Jan 08 2013
I’ve been working on some bootstrap instant edit userinterface ideas, and while integrating hallo.js, I was reading about backbone.js and the VIE create.js RDF form generators.
This lead me to backbone-forms, which auto-creates the backbone view from a model schema…
So to try it out, I wrote a TodoMVC example using backbone-forms – moving almost the entire code into the view.
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Sep 17 2012
When I developed the Foswiki MongoDB integration, I worked out a really ‘nifty’ way to do cross database and collection JOINs .
but, it’s finally been broken in MongoDB 2.2 – with the removal of the global lock.
So we’re going to have to restrict the foswiki MongoDB plugin to version 2.0.
So, you’re curious?
On reason I decided to use MongoDB as a target for foswiki adhoc queries, was the backup of writing $where clauses in javascript. I’ve used them when the Perl-isms in foswiki’s query results could not be magically matched – string and number duplicity for example.
and one facility that MongoDB’s javascript has, is to call db.getSisterDB(‘someotherdbname’);
so for (a very simplified) example:
db.current.find({$where : "db.getSisterDB(this.otherDB).current.findOne({topic: this.otherTopic}).value == 'what are you looking at'"});
yes, this is not SELECT JOIN, just WHERE JOIN – but it’s exactly what we needed.
Apr 15 2012
George has been leading the charge to a major bug fixing release of foswiki – we’ve resolved over 120 issues, and worked hard to improve security – dealing with some interesting cross site scripting issues found by ‘SonyStyles’, and then pushing on to harden the registration process to deal with spammers.
foswiki’s password system can now migrate your user’s password store to more modern encryption methods – the default that we shipped with Twiki can thus move from crypt to md5-apache.
4 days after the release, the installation and maintenance options for 1.1.5 have improved too:
Apr 07 2012
Thanks to a tweet by a Brisbane local (Bruce) I was continuing to mull the disconnect I have from external web traffic tracking tools. I prefer to reduce the number of requests needed to serve my users – and zero requests are always fastest.
I’ve been messing with Apache CustomLog formats to debug session and performance issues in foswiki, and so given a hammer, wondered why not apply it to more things.
Then comes Bruce’s link to Client-Side Error Logging With Google Analytics, a continuation of You Really Should Log Client-Side Errors – and I wondered…
What if I put the client error into the next user request made to the server?
the javascript:
function logError(details) {
$.cookie('clientError', details);
}
window.onerror = function(message, file, line) {
logError(file + ':' + line + '\n\n' + message);
};
$(document).ajaxError(function(e, xhr, settings) {
logError(settings.url + ':' + xhr.status + '\n\n' + xhr.responseText);
});
$.cookie('clientError', null);
the apache CustomLog settings:
#add a Client Error log
LogFormat "%h %l \"%r\" %u %t %>s %{clientError}C" clientError
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/clientError_local_log clientError
and the result:
192.168.1.51 - "GET /~sven/core/pub/System/JQueryPlugin/plugins/foswiki/jquery.foswiki.js?version=2.01 HTTP/1.1" - [07/Apr/2012:16:18:26 +1000] 304 - 192.168.1.51 - "GET /~sven/core/pub/System/TwistyPlugin/jquery.twisty.js?version=1.6.0 HTTP/1.1" - [07/Apr/2012:16:18:26 +1000] 304 - 192.168.1.51 - "GET /~sven/core/bin/view/Sandbox/TestClientSideLogging HTTP/1.1" - [07/Apr/2012:16:18:31 +1000] 200 http%3A%2F%2F192.168.1.51%2F~sven%2Fcore%2Fbin%2Fview%2FSandbox%2FTestClientSideLogging%3A1%0A%0Acall_me%20is%20not%20defined 192.168.1.51 - "GET /~sven/core/pub/System/TwistyPlugin/twisty.css?version=1.6.0 HTTP/1.1" - [07/Apr/2012:16:18:32 +1000] 304 - 192.168.1.51 - "GET /~sven/core/pub/System/JQueryPlugin/plugins/livequery/jquery.livequery.js?version=1.1.1 HTTP/1.1" - [07/Apr/2012:16:18:32 +1000] 304 -
This way we get super fast, no extra traffic client error tracking.
(If someone has the apache-foo to get the right SetEnvIF or RewriteCond to only log when an error is defined, please help – I tried, but failed.)
Apr 05 2012
I’ve spent time trying to work out why a client foswiki setup was slow last month.
http requests to the view script were taking in the order of 1second to respond (not good, but bearable given the virtual machine setup) ~ whereas https requests were taking around 5 times as long.
The connect times for https where an eye opener – sometimes it took up to 500mS.
After poking all sorts of options, spending time profiling foswiki, and generally assuming we had something wrong, I got to discussing the issue with Paul on the #foswiki irc channel, and he asked some interesting questions – the most notable
Are the host names in the /etc/hosts file?
and the answer – nope (that’ll teach me for not reviewing the basic server setup 
).
