Interesting And Social API In Corona SDK

Here is a list of blog posts documenting how to use the most interesting and useful parts of the Corona SDK API by Ansca Mobile...

Many of these can be found on this root page: http://blog.anscamobile.com/category/tutorials/

Firstly, the social API's:

• Facebook Single Sign On
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2012/01/implementing-facebook-single-sign-on/
• Native email and SMS
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2012/01/composing-email-and-sms-in-corona/
• App URL schemes
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/12/using-app-url-schemes-in-ios/
• Push notifications
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/12/push-notifications-for-ios-in-corona-sdk/
• Local notifications
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/09/local-notifications-now-in-daily-builds/
• Uploading photos to facebook
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/12/uploading-photos-to-facebook-in-corona/
• Kindle Fire apps
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/11/building-and-publishing-kindle-fire-apps/

And second, the deeper API's:

• Storyboard API
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/11/introducing-the-storyboard-api/
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/11/common-storyboard-api-questions/
• JSON
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/08/tutorial-exploring-json-usage-in-corona/
• Custom fonts
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/07/custom-fonts-corona/
• Web popups
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/08/getting-creative-with-web-popups/
• XML files
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/07/how-to-use-xml-files-in-corona/
• Content scaling and Dynamic image resolution
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2010/11/content-scaling-made-easy/
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/01/dynamic-image-resolution-made-easy/
• Closures
  http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/02/using-closures-in-lua-to-avoid-global-variables-for-callbacks/

Stuff You (I) Should Know

The following is a list of APIs and tools which I consider the current state of the art in .NET development (though not exclusively .NET) and that I really should know a lot more about. This should pretty much be complete right now, though I have a nagging feeling I missed one.

• OpenRasta
  http://trac.caffeine-it.com/openrasta/wiki/Doc
• ASP.NET MVC 2
  http://www.asp.net/learn/mvc/
  http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/matthijs/ASPNET-MVC-2-Ninja-Black-Belt-Tips-by-Scott-Hanselman/
• SparkView
  http://sparkviewengine.com/documentation/syntax
• Castle
  http://www.castleproject.org/activerecord/documentation/v1rc1/index.html
  http://gojko.net/2008/11/04/dependency-injection-with-castle-windsor-video/
  http://using.castleproject.org/display/IoC/Home
  http://using.castleproject.org/display/IoC/Fluent+Registration+API
  http://www.castleproject.org/castle/download.html
  http://api.castleproject.org/
  http://blog.coreycoogan.com/2009/11/06/castle-windsor-tutorial-in-asp-net-mvc/
• NHibernate
  http://nhforge.org/
  http://community.jboss.org/wiki/NHibernateforNET
  http://www.nhforge.org/doc/nh/en/index.html
  http://blogs.hibernatingrhinos.com/nhibernate/archive/2008/04/01/your-first-nhibernate-based-application.aspx
  http://www.ayende.com/hibernating-rhinos.aspx
  http://nhforge.org/wikis/howtonh/your-first-nhibernate-based-application.aspx
• MvcContrib
  http://mvccontrib.codeplex.com/Wikipage
  http://mvccontrib.codeplex.com/releases/view/43560
• NUnit
  http://www.nunit.org/
• Ruby On Rails
  http://ironruby.net/About
• Fluent Programming
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_interface
• NerdDinner
  http://nerddinnerbook.s3.amazonaws.com/Intro.htm
  http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ExtendingNerdDinnerExploringDifferentDatabaseOptions.aspx
  http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ExtendingNerdDinnerAddingMEFAndPluginsToASPNETMVC.aspx
  
• Managed Extensibility Framework "MEF"
  http://mef.codeplex.com/
  http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/mef
  http://blog.maartenballiauw.be/category/MEF.aspx

The following list is not complete, won't be for some time and may require time travel to keep reasonably accurate - list of best practice advice/docs:

• http://weblogs.asp.net/rashid/archive/2009/04/01/asp-net-mvc-best-practices-part-1.aspx#prg
  

And some videos which I hope will be helpful:

• MVC
  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6197789949116343290#

Footnote: This needs reorganising into a list of tech, each with a list of links and FAQ/Quickstarts.

The Right Or Wrong Level Of Abstraction

I just have to post this:

• http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/06/the-wrong-level-of-abstraction.html

I'm doing some encryption-involved work atm and this is particularly relevant.

It's also relevant because I often find myself, usually at the beginning of a project (like, right now), asking me, "What level should I be working and is there an API to do this for me?"

Usually, the answers are, "Don't know" and "No", in that order. Which is annoying but also called, "Life."

Anyway, read that article, the articles linked from it. It be good. Here it is again...

• http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/06/the-wrong-level-of-abstraction.html

Google Data And Client Libraries

Quick link for those looking to get the Google .NET API:

• http://code.google.com/p/google-gdata/source/checkout
  svn checkout http://google-gdata.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ google-gdata-read-only

Working with Google's APIs to extract I've discovered some very useful links:

• Client Libraries, for languages like Java and .NET: http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/docs/client-libraries.html
• Authentication "ClientLogin" sample code: http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/docs/auth/clientlogin.html
• Getting started: http://code.google.com/apis/accounts/docs/GettingStarted.html
• Data API -account feed: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gdata/gdataReferenceAccountFeed.html
• An interesting abalytics blog post: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/08/api-sometimes-you-just-gotta-explore.html

I've now been attempting this fun for a little while and there seems to be a fair bit of mis-direction around the Google .NET APIs. My (and others, it seems) main concern is that the .NET APIs seem to cater very well for most Google Labs/Apps uses, except for Google Analytics. Issue #1 being how to even get access/login with .NET. I have since discovered the actual Analytics .NET libraries, so the links are here. However, currently, it's important to note that the links above don't directly link to the libraries you really need.

• Browse the SVN code library online: http://code.google.com/p/google-gdata/source/browse/#svn/trunk/clients/cs/lib/Release
• Checkout the code from here: http://code.google.com/p/google-gdata/source/checkout
  It's important to note that you will need Subversion ("SVN") installed to do this and the path to use is: http://google-gdata.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/
• Google "GData" project home: http://code.google.com/p/google-gdata/
  It is important to note that the "Downloads" tab here will not get you the Google Analytics library - you need the "Source" tab, which will take you to the SVN link above.
• Google Code blog from April 2009 about the new Data Export API: http://googledataapis.blogspot.com/2009/04/google-analytics-data-export-api-has.html
• The StackOverflow post which got me there: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/791125/google-analytics-api-and-net

The code I used to get an authentication token from the Google Analytics Service is:

using Google.GData.Analytics;

AnalyticsService analyticsService = new AnalyticsService(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ApplicationName"]);

analyticsService.setUserCredentials(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Email"], ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Password"]);

string analyticsAuthToken = analyticsService.QueryClientLoginToken();

return analyticsAuthToken;

Tweet Buffer: Twuffer

Hmm, I quite like this idea, simply because it's a neat utilisation of twitter which you might think should have been part of the original web app (twitter) but is just a sensible extension - and a good example of third party expansions to open API's:

• http://twuffer.com/

Swearwords

If you want to block swearwords on your site, here's some resources. Things to think about are your intended audience, the seriousness of your site and how strict you want to be...

• http://www.bannedwordlist.com/
• http://www.banbuilder.com/
• http://www.noswearing.com/index.php
• http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php

Instant Messaging Tools

Wow, I seriously underestimated the number of instant messaging applications out there. I've been using MSN Messenger for a long time (hasn't everyone?) and now I work on Windows Std Server 2003 I can't - the two are incompatible, as is iTunes/WS2k3. So, I went looking for a replacement which might run on WinSrv2k3, and a quick google of "instant messenger comparison" brought me to this neat link:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_messaging_clients

Having said that, of course, there are plenty of tools, APIs etc out there to let you build your own instant messaging application - including an MSN Messenger app!...

Code and API's for developing with Microsoft's MSN Messenger service, found via:http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGLS_en-GBGB299GB309&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=c%23+msn ...

• http://forum.mess.be/index.php?showtopic=36
• http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/Connect_To_MSN_Messenger.aspx
• http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/MsnMessengerLogListener.aspx
• http://www.hypothetic.org/docs/msn/index.php - Out of date now
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms630960.aspx
• http://www.codeproject.com/KB/IP/connectingtomsn.aspx

A number of these utilise the DotMSN API:

• http://www.xihsolutions.net/dotmsn/ - An actual MSN Messenger API wrapped up for C# specifically

Also, dubiously, there is this, which I am just not sure about yet, perhaps it's a goldmine, perhaps a landmine: http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-hack-msn-web-cam/

Tweet in C#

Just a quick one; how to tweet to twitter in C#:

http://weblogs.asp.net/wallym/archive/2009/03/25/twitter-api-submit-a-post-in-c.aspx