Idea for the Propeller Tool

John Minton

Hey everyone, I think I have a pretty cool idea....I would like to share it and maybe someday it will happen:

The Object exchange website is accessible to anyone who has internet connection. So, why not build a button or window inside of the Propeller Tool that allows you to pull your code right from the website into the program.

What I mean is, Browse/open the code on the website from within the Propeller tool.

See attached Image.


Ideas, opinions, input?

ErNa

Nice idea. Just to use this as a vehicle, another note: When searching in the open source code, the line of the string found is placed at the border of the window, so there is often no context available. It would be better to have a few lines more visible, both on top or bottom of the window.

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cmapspublic3.ihmc.us:80/servlet/SBReadResourceServlet?rid=1181572927203_421963583_5511&partName=htmltext
Hello Rest Of The World
Hello Debris
Install a propeller and blow them away

legoman132

Good idea. This would save the hassle of downloading, finding the file, and putting it in the propeller tool library

John Minton

It's good to hear others think it might be a good idea. It would be excellent to include a way to search and browse through all the scripts as well as shortcuts for object/project of the week. It is kind of a neat idea to integrate the development application with the website so that when a user uploads a cool code or w/e everyone can see it right from where they do their coding....it kind of does it for me! [noparse]:)[/noparse]


I am handy with PHP, and just familiar with other languages out there. It looks like the Parallax site is all ASP.

In ASP someone would have to write a script that would loop through the list of categories (in a sql database probably), then do another loop inside of that one to pull all the file names and urls for the files. The output would be formatted as a custom XML file, built to the category's structure.

The filenames displayed in the program would be in an XML tag with an attribute that points to the source codes URL on the website, ie:
<category>Memory Cards</category>
<file url="http://obex.parallax.com/objects/download/obj/649/">sc_32322</file&gt;
<file url="http://obex.parallax.com/objects/download/...">something else...</file>
etc

Now from inside the propeller tool, when a source code file is clicked, the program will download the zip file/source code from the site, locally extract is (downloads are all zip files right?), and each file opened into the propeller tool.


Assuming the Propeller Tool is written in C, a CURL library would do just the trick of grabbing the list of categories / files and downloading the files from the server.

After that it would be a little bit of programming to make the list of categories/files display in a nice tree layout, and also a little bit of programming to extract the source code from the zip files and make cmd calls to propeller tool to open the source code files.


It appears to be a fairly simple, yet extremely useful idea. It should also save time when you are coding.