There is information on a website that is neatly listed and every so often (not on a set schedule) it updates with new information. I am wanting to write a quick script that will automatically let me know when something new has been updated instead of letting me know every x-amount of house/minutes.
My initial thought was that I would have the script pull all the information I was looking for and store it in a list and on the next scan create a new list and get rid of all duplicates which would leave me with what the new information is.
If you know of an effective way to go about such things and could lead me in the right direction, it would be appreciated.
I'm not really looking for source code, just how to go about it and I'm sure I can put it together after some guidance on an efficient way to do it.
You can poll the website, there is no real way you can register a change listener.
If you are ready to poll then document.lastModified (js) can help.
Of course if your website have rss feeds then you can listen for changes.
or there are some free services that will send you an email notification if you register for their services. things (eg: http://www.followthatpage.com/)
Related
Hi guys I am constructing a task distribution management system for my team in which I want to add a functionality that:
When I create a task, I will have an option to choose "how long is this task valid for being taken". For example, when creating the task I put "2 hours" in the
<input id="valid-for">
, then this task will only be displayed on the dashboard for 2 hours from the time it was created and then after 2 hours -> "display: none".
I've searched the web for the mechanism of achieving this feature but I didn't get a satisfied answer probably because I don't know the right terminology to google. I tried to use AJAX and use TIME_STAMP type attribute in MySQL but didn't know how to proceed. Could anybody tell me how to achieve this feature by the use of MySQL, jQuery or any other technics that could fulfill this feature? No code necessary I just need some explanation.
Thanks guys!
Without knowing any more details, here is how I would consider writing the code:
In the database, have a start time and a use-by time.
In your browser page, you can run a script periodically, say every minute (this is called polling). In this case, you can use Ajax to call back to the server for updates.
At the server end, check for new tasks as well as expired tasks. Then send the results back to the Ajax caller.
Back at the browser, update the dashboard accordingly.
I would be inclined to remove the task on the browser rather than simply hide it.
I have a specific problem: I would like to create a Crowdflower job, in which the participant will be redirected to my website (let's say http://www.xxx.yy), where he will complete the task and after he finishes, he'll be redirected back to Crowdflower and paid. Is it possible to do something like that?
I imagined they would have an API, where the user would get some token, which would be then sent to my website and after the completion of the job I could simply do some API call to mark the task as finished. However, I can't find anything in their documentation that would do such thing (http://success.crowdflower.com/customer/portal/articles/1288323).
The reason I need to redirect users to my website is that I need more freedom than CML (Crowdflower Markup Language which is used for creating tasks) offers:
I need to be able to embed an swf file
the swf file should be chosen randomly from an aray of files (approx. 10)
I need to be able to measure how long s/he spends on the website and act based on that time
store some data into a database
All these things can be done pretty easily using some Javascript and PHP, but i don't think they can be done in CML, that's why I need to redirect them to my website.
Can you, please, give me some advice how to do this?
What ways are used to show a user help the first time they use a page - to showcase certain features they might not realize are there.
For instance, say a search form is introduced that has a hidden "advanced search" option:
I would think most people would see the chevron and click it, but..you never know. I know that I could add a cookie to say "Hey - this user has seen it" or create a table in the database.
The problem I see with adding a cookie, is if the user deletes cookies and logs back in - they will have to always dismiss the alert/error/whatever. Unless after a period of time, I go in and manually delete it (which then new users wouldn't see the alert.)
Alternatively, adding a table to the database seems too much for such a simple task. It's what I'm leaning towards, but I hate it...there has to be a better way.
Are there any other ways to show a one time alert for certain pages?
Edit - I used a pretty trivial example on purpose.
I guess both your options are right. The cookie option is bit better cause it will be lighter on the server, again in case you have many users then the database options will be not great.
You may also lookup the new HTML5 feature of storing data on client side. Its a better local storage method.
It goes like localStorage.uid="1234" or something like clickcount.. Refer the html5 docs its a great feature as well.
Heres the link..
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_webstorage.asp
have fun..
I am a student at a University. With the placement process going on, we have an internal placement website that shows updates and status about various companies I have applied to. Since the number of companies is too large it becomes cumbersome to scroll through the complete list to find information. Sometimes, I just miss some things. Now, to tackle this problem, here is what I want to do:
The data is in an HTML table. Each row shows information about one company: Some dates, Status(Not/Shortlisted/Applied), Some yes/no options etc. each in a different column. Once I open the page I want to be able to extract information about which companies I got shortlisted in, and in which ones I didn't make it.
What is the right technology to do this ? I am thinking of writing a Greasemonkey user script (I have never actually written any, but how hard could it be ?). What other options do I have?
Edit: I don't quite understand why this question has voted to be closed?
I just displayed a use case for something general: On opening a web page, automatically extracting information from the page and display it to the user. What is the easiest and sufficiently powerful way to achieve this?
Since you can't get access to the website's database, Greasemonkey would be your best automation approach. However, this task is likely to be over before you can get a decent script up from scratch.
Your best practical approach is to save the pages and/or copy and summarize the data in MS Excel, or equivalent.
~~~~~~~~~
Here at SO, We will not develop any but the simplest Greasemonkey scripts for you from scratch (unless they are fun somehow ;) ). But, you can sometimes get such help in the "Script requests forum" at userscripts.org.
In order for someone to help you, they will need:
A clear idea of exactly what data gets manipulated, and how.
Access to the target site. Or access to saved snapshots of the target pages. GM scripts are extremely dependent on the details of the target page.
"other option":
ctrl + F
enter shortlisted
enter
ctrl + G <--repeat last search
I'm experimenting with P2P on Flash, and I've come across a little hurdle that I'd like to clarify before moving forward. The technology itself (Flash) doesn't matter for this problem, as I think this problem occurs in other languages.
I'm trying to create a document that can be edited "live" by multiple people. Just like Google Docs pretty much. But I'm wondering, how would you suggest synchronizing everyone's text? I mean, should I message everyone with all the text in the text field every time someone makes a change? That seems very inefficient.
I'm thinking there has to be a design pattern that I can learn and implement, but I'm not sure where to start.
Optimally, the application should send the connected clients only the changes that have occurred to the document, and have some sort of buffer or error correction that can be used for retrieving earlier changes that may have been missed. Is there any established design pattern that deals with this type of issue?
Thanks,
Sandro
I think your "Optimally" solution is actually the one you should go for.
each textfield has a model, the model has a history (a FILO storing last, let's say, 10 values).
every time you edit that textfield you push the whole text into the model and send the delta to other connected clients.
as other clients receive the data they just pick the last value from the model and merge it to the received data.
you can refine the mechanism by putting an idle timer in the middle: as a user types something in the textfield you flag that model as "toBeSentThroughTheNet" and you start a timer. as the timer "ticks" (TimerEvent.TIMER) you stop it, collect the flagged data and send it to other clients. just remember to reset the timer everytime the user is actually typing (a semplification coul be keydown = reset, keyup = start).
one more optimization could be send the data packed in a compressed bytearray, but this requires you write your own protocol and may be not so an easy and quick path :)
If the requirement is that everyone can edit the document at the same time and the changes should be propagated to everyone and no changes should be lost, then it is a non-trivial problem. There are few different approaches out there, but one that is quite robust is Operational Transformation. This is the same algorithm that Google Docs uses for collaborative editing.
Understanding and Applying Operational Transformation and the attendant hacker news discussion are probably other good places to start.
The Wave Protocol was released as open source so you can take a look on how it is implemented.
You could of course forgo the tricky synchronization and just allow people to take turns and only one person can edit the document at a time and this person just pushes the changes to the remainder of the group.