosco

I like to do what you are... create my own convention. :)

mootinator

Sure.

jcolebrand

Alternately of course: /controllers/pathcontroller.js:to = function(id,name,place,time,thing,and,some){

@Fosco what do you mean?

Fosco

Sorry.. took a few edits to spit that out.

jcolebrand

But does this all sound reasonable?

Fosco

03:22

Absolutely

jcolebrand

Does it look like it would be a reasonable restriction to place on devs to make the auto-wire magic work easily?

mootinator

It doesn't sound unreasonable at all.

Though this is coming from someone who leaves the default routes alone 99.9% of the time anyway.

Fosco

It's a restriction that defines the framework.

Then it's up to them if they want to build things that way.

jcolebrand

I was going to register regexs in an array and check every incoming request to every regex, and store ancillary data about the methods in the hash, and then this morning I was like "what the fuck am I doing?!?!?" and realized I could just at startup hash all the paths and var names and then never have to guess, just keep hitting matches.

@mootinator exactly, that's what I do

mootinator

No doubt someone will hate it, but you can't please everyone ;)

jcolebrand

03:23

And they can piss off and go build shit on C# and mono ;-)

If I can make it easy to build an MVC app using basic conventions that people are familiar with, and remove all the guesswork, so be it.

Then I have this monstrosity: gist.github.com/34db9631a9132293d7b6

ignore the database part, I'm going to do something else there.

I was talking to the guy that wrote the couchbase driver for node/ruby/etc on twitter and he said if I kept the connection open for the life of the app it would fare better overall, so I'm going to pass that downstream in a certain way

So what this gist tells you is that I'm going to only do form or body requests for PATCH, POST or PUT, right?

Is that a dumb convention?

I mean, it's extra processing overhead if I do it for everything, which I want to be nothing if not efficient when I can be, and it's a good restriction to place, I feel

Besides, you get everything passed in as a this.body or this.form inside the method (magics I tell you) on method operation, so that should be fine, I think

Tim Yi Jiang

mootinator

Not sure on that one, I haven't had the privilege of looking at node.

jcolebrand

Am I into esoterics territory at this point?

Tim Yi Jiang

Firefox | Chrome | IE9

CC Inc

@jcolebrand ... What's that supposed to mean

Tim Yi Jiang

03:29

*shakes fist at Chrome*

jcolebrand

@mootinator no, the restriction of "you only get request body parameters if you're on PUT, POST, PATCH requests"

I mean, you could ostensibly reach into the internals of the method on your request and get those things, but I'm trying to avoid making people do that if they follow the convention.

Fosco

@jcolebrand It's your framework, so you set the convention. You make whatever restrictions you want, just make sure they're the most documented feature.

jcolebrand

I'm also going to expose an HttpContext to each method >.>

@Fosco I'm trying to make sure it makes sense

Fosco

sense is relative ;)

jcolebrand

So true

mootinator

03:31

@jcolebrand Okay...

jcolebrand

ok, so I need help, how do I go about documenting all this shit?

Documenting this framework is going to take ages longer than writing it, I expect

mootinator

If you're CakePHP you don't and people adopt it anyhow.

jcolebrand

ha!

@mootinator would you expect a GET request (made from the browser) to have a body attached to it, or should the body be empty?

mootinator

I'd say find some documentation on an MVC framework you think is good, and start a wiki with a similar structure. :D

jcolebrand

@mootinator I would prefer to XMLDoc it, I think. Maybe.

I mean, I would rather it just be intuitive based on the examples I provide one day :p

Like, my entire fricking site

mootinator

03:34

@jcolebrand I would assume it doesn't.

jcolebrand

See: no body

@mootinator Exactly

So, you stuff one in, you gotta go find it. I'm going to assume you don't.

It's like I'm a purist or something, sheesh

I'm still debating on the best way to do the exposing of the main ActionResult methods

@Fosco you do .NET right?

Ok, last thought before I quit bugging folks

Fosco

Not much, no...

mootinator

@jcolebrand Is that even valid?

jcolebrand

@mootinator it is, but I don't like to acknowledge it

I mean, it's valid in so far as you can do it

mootinator

...

Fosco

03:37

I can do it, but I choose not to if I can. :)

jcolebrand

Let's check wikipedia

Fosco

I've had an idea... an app to migrate a mysql database to the Parse cloud, and I'm going to start building it.

mootinator

What are we checking Wikipedia for?

jcolebrand

tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1945#section-5

mootinator

This ancient thread agrees, just ignore it: hpl.hp.com/personal/ange/archives/http-wg-archive/1182.html

jcolebrand

03:44

lol

The spec doesn't say what to do, so I figure I'm going to ignore it

mootinator

Yep.

