http://www.burpee.com/schools

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bizdev@artimys.com to partner with Artimys Language Technologies

Prerequisites

• Disqus shortname – Disqus Account
• Disqus API Secret – Disqus API Account
• Disqus PHP Library

Database Tables

I created two database tables disqus_thread and disqus_comment. A Disqus thread is equivalent to a unique page with Disqus comments. The ‘title’ is the disqus_identifier.

create table `disqus_thread`
(
	`id` int not null,
	`title` varchar(2000) not null,
    `created` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
	 unique key(`id`),
	 index(`created`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

create table `disqus_comment`
(
	`id` int not null,
	`thread_id` int not null,
	`author_name` varchar(200),
	`comment` text not null,
    `created` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
	 unique key(`id`),
	 index (`thread_id`),
	 index (`created`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

Disqus Sync Script

The sync script will fetch all new comments from Disqus and store them. It then checks for missing threads. If it finds any it fetches them from Disqus and stores them as well. We only care about the threads that have comments. When someone visits a page Disqus will create a thread even though there are no comments yet. To limit the size of our DB we only store threads with comments.
config.php

<?php
define('DB_NAME', 'your-db-name');
define('DB_USER', 'your-db-user');
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'your-db-password');
define('DB_HOST', 'your-db-host.com');

define('DISQUS_FETCH_LIMIT', 100);
define('DISQUS_FETCH_ORDER', 'asc');
define('DISQUS_API_SECRET', 'your-api-secret');
define('DISQUS_FORUM_SHORTNAME', 'your-shortname');
?>

sync-disqus-comments.php

<?php

error_reporting(0);
set_time_limit(60*10); // 10 minutes

/**
 * Sync the latest Disqus comments.
 */
require('config.php');
require('disqusapi/disqusapi.php');

try {
    $db_connect = 'mysql:host='.DB_HOST.';port=3306;dbname='.DB_NAME;
    $dbh = new PDO($db_connect, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD);

    $threads = $dbh->prepare("insert into disqus_thread (id, title, created) values (:id, :title, :created)");
    $comments = $dbh->prepare("insert into disqus_comment (id, thread_id, author_name, comment, created) values (:id, :thread_id, :author_name, :comment, :created)");

    $disqus = new DisqusAPI(DISQUS_API_SECRET, 'json', '3.0');

    $params = array('forum' => DISQUS_FORUM_SHORTNAME, 'order' =>  DISQUS_FETCH_ORDER, 'limit' => DISQUS_FETCH_LIMIT);

    //
    // Fetch comments ..
    //
    $res = $dbh->query("select max(created) as max from disqus_comment")->fetch();
    if (!empty($res['max'])) {
        $params['since'] = $res['max'];
    }

    do {
        $posts = $disqus->posts->list($params);
        $cursor = $posts->cursor;

        $params['cursor'] = $cursor->next;

        foreach ($posts as $post) {
            $comments->bindValue(':id', $post->id);
            $comments->bindValue(':author_name', $post->author->name);
            $comments->bindValue(':comment', $post->raw_message);
            $comments->bindValue(':thread_id', $post->thread);
            $comments->bindValue(':created', strtotime($post->createdAt."+0000"));  //Since Disqus returns GMT add +0000 to the time string.
            $comments->execute();
        }
    } while ($cursor->more);

    unset($params['since']);
    unset($params['cursor']);

    //
    // Fetch threads
    //
    $unknownThreads = array();
    $unknownThreadsQuery = $dbh->prepare("select c.thread_id from disqus_comment c where (select count(*) from disqus_thread where id=c.thread_id)=0");
    $unknownThreadsQuery->execute();
    while( $row = $unknownThreadsQuery->fetchObject() ) {
        $unknownThreads[] = $row->thread_id;
    }

    if (!empty($unknownThreads)) {
        $params['thread'] = $unknownThreads;

        do {
            $posts = $disqus->threads->list($params);

            // Create cursor to paginate through resultset
            $cursor = $posts->cursor;

