Nerd forum desktop app and possibly web API

#21 (V) (`m`) (V) ︵ ┻━┻

Forever in debt to your priceless advice.

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Posted 05 February 2013 - 03:47 PM

I was kicking around the idea of a desktop app (for personal use) that would sit in the tray and show alerts for new posts/messages. If there's any outside interest in it I would be happy to develop it right (read: purely not just for me) and be open to feature requests.

The very core of it would
Display new posts with a link to the thread
Display new messages with a link to it
Detect full screen apps and stop making requests if they're active (ie, it won't run if you're playing a game)
Other features I think would be nice if there was interest
Be able to send personal messages directly from the app
See online users
Be able to filter displaying new posts (ie, ignore new posts from user x, only show alerts for Everything Else section, etc)
It would be windows only (it might run on Mono but I wouldn't plan to support it), but I would (probably) build a web service if there's interest so if someone wanted to make a client for mac/linux they'd be able to easily.

So, any interest? If yes, any requested features?

This sounds farkin epic.

Out of curiosity, what would you charge for a mobile app?

He better not pull out the maid outfit, dammit.

ΝΙΨΟΝ ΑΝΟΜΗΜΑΤΑ ΜΗ ΜΟΝΑΝ ΟΨΙΝ

#22 SpleenBeGone

Deer Leader of the Goriest Revolution

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Posted 05 February 2013 - 04:15 PM

Fair enough. >.>

#23 Coconut Man

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Posted 05 February 2013 - 04:31 PM

Once the desktop version is done I can mess around with a version for Android. If people actually use it I'll maintain it but I make no real promises.

If you do actually make an Android version, could you make one for iOS? Regardless of your OS preferences, the App Store is still a big market (Maybe not as big as Android, but you'd certainly be leaving a lot of members behind doing so).

#24 Guest_ElatedOwl_*

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Posted 05 February 2013 - 04:40 PM

It's not a matter of having anything against Apple (I have no quarrels with their mobile stuff in general) but rather

I don't own a mac. This means I'd have to use an unofficial SDK to develop with and I have no way of signing the application.
I've never touched objective-c
It's another platform to maintain. Anytime iOS updates I have to worry about the application and I don't own any iOS devices.

I don't mind doing android purely because it's a small, straight forward app and I can develop for it on windows with the official SDK and emulate the device.

#25 Coconut Man

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Posted 05 February 2013 - 04:43 PM

Okay, can you send me the Android code so I can try and iOS-ize it?

#26 Guest_ElatedOwl_*

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Posted 05 February 2013 - 04:51 PM

It won't be the same at all. If you're familiar with objective-c more or less all it's going to be is

Login (just POSTing to a page) (If the user's ID is in storage skip this)
Parse json response, if success==true store the userID
Set up a lastCheck variable, set it to the current time
Every x seconds (60, whatever, user should be able to set this)
Make post request to new posts page (passing along the user's ID and datetime of the last request)
Parse json (will come in as an array, likely something like [{title: blahblah,message: blahblah,author:blahblah,user: blahlbah}] )
End

Page names/actual json output has yet to be determined. I'll probably get around to it tonight if my net holds up.

#27 Delta22

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Posted 05 February 2013 - 11:37 PM

once you fineshed the app, do you mind sending me the source code?

Programmer(in training), hacker(in minimal training), good with computers and mature, all you need to know about me but feel free to talk to me, contact me or whatever, i am no danger.

#28 Guest_ElatedOwl_*

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Posted 11 February 2013 - 04:06 PM

For anyone interested in consuming the service - the method for getting posts is going to take one argument, lastPoll - a unix date stamp. It uses this date to grab all posts that have a date stamp after it.

It returns JSON in the following format

[
	{
		"topic": {
			"name": "a new topic",
			"ID": "4",
			"url": "/topic/4-a-new-topic"
		},
		"post": {
			"author": {
				"name": "emosaurusrex",
				"ID": "3"
			},
			"message": "is born"
		},
		"newTopic": "1"
	},
	{
		"topic": {
			"name": "a new topic",
			"ID": "4",
			"url": "/topic/4-a-new-topic"
		},
		"post": {
			"author": {
				"name": "emosaurusrex",
				"ID": "3"
			},
			"message": "and a new post as well"
		},
		"newTopic": "0"
	},
	{
		"topic": {
			"name": "a new topic",
			"ID": "4",
			"url": "/topic/4-a-new-topic"
		},
		"post": {
			"author": {
				"name": "emosaurusrex",
				"ID": "3"
			},
			"message": "now [i]with[/i] [b]more[/b] [size=6] [/size][size=6]formatting <img src='http://spleenbegone.com/ipb/public/style_emoticons/default/laugh.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='<img src='http://nerdforum.org/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':lol:' />' />[/size]"
		},
		"newTopic": "0"
	}
]

bbcode and HTML is not stripped from the message.

#29 Coconut Man

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Posted 12 February 2013 - 05:31 PM

Found a solution for Mac, pretty nice.

#30 Noalg

Byte

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Posted 30 March 2013 - 01:29 AM

If anybody wants a simple shortcut of a Chrome Browser App, here's my ver I just made

https://docs.google....dit?usp=sharing

Settings icon [browser toolbar : Top-Right corner]
Tools > Extensions
Locate the Nerd Forum.crx app file on your computer (should be in your 'Downloads' directory)
drag and drop the file onto the Extensions page from step 2 and Install.

I'm also working on a simple Nerd Forum extension for Chrome similar to Notifier for Twitter

And thanks, EmoSaur, for the idea. I'll throw my hat in the ring on the android project too.

#21 (V) (`m`) (V) ︵ ┻━┻

#22 SpleenBeGone

#23 Coconut Man

#24 Guest_ElatedOwl_*

#25 Coconut Man

#26 Guest_ElatedOwl_*

#27 Delta22

#28 Guest_ElatedOwl_*

#29 Coconut Man

#30 Noalg

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