Tag: «javascript»

I rewrote my bot in ES2015 and also added tests. When the bot reports that a new version has been released in the App Store, it now also shows what is new in that version.

Source code on GitHub.

While coding in Node.js, I constantly need to print something to the console. Errors, for example. But for better information it is more convenient to know exactly where the output is coming from. Especially since when I was coding for iOS, I always had such a handy macro at hand, but with Node.js I had to google and dig around, because many examples from Stack Overflow simply crashed on the latest Node.js 5.10.0. They crashed because they used Error.captureStackTrace(err, arguments.callee), and now you need to use NFE.

In the end I made what I wanted. Leaving it here as a cheat sheet.

npm install colors --save

File logger.js:

'use strict';

let colors = require('colors');
colors.enabled = true;

exports.p = function logger(somethingForPrint) {
    somethingForPrint = somethingForPrint || '';
    const originalPrepareStackTrace = Error.prepareStackTrace;

    Error.prepareStackTrace = (error, stack) => { return stack; };

    let e = new Error;
    Error.captureStackTrace(e, logger);

    const stack = e.stack;
    const filename = stack[0].getFileName().split('/').reverse()[0];
    const trace = filename + ':' + stack[0].getLineNumber() + " " + colors.bold.black('%s') + "\n";

    Error.prepareStackTrace = originalPrepareStackTrace;

    console.log(trace, somethingForPrint);
}; 

Use:

const logger = require('../utils/logger');
logger.p('something happened');
// file.js:401 something happened 

I had been carrying this idea around for a while and finally implemented it. Apple has a REST API for searching iTunes. I made a bot for Telegram that lets you subscribe to app updates. When a new version comes out, it writes to you in Telegram, whether in a private chat or a group chat. Now at work we will all be able to find out quickly when new versions of our apps go live in the App Store.

I wrote it in Node.js as best I could. The main thing is that it works. I wanted to make something for Android folks too, but it turns out Google Play has no API. None at all O_O.

Try the bot: https://telegram.me/ReleaseInformerBot (just type /help when you start)

If anyone wants to add something, the source code is on Github: https://github.com/makoni/ReleaseInformerBot

True, besides Node.js it uses my favorite CouchDB as the database. But to run it on a Mac, you just download the binary and you are done (well, and create the DB + views).

I was tinkering with something on Parse. In short: the thing is very cool, there are great SDKs for different platforms, and you can even use them in Javascript on both the frontend and the backend. You can even write the backend right there in their cloud with node.js, and you can connect Express if you need it. But there are two caveats:

1. When you create a scheduled push notification, you specify the send time. Through the Javascript SDK, however, it sets it in GMT and that's it. Everyone gets the push according to GMT regardless of their time zone. You cannot specify in the Javascript SDK that you want to send a push to everyone, for example, at 19:00 local time, so that a client in any time zone receives the message at their own 19:00. This bug is already 2 years old. Instead, they suggest using their REST API from Javascript (sic!).
2. Okay, so you use the REST API; fortunately this can be done conveniently from the same Javascript SDK, and everything works as it should, pushes get scheduled for local time, but... all Russian letters are stripped out of the message title text. All the examples in the REST API documentation ask you to specify the request header "Content-Type: application/json", but that is not enough to keep Cyrillic and other non-Latin characters from being stripped. It turns out you need to specify the encoding in the header: "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8". God knows what encoding they expect by default for data in an international service, but there it is.

Other than that, of course, the service is very cool.

The problem of selecting text inside a link in Webkit/Blink engines has existed for a long time. At least for me. Somehow I missed that it could be solved with a browser extension. I found such an extension, called Select like a Boss. But it was only for Firefox, Opera (Blink), and Chrome. Since the source code for the Chrome extension was available on GitHub, I simply took the js code and packaged it as a Safari extension. Now I'm happy and can properly select text inside links :)

Source code + download link: GitHub.

Updated the Safari extension. It now shows 5 releases in the toolbar instead of 3. And the design now matches Safari 8.

Source code on GitHub.

Install extension.

I stop by Funkysouls from time to time looking for new music. I scroll through the first few pages, check the tags to see whether it might be interesting, then copy the artist name, go to VK or Yandex.Music, paste it there, and listen to a couple of tracks. If I like it, only then do I try to get the album.

I got tired of all that copy-pasting and wrote a Safari extension (I had been wanting to learn how for a while).

The extension does only 2 things:

1. When you open Funkysouls, each release gets 2 Play buttons, as you can see in the screenshot. The red one searches for the artist on Yandex.Music, the blue one searches for the artist on VK. No more copy-pasting. 2 clicks and you are listening.
2. I got slightly carried away while writing it and also added a browser toolbar panel. The extension fetches the site’s RSS feed every 5 minutes and shows the latest 3 releases in the toolbar. So you can follow them without even opening the site. Naturally, if you click a release title in the toolbar, a new tab opens with that release page on Funkysouls.

If you want, you can take the extension code from end.js and button.css, paste it into something like the Control Freak extension in Chrome, and get the same 2 Play buttons in Chrome. I assume you could do the same in Firefox through Greasemonkey.

Source code on GitHub.

Install extension.

I recently made a promo page for Dolphin’s site for a book of poems that is coming out soon. During the discussion I suggested making it in the form of video, so the animations would look nice. Along the way a few nuances surfaced.

I had wanted to make something like this for a long time, so that when the page is scrolled some block would scroll together with the page up to a certain point and then stick. Today I found a plugin called jQuery Sticky Scroller

You can download it here.

It is connected quite simply:

var scroller = new StickyScroller("#menu",
{
    start: 270,
    end: 50800,
    interval: 200,
    range: 100,
    margin: 0
});

As the parameter name suggests, when scrolling goes more than 270 pixels past the top edge of the page, the #menu element is fixed on the page, that is, it gets the CSS property position: fixed;. The end parameter is responsible for the lower bound of scroll tracking, in case the fixed element should not stay fixed all the time. The margin parameter defines how far from the top edge of the browser window the element will be positioned.

The plugin also has several public methods; I do not see much point in describing them here, the description is available on the plugin page.

At work I occasionally have to look at some data from the database. Times we mostly store as TimeStamp (the number of seconds since the dawn of the Unix world — 1 January 1970).

A number like 1305233826 tells you nothing about what date it is. Writing the conversion in some script every time gets tedious, so I made an online converter. It shows the time in a human-readable form.

Enjoy. Online TimeStamp Converter