Get the contents of this URL, and oh, BTW, here's a picture of my cat.

jcolebrand

haha thanks, gtfo

Does it make sense to give the controller a fully developed internal representation of all the models in the app?

Since there's no using App.Models.Library;

I could allow you to var model = require('../models/thing/lib.js'); but then I gotta let you be responsible for spinning up and down a connection to the db, so I would prefer to just gen up one db connection (or one db controller) and auto-wire that for every model once.

Then when you want a specific model you would:

var m = models('thing.lib');

So you could, if you wanted, do: function Index (id) { return View(models('thing.lib').get(id)); } and we come back to what I love about how clean MVC is :D

mootinator

It'd be cool if IoC were built-in.

jcolebrand

Help me out here, I'm still a bit of an IoC newb. What do you mean?

mootinator

Well, as long as 'thing.lib' isn't a reference to a specific implementation.

jcolebrand

03:50

no

you would literally have to write:

mootinator

Then I'm just talking out my butt :)

jcolebrand

/models
  /thing
    lib.js

I would figure out from the namespace you give me what model class to pull back

mootinator

Right... How would I throw a mocked class in there?

Without changing the controller.

jcolebrand

I provide a db class upstream, you would mock the db class?

The individual method doesn't need to know shit about the database, that's a model job.

I just tell the controller "here's your models object"

mootinator

That's usually more difficult than mocking a specific domain.

jcolebrand

03:53

but you know what you're going to need?

idk, I never said I was perfect :p

You ask an excellent question

mootinator

Not impossible either, mind you.

jcolebrand

I don't have a great answer, but I have a feeling that because I'm doing constructor property injection it could be done

mootinator

That's how I set up my MVC controllers, generally.

jcolebrand

Is that what you mean then?

mootinator

public SomethingController(Model1 foo, Model2 bar);

jcolebrand

03:56

Yeah, except I'm giving all the models as one object

mootinator

Ah, ok.

jcolebrand

Does that make sense?

mootinator

Yeah.

jcolebrand

So if you wanted to mock-test the controller, you would declare a models class (I can give a dummy on that) and then you would just var c = require('/path/to/controller')(dummy)

Because there's no type class, obviously, so you have to tell it what file to use

mootinator

That sounds sensible.

jcolebrand

03:58

It would actually take a ittle more work than that right now, I've got to rework the "getController" into a module. But now that you've asked me that, the getController will expect a models object as well

Sweet. I like how my design already makes it easy to test with IoC and I didn't even intend on it, I just wanted to be lazy.

I might actually begin to know wtf I'm doing here

gist.github.com/4521772

@Fosco did you see this gist yet?

This is mostly all the stuff I want to implement (oh, there's more I assure you)

Thanks for the rubberducking and feedback Kevin

Much obliged, I assure you

So does this mean I'll be able to count on you to help me write some tests for demonstrative purposes one day? ;-)

mootinator

@jcolebrand Well, your collection of models can sort of act as a quasi IoC container.

jcolebrand

I must admit I don't like to UnitTest my Controller methods

@mootinator Aye

I figure it's responsible for "knowing things" about the convention

I really do hate configurations

mootinator

@jcolebrand lol, I'm not great at it either, I just took some time to see how well it suited me once ;)

jcolebrand

				"node": {
					"hostname": "localhost",
					"port": "8080"
				},
				"couchnode": {
					"hosts": ["localhost:8091"],
					"bucket": "default"
				},
				"app": {
					"baseDir": "",
					"controllerPath": "",
					"viewPath": "",
					"modelPath": "",
					"defaultController": "Index",
					"defaultMethod": "Index"
				},
				"regex": {
					"defaultController": {},
					"defaultMethod": {}
				},
				"bodyParser": {
					"strict": false,
					"reviver": null,
					"limit": 2097152
				}

Fosco

@jcolebrand Just looked.. very cool

jcolebrand

04:02

This is just "so far"

mootinator

But I'll be willing to help out, if that's what you need from me, looks cool =)

jcolebrand

@Fosco you know I'm going to want you to help with this at some point ;-)

Fosco

I'm sorry but I'm too distracted to have much of an opinion =\

jcolebrand

@mootinator I'm going to lean on all the SE Chat regulars at some point to help accelerate development ;-)

