Jason Braun, Bryan Hurley, Anthony Varner, Andrew Winder

snewsrThe gnizr social news readr

Project DescriptionProject Idea 4: Create a Home page for gnizr

communityCreate a new page in gnizr that will features Top links

and tags. The purpose of this page is to give users an overview of that what’s going on in gnizr. You may also consider applying other virtualization and mashup techniques. For example, display geotagged bookmarks in a Google Maps, and at the same time, mashup news or bookmarks from a third-party web application (e.g., del.icio.us or Yahoo! Pipe).

Things to consider:How do you compose the Web page – MVC, page-

drive, mashup?How will this page be created – a robot creates it

every hour or it’s created when a user request is received?

What relevant information to collect from gnizr DB?

Project GoalsCreate a news feed to replace the normal

login page that greets you when you connect to a gnizr server

Create an RSS feed of the news feed so a user can keep up with the latest bookmarks without connecting to gnizr

Allow posting of comments from any user to any other user’s bookmarks

InnovationsAdditional functionality added to gnizrBackend development directly to the gnizr

database using proper gnizr methodsDatabase driven on demand pages created

specifically for this projectUsed MVC to display new interfacesNews feed is created when requested, not

by robot or other methodBookmarks and comments are retrieved

from the gnizr database

System Architecture

gnizr backend hackingDatabase interfaceComments databaseStored proceduresBookmarks databaseThorough understanding of gnizr attained

gnizr frontend hackingReplaced index.ftl

Pom.xmlIntegrated with existing gnizr codeUsed gnizr 2.4Created a news feed page to replace the

default login when connecting to gnizrRSS feed created from news feed pageComments interface to add and change

comments

Future WorkProper use of all gnizr css and other

information to make the new pages fully compliant with global changes to gnizr

Integration of comments into the news and RSS feed

Check logged-in status to change available news feeds

Add additional functionality to the news feed page so it can act more like a portal to gnizr

Lessons LearnedMeet often, even if for short amounts of timeSVN and Google Code are your friend, do not

be afraidComments, comments, comments, and

commit commentsDr. Chen is your friend too, do not be afraidWebwork however, is not your friend, but Dr.

Chen is a level 70 Webwork Mage, and he is in your guild

Communication, updates, keeping everybody updated is important

Demo

Demo the new system

Start in Firefox (nice RSS reader) Start the server Open the homepage See the news feed Click the subscribe link on the bottom and subscribe to the page Leave Firefox open

Open IE Open the homepage See the news feed Click home to login login Create a new bookmark with a tag Go over to Firefox, open a new blank tab and refresh the live feed and show

that it is working properly Back to IE and demonstrate the comments functionality Create a comment on a bookmark Back to Firefox and login through the home link on the front page Add a comment to the bookmark that you just added one to through IE to show

that two different users can add comments to the same thing. All functionality has been demonstrated the thoroughly explained at this point.

Open up for questions.