Development question for you
Wil Coulbourn
I have a question if you don't mind. Over the time I've used Fuel you
have had the Google import/export option. I have an simple app in the
catalog and am trying to figure out how to do the same kind of thing.
That is, i would like to export and import a simple table to/from
Google.
Do you have any pointers to good (or even halfway decent)
documentation/how-tos/anything on which APIs to use and how to
implement them?
Thank you for your help and if it's not something that is quick at
hand or you don't have time or inclination to do I completely
understand.
Have a wonderful week.
Wil
Rob (rbtwhiz)
features into Fuel... The docs are much better now, if still
incomplete in spots. One of the first hurdles I found was to
understand that you actually use two different APIs to do the work.
This was vaguely implied, but wasn't very clear initially. You kind of
had to guess, try something to see if it worked, be happy if you found
something that did and hope they didn't change it out from under you;
its still in Labs - i.e. experiemental. Now the docs actually spell it
out. You use the Documents List API for dealing with creation of the
documents themselves and finding document keys, and you use the
Spreadsheets API for dealing with the contents of a given document
once you know the key for a document.
http://code.google.com/apis/documents/
http://code.google.com/apis/spreadsheets/
After understanding that it basically boils down to a series of http
requests to retrieve feeds that contain links to other feeds that
eventually lead to the data you want. How you get to that point
depends on the type of feed you choose to utilize. The table and
record feeds didn't exist when I wrote Fuel's features, so I used the
list feed. Had I known that the cell feed would end up acquiring the
ability to batch (and thus reduce the number of http requests), I
probably would've used it... since the list feed doesn't have that
luxury (and thereby takes longer - producing a bit more traffic
between the device and the service). I may choose to switch feeds as I
port Fuel to the Enyo framework for the next generation of devices...
but I'm not settled on that quite yet. There are trade offs to both
approaches.
I will say, one thing that helped me quite a bit was using a browser
to inspect the data in the feed. There are parameters that allow you
to pretty-print the response, which makes finding what you're looking
for significantly easier.
Outside of that, the best thing I can tell you to do is stay calm and
be patient. You'll waste a bunch of cycles getting frustrated with it
if you don't... ;)
-Rob
Wil Coulbourn
I appreciate the time you took to respond and the advice (specifically
about the browser AND patience)
Speaking of "Fuel". I use it all the time and love it. Fuel Plus was
in progress. Is that still coming? Or are you looking to wait now
until the new interfaces/WebOS version is on place? Either way looking
forward to it!
Wil
On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 11:04 PM, Rob (rbtwhiz) <rbt...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, Google's API docs have changed a bit since I first wrote those
> features into Fuel... The docs are much better now, if still
> incomplete in spots. One of the first hurdles I found was to
> understand that you actually use two different APIs to do the work.
> This was vaguely implied, but wasn't very clear initially. You kind of
> had to guess, try something to see if it worked, be happy if you found
> something that did and hope they didn't change it out from under you;
> its still in Labs - i.e. experimental. Now the docs actually spell it
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Rob (rbtwhiz)
I'm conflicted on Fuel Plus, actually. Fuel Plus is the real version
that gets developed, and when I'm wrapping up a build of the free
version to post to the catalog, I strip out the Plus features that I'm
reserving for it. The features themselves work great... they have been
going through testing for quite a while now. What I'm conflicted about
is putting out a paid version that I will then be expected to support,
only to turn around and port it to the Enyo framework and not have
time to maintain the Mojo version. Part of me wants to finally release
it, because it is useful as it is, and another part of me doesn't want
to release a version that won't have much chance at a life given the
imminent framework changes... I'm leaning toward waiting until the
Enyo port is done and then releasing an even better version at the
same time.
-Rob