Fosco

The move to san francisco is constantly interrupting any train of thought I have.

jcolebrand

04:04

I figure I need to nail the models, how the controllers work, and get some basic view engine work going, and then wire up an extensible set of translators on certain things (like OneBox is going to have a plugin system, so to speak, to make adding new support as easy as coding up one file), and then I can say "ok, here's the punch list, who can help" and spread it all out

So, I've gotta finish up my Razor ViewEngine this weekend so I can do Razor Views :D

.jshtml -> Razor

Except there's already a jshtml viewengine app out there, and it SUCKS for what I want

I want ViewBag support, Url helpers (also extensible), Html helpers (also extensible), and model, and layouts, and partials

I've got 60% of that already done.

Anyways, I asked for time to 10pm, it's 10PM. I appreciate it

@Fosco even tho you don't do .NET normally, does all this generally make sense on app architecture and usage?

Woot, time to go work on my VE, tty later fellas

Fosco

Yes, it makes sense.

jcolebrand

@Fosco good

Fosco

Honestly I wouldn't use that type of system, but that doesn't mean it isn't reasonable or awesome.

jcolebrand

@Fosco out of curiousity, why not?

too much "under the hood"?

Fosco

I eschew complexity and over-engineering. I try to stay close to the program flow and not depend on magic.

jcolebrand

04:12

I can appreciate that

Fosco

But I definitely feel like a minority on that topic.

jcolebrand

I just want to have auto-wired variables, and I felt like that would be a lot more work to implement on express, so I just wrote my own

Fosco

I can appreciate that.. that's what I meant earlier, I like to build my own too )

mootinator

I like to depend on magic, but have the source code available, so I can actually understand how the magic works.

jcolebrand

But if I can make it extensible, then I can at least use it to write the handful of sites I want, and maybe let other people use it too

@mootinator that's why I do .NET MVC3 :D

Fosco

04:14

.NOT

jcolebrand

Psssh, you're just jealous that PHP doesn't do compile time type checking

(not that nodejs does either >.< )

mootinator

When I go to an interview, I claim to like whatever pisses off the interviewers the most. I have a sixth sense for that.

jcolebrand

ha!

Fosco

Surprisingly, I haven't touched PHP in over a year. Node and Objective-C are my top 2 now.

jcolebrand

Nice

mootinator

04:16

oOo

Fosco

I really like Objective-C. Took a while to break through, but I understand it now.

jcolebrand

So how are you doing your HTML on your websites?

Or are you just doing API access from node and doing all the UI in objc

mootinator

Ooo I got a limited edition Kickstarter reward that actually sold out. That's unusual.

Or are you writing node.js websites and native iOS apps?

jcolebrand

@mootinator that would mean he was doing HTML :p

mootinator

@jcolebrand Yeah, sometimes I type faster than I think.

jcolebrand

04:21

lol, I do that a lot

Fosco

If I'm doing Obj-C I'm not using html at all.. not web projects. For Node I either use express (minimally) or my own home-grown ways.

cfgtools.com

really pretty & fast site.. every resource is cached.

jcolebrand

That's you?

Fosco

built it myself.. caching, sessions, shopping cart.. Stripe for payments.

(a project I did at work)

(the graphics were provided)

jcolebrand

Stripe! I just found out about them today!

how are you caching things?

Fosco

Very very simply. Let me show you an example.

// CFG Tools About page script
// Loaded from main server.js

var fs = require('fs');

// The following readFileSync calls will take place when the server process is executed.
// They will only occur once, and the contents will be stored in memory.
// Serving these template pieces to web visitors will be done without disk access.

console.log('Loading HTML template file into memory: about');
exports.pageContent = fs.readFileSync('./pages/about.html','utf8');

jcolebrand

04:30

you're chunking back everything? It can't browser-cache any of that ...

oh, all your pages are static?

Fosco

Static pages, everything else is javascript.

jcolebrand

your modules are cached, but your files aren't.

you're reading it in everytime, according to that

Fosco

No....

mootinator

Hmm. I last did my weekly backup in August.

jcolebrand

yes

mootinator

04:32

I'm on borrowed time here O_o.

jcolebrand

require is read in and statically cached

Fosco

var about = require('./cfg_page_about.js');

jcolebrand

but the module is executed on every request

Fosco

The performance of the application and the console logs state that it is only loaded once.

jcolebrand

then why is it taking 4s to load a page?

Fosco

04:34

your connection is slow?

I just clicked through about 6 pages in 5 seconds

jcolebrand

That could be it >.<

I really hate the network speed here

mootinator

A tech form the phone company came and improved my line last week such that I now get 4.5mbps instead of 2.2.

However, my phone line no longer hangs up after a call.

So there's that.

jcolebrand

That's handy

Tim Stone

04:49

@mootinator My friend's iPhone used to patch through incoming audio before she'd pick up the call. That was exciting.

mootinator

Ha! I bet.

Tim Stone

It was the weirdest thing.

Tim Yi Jiang

05:06

Tim Stone

Been searching for "facehoof" eh?

Tim Yi Jiang

Yup :P

Tim Stone

Come to think of it, that bothers me a lot

To Chat Feedback!

Tim Yi Jiang

WHat bothers you a lot?

Tim Stone

That the box isn't cleared when I submit the search

Tim Yi Jiang

05:13

It doesn't clear, and I think that's fine

The behavior is consistent with other search boxes

Tim Stone

I get annoyed because then I go to search for something else later and there's text there I have to clear.

Other search boxes don't pop open a new tab though :P

Tim Yi Jiang

Actually, whenever I get a fresh Firefox installation one of the first thing I do is to mess with about:config so that the browser search bar opens results in a new tab automatically

mootinator

Uh-oh.

Tim Stone

Ah, I just Ctrl+T whenever I want to search with Chrome

Tim Yi Jiang

Yeah, but you know, one less step

Since most of the time you want your results in a new tab

But then Chrome is different, since you automatically get focus in the location bar, which is also used in search

So that's alright I guess

Tim Stone

05:16

Right

jcolebrand

Fosco

writing a cli node app using commander and cli-color

jcolebrand

05:32

@Fosco oooooh, question

Fosco

sup?

jcolebrand

How can I build in a CLI to the base of my server so I can talk to it before the http stack kicks in?

aka

Fosco

I sometimes run one of my apps interactively like that... by just using the REPL.

jcolebrand

tell it to restart without killing the process

Fosco

tell what to restart?

jcolebrand

05:33

the httpServer

Because I'm thinking about how to multihome in nodejs as well

so if you want to restart one of the sites, but not all of them

I know I know, just put a proxy on the frontend

Fosco

How do you restart the http server?

jcolebrand

Apache and IIS don't need that

@Fosco load one, start it. load a second, detach the first and attach the second to the port

Fosco

Are you doing that because something has changed?

jcolebrand

yes

Fosco

Ah. Never had to deal with that. Not sure.

jcolebrand

05:36

me either

but it should be doable

Just something to think about and tickle the back of your mind next to mine

Fosco

Sometimes I run the REPL and then var s = require('./server.js')... it gives you live access to your app.. if you exported a function that restarted it, you could always just execute it on the repl.

jcolebrand

Sure

but then I gotta run it on the repl

Also, there should be a way to neatly shut down the server, like for reboots

Fosco

I'm sure there is. There's a module for everything.

jcolebrand

06:04

imgur.com/blog/2013/01/18/more-characters-in-filenames

huh

mootinator

What's a numerical digest?

jcolebrand

lol, digits?

mootinator

:D

rohan-patel

06:50

Hello. I have one suggestion. Day by day I have been noticing that quality of answers given are deteriorating. Many users (mostly the new ones who wants sudden reputation increase) are posting of links many a times as an answers and also getting upvoted mostly. Moreover so many times links do not contain exactly what is being asked in question. My proposition is should not we include a section of stating guidelines for How to answer a question in FAQs

Downvoting and flagging is there but including a guideline would have some impact I believe.

0

Q: Getting an editable text from UIImage of text in Xcode

I want to develop an application in which I capture an image of text (a business card, for example), and now I want it to be scanned and converted into an editable text. Is it possible? Something like optical character recognition.

recent example. :/

gnat

@Shog9 per my reading, "hotness formula" implicitly assumes that amount and score of deleted answers are ignored, is that correct?

93

Q: What formula should be used to determine "hot" questions?

Right now the front page Popular tab is fairly broken -- it's a simple descending sort by views. As Joel said in podcast #18, it is "a self-fulfilling prophecy." But this is not intentional, it's only because we haven't had time to improve it yet! As I sit down to write a better algorithm, I tho...

discussion stackoverflow algorithm hot-questions

jcolebrand