            // Update our arguments with the cursor and the next position
            $params['cursor'] = $cursor->next;

            foreach ($posts as $post) {
                $threads->bindValue(':id', $post->id);
                $threads->bindValue(':title', $post->title);
                $threads->bindValue(':created', strtotime($post->createdAt."+0000")); //Since Disqus returns GMT add +0000 to the time string.
                $threads->execute();
            }
        } while ($cursor->more);
        // End forum threads
    }




} catch (DisqusAPIError $e) {
    echo $e->getMessage();
    echo PHP_EOL;
    exit;
}

?>

Cron Job
We run the sync script every hour. Here is the crontab command.

0 * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/analysis/sync-disqus-comments.php > /dev/null 2>&1

Front-end UI

Here is the code to display the Disqus comments. All the server-side comments rendered within <div id=”disqus_thread”> will be replaced with the client-side Disqus comments.

        <h3>User reviews of <?php echo($domain); ?></h3>
        <div id="disqus_thread">
            <?php
                $commentsQuery = fetch_analysis_page_comments($domain);
                while( $row = $commentsQuery->fetchObject() ){
                    ?>
                        <div>
                            <p>Author: <?php echo($row->author_name); ?></p>
                            <p>Comment: <?php echo($row->comment); ?></p>
                        </div>
                    <?php
                }
            ?>
        </div>
        <script type="text/javascript">
            /* * * CONFIGURATION VARIABLES: EDIT BEFORE PASTING INTO YOUR WEBPAGE * * */
            var disqus_shortname = '<?php echo(DISQUS_FORUM_SHORTNAME); ?>'; // required: replace example with your forum shortname
            var disqus_identifier = '<?php echo($domain); ?>';

            /* * * DON'T EDIT BELOW THIS LINE * * */
            (function() {
                var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true;
                dsq.src = '//' + disqus_shortname + '.disqus.com/embed.js';
                (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq);
            })();
        </script>
        <noscript>Please enable JavaScript to view the <a href="http://disqus.com/?ref_noscript">comments powered by Disqus.</a></noscript>
        <a href="http://disqus.com" class="dsq-brlink">comments powered by <span class="logo-disqus">Disqus</span></a>

fetch_analysis_page_comments($)

function fetch_analysis_page_comments($domain) {
    $db_connect = 'mysql:host='.DB_HOST.';port=3306;dbname='.DB_NAME;
    $dbh = new PDO($db_connect, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD);

    $commentsQuery = $dbh->prepare("select * from disqus_comment where thread_id = (select id from disqus_thread where title=:domain)");
    $commentsQuery->bindValue(':domain', $domain);
    $commentsQuery->execute();
    return $commentsQuery;
}

In our case the $domain variable is the Disqus disqus_identifier.

I’m using a Mac so there will be slight changes for other Operating Systems.

Step 1

Download and install LESS CSS.

Step 2

Create the less.xml ant task and add it as an Eclipse Builder.

Add the following ant build file to the base of your Eclipse project.
less.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project name="lesscss" default="less" basedir=".">
	<property name="dir.project"
		value="/Users/rgfindley/Documents/work/workspace-juno/marineweather" />
	<property name="dir.css" value="${dir.project}/war/static/css" />
	<property name="lessc" value="/usr/local/bin/lessc" />
	<property name="pathToNode" value="/usr/local/bin" />

	<target name="less" description="Compile LESS files">
		<antcall target="lessfile">
			<param name="file.name" value="test" />
		</antcall>
		<antcall target="lessfile">
			<param name="file.name" value="test2" />
		</antcall>
	</target>

	<target name="lessfile">
		<exec executable="${lessc}" failonerror="true">
			<env key="PATH" value="${env.PATH}:${pathToNode}" />
			<arg line="-x ${dir.css}/${file.name}.less ${dir.css}/${file.name}.css" />
		</exec>
	</target>
</project>

Change the properties to match your project configuration. Ideally the ant task would compile all *.less files and compile them. If anyone improves this script please let me know.

If you are getting the following error: “env: node: No such file or directory”.

Make sure you have the following: “<env key=”PATH” value=”${env.PATH}:${pathToNode}” />” in your lessc <exec> call.

Step 3

Now add the Eclipse Builder to your project.

Project->Properties->Builders->New…
My project is called ‘marineweather’. So replace that with your project name.
Here are the LESS CSS builder settings.

Step 4

Create the test LESS CSS file.
test.less

@color: #4D926F;

#header {
  color: @color;
}
h2 {
  color: @color;
}

That’s it

Now every time you edit your LESS CSS files the corresponding *.css files will be generated.

Bluefin AWS Image Server.
Open Source on-the-fly image server. Resize your S3 images on the fly using ImageMagick, then cache them using CloudFront.

After uploading your full size image to S3 you can request a resized image to place on your page.

For more information please visit the GitHub Project.

More than ever, gardening is about sharing. With family, friends, community. Even a single gardener tending a single potted tomato is part of a larger growing community of people who value a connection to the soil and some moments in the sun. If you’ve ever admired a flower or picked a fresh tomato, you’re part of a shared gardening experience. And this forum is for you.

The application was developed using Java/J2EE (Servlets and JSP’s) and Tuckey’s UrlRewrite. The application is hosted by AWS Cloud using the following tools.

Burpee’s Backyard Web Application

• Elastic Beanstalk
• EC2 (Tomcat 7)
• Elastic Load Balancer
• RDS Mulit-AZ (MySql)
• S3 + Cloudfront (Uploaded files, images, etc…)
• Cloudfront (static files, images, js, css)
• SQS (async tasks)
• SES (email)

Burpee’s Backyard Image Server
The image server generated on-the-fly image sizes. The source image are stored in S3. The images are then cached by Cloudfront.

• EC2
• Auto Scaling Group
• Linux, Apache, PHP, Imagemagick
• Cloudfront
• S3

Our application is the #1 mobile application available on all Android and iOS devices. The application covers the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia.

http://www.marineweatherbybluefin.com

Bluefin Engineering is proud to be one of Amazon’s Consulting Partners. Bluefin Engineering has been building applications for the cloud for over a year now. All of our current development will be hosted in the cloud.

Here is our amazon profile page https://aws.amazon.com/solution-providers/si/bluefin-engineering

First I would like to thank Ken and his blog post “Using gdalwarp“. Ken took the time to answer my questions about gdalwarp and was a huge help.

I needed to display NOAA Ridge Radar images on Google maps. The problem is that the radar images have a different projection (representation of the globe on a flat map) than Google maps.

NOAA Ridge Radar: Un-projected
Google Maps: Mercator Projection

Here is how I reprojected the images on the fly using Amazon EC2, CloudFront, and PHP.

First I had to install gdal and ImageMagick on my EC2 instance. I explained this in a previous post.

Next I created a PHP script to warp the image on the fly. CloudFront caches the request. If the same image is requested CloudFront will return its cached version and our server won’t be touched. This improves performance and reduces the load on the server.

radarImage.php

function noCacheError() {
	header('Cache-Control: max-age=0'); 
	exit;
}

try {

	$name = $_GET['image']; //pacnorthwest_20120817_0118_N0Ronly.gif, NCR/AHG/AHG_20120817_0912_NCR.gif
	if (strlen($name) <= 0)
		noCacheError();
	
	//
	// Setup the params
	//
	$url = "http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ridge/Conus/RadarImg/";
	if (strpos($name, "/")) {
		$urlPostfix = substr($name, 0, 8);
		$name = substr($name, 8);
		$url = "http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ridge/RadarImg/".$urlPostfix;
	} 
	
	$prefix = strtolower(substr($name, 0, strpos($name, "_")));
	$tmpName=$prefix."_radaronly.gif";
	$gfw=$prefix."_radaronly.gfw";
	$tiffName=$prