Weird Sheep Software

Well I have been quiet haven’t I? This has mainly been due to work and a Wordpress side project. Since my last post I have written some test code for Android that communicates with the Coppermine JSON-RPC extension I have written. More importantly I am nearing completion on the alpha of a Coppermine client for the iPhone. So here are some screen shots of the progress so far.

The Categories View

The Categories Detail

Capture

The Albums

The Album Detail

I’ve just come back from another jaunt to the US on business (not in the Alfred Bester kind of way but traditionally on a British Airways 747). Just before I left I took delivery of a shiny new MacBook 2.4Ghz that replaces my now, very ill, iBook. This meant I could start developing again.

While I was in the US I had little time between work and socialising but I did get to set up the iPhone and Android dev kits on the new machine and play with some UI concepts. I also started writing some test code in Java to test the RPC mechanism to Coppermine. This code has turned in to the JSON-RPC and Session classes that will be used in the Android version of the client app. I will also release that code as open source so that anyone can write Java clients for Coppermine.

I will use the same design when I implement that mechanism in Objective-C. This will be used in the iPhone client. I have also downloaded the iPhoto extension SDK so I think I’ll release an iPhoto export extension that will allow you to export directly from iPhoto in to Coppermine.

Lots for me to do.

As you may have noticed if you’re reading this having navigated through from the index page I have tied up the Weird Sheep Software web site and given it a proper main page, theme, links, projects page and so on. The documentation for the Coppermine JSON-RPC API is also available. The theme, although not terribly exciting, is lovingly hand crafted PHP and CSS. Once I’m happy with it I’ll have it available for download for all those who want to use it for a Wordpress blog.

I took time out from development to do this due to the fault with my Mac halting development for a short while. So I set up a new server and development machine running the Ubuntu 8.10 distribution. Also I ordered a new MacBook which is currently in transit which I hope I will receive before I head back to the US at the end of the week. So that’s about it.

Current Mood:  accomplished

The JSON-RPC extension for Coppermine appears to be behaving itself. Its not got all the functionality required yet but it is a start. You can satisfactorily authenticate and get catagories, album lists etc. using the API. So last week I started on the iPhone Coppermine client itself.

At the beginning of this week I decided to set up my old PC is a pure Linux dev box and test server. I had given it away to one of my girlfriends but they no longer required it so I reclaimed it and installed Ubuntu. It appears that the fates decree that I should have an unchanging average number of working computers. Because as I was bringing the PC up and getting software installed my trust three and a half year old iBook, on which I code, developed a fault.

The fault appeared as a complete freeze of the machine. I hard booted and it couldn’t find the harddrive. My good friend, Sonya, who’s a Mac Goddess, talked me through various options on IM. Unfortunately none of them really fixed the issue. So the following day I took the machine in to the office, put the iBook in to target disk mode, and used my work laptop to copy the data on to an external USB harddrive.

That evening I tried to install OS X on another external harddrive but the iBook froze yet again. Since the internal harddrive was out of the loop this looks like a more serious problem; possibly a main board failure. Anyway I recovered the data, which is the important thing. Also I have a machine that does work for short periods so I’m currently not using it incase I have to fire it up at any point for data I’ve not recovered yet.

So today I decided I couldn’t live without my Mac and ordered a nice shiny new top of the range MacBook from the Apple Store. This will take a few days to arrive. I hope it arrives before I go to the US in about ten days otherwise I will find it hard to survive. My work laptop is very much a work machine. In the mean time I’m switching back to working further on the Coppermine extension and also at setting up an Android development environment and thinking about the Android client.

Well it turns out that rather than a plugin for Coppermine I’ve written an extension. Basically you un-tar the package in to the Coppermine directory and it adds support for JSON-RPC providing a set of API that allows remote clients to query Coppermine. The code is fully Doxygened and the documentation is available online here.

Now this is working it allows me to start development on the clients. Which I have done. iPhone development has begun and hopefully there will be a few screen shots soon. Also I’ve got myself a T-Mobile G1 Android phone so I’ll be writing a client for Android too.

I have started prototyping the Coppermine side of the client server architecture for the iphone client. I have decided to use JSON-RPC for the web API interface. That calls an external PHP API within Coppermine itself. I need to document the API and I am considering using. Google Code for the project.

I’ve started with the most important part, the authentication. I have implemented a challenge / response protocol. I’m currently at SFO waiting for a flight to the UK. On the plane I will code up query functions that return catagories and albums for a catagory. The I will code the upload functionality. The whole lot then needs to be tested so I’ll use a simple CLI client to try it out. If that works I’m on to the proper client.

I recently acquired an Android based phone so I’ll produce a client for that too.

Weird Sheep has started its first project in a long while.  The development of an iPhone client and associated plug-in for the Coppermine media gallery has begun.  This will allow you to upload to your on-line gallery direct from your iPhone where ever you are adding descriptions and other information at the same time. Hopefully there will be some screen shots of the prototype shortly.

Weird Sheep Software is the name I used to publish small applications under back in the 90s.  When I became a commercial developer I found other interests outside of work.  Now I’m a consultant I virtually never code and so I have started personal projects again.  It seemed right to resurrect the name to go with them.

Watch this space!