So I added them, and suddenly, the performance of the https connections became alot more inline with the http times.
So if you have a problem that is vaguely related to your foswiki / twiki – come brainstorm with us on irc, in the foswiki support web, or on the mailing list – you just never know when someone will ask the right odd question
Feb 04 2012
Just a short teaser from my testing virtual machine: I’m still working on a few wrinkles – hopefully It’ll be releaseable for foswiki 1.1.5
yum install foswiki-widgetsskin
======================================================================== Package Arch Version Repository Size ========================================================================Installing: foswiki-widgetsskin i386 110415-226 foswiki 9.6 M Installing for dependencies: apr i686 1.3.9-3.el6_1.2 base 129 k apr-util i686 1.3.9-3.el6_0.1 base 89 k apr-util-ldap i686 1.3.9-3.el6_0.1 base 15 k foswiki i386 1.1.4-231 foswiki 2.6 M foswiki-autoviewtemplateplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 9.1 k foswiki-commentplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 23 k foswiki-comparerevisionsaddon i386 111217-226 foswiki 95 k foswiki-edittableplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 78 k foswiki-emptyplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 15 k foswiki-famfamfamcontrib i386 111217-226 foswiki 3.0 M foswiki-historyplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 76 k foswiki-interwikiplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 11 k foswiki-jqueryplugin i386 111221-226 foswiki 6.1 M foswiki-jscalendarcontrib i386 111217-226 foswiki 383 k foswiki-mailercontrib i386 111217-226 foswiki 44 k foswiki-patternskin i386 111217-226 foswiki 725 k foswiki-preferencesplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 12 k foswiki-renderlistplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 20 k foswiki-slideshowplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 23 k foswiki-smiliesplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 14 k foswiki-spreadsheetplugin i386 120118-226 foswiki 37 k foswiki-tableplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 29 k foswiki-tinymceplugin i386 111222-226 foswiki 1.4 M foswiki-tipscontrib i386 111217-226 foswiki 18 k foswiki-topicusermappingcontrib i386 111221-226 foswiki 41 k foswiki-twikicompatibilityplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 140 k foswiki-twistyplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 28 k foswiki-wysiwygplugin i386 111217-226 foswiki 61 k httpd i686 2.2.15-15.el6.centos base 818 k httpd-tools i686 2.2.15-15.el6.centos base 70 k mailcap noarch 2.1.31-2.el6 base 27 k perl i686 4:5.10.1-119.el6_1.1 base 9.7 M perl-AppConfig noarch 1.66-6.el6 base 87 k perl-Archive-Tar i686 1.58-119.el6_1.1 base 70 k perl-CGI i686 3.51-119.el6_1.1 base 206 k perl-CGI-Session noarch 4.35-5.el6 base 120 k perl-Compress-Raw-Zlib i686 2.023-119.el6_1.1 base 67 k perl-Compress-Zlib i686 2.020-119.el6_1.1 base 43 k perl-DBD-Pg i686 2.15.1-3.el6 base 191 k perl-DBI i686 1.609-4.el6 base 705 k perl-ExtUtils-MakeMaker i686 6.55-119.el6_1.1 base 290 k perl-ExtUtils-ParseXS i686 1:2.2003.0-119.el6_1.1 base 42 k perl-FreezeThaw noarch 0.45-5.el6 base 19 k perl-IO-Compress-Base i686 2.020-119.el6_1.1 base 66 k perl-IO-Compress-Zlib i686 2.020-119.el6_1.1 base 133 k perl-IO-Zlib i686 1:1.09-119.el6_1.1 base 30 k perl-IO-stringy noarch 2.110-10.1.el6 base 68 k perl-Module-Pluggable i686 1:3.90-119.el6_1.1 base 37 k perl-Package-Constants i686 1:0.02-119.el6_1.1 base 24 k perl-Pod-Escapes i686 1:1.04-119.el6_1.1 base 30 k perl-Pod-Simple i686 1:3.13-119.el6_1.1 base 209 k perl-Test-Harness i686 3.17-119.el6_1.1 base 229 k perl-Test-Simple i686 0.92-119.el6_1.1 base 110 k perl-Text-Glob noarch 0.08-7.el6 base 11 k perl-devel i686 4:5.10.1-119.el6_1.1 base 420 k perl-libs i686 4:5.10.1-119.el6_1.1 base 590 k perl-version i686 3:0.77-119.el6_1.1 base 49 k postgresql-libs i686 8.4.9-1.el6_1.1 base 201 k rcs i686 5.7-37.el6 base 169 k
Transaction Summary ======================================================================== Install 60 Package(s)
Yes, I’m finally cutting the foswiki release package up into its constituent parts so that the packages can be updated separately like when using configure.
The same build script is used to generate debian packages, so I hope that will come in February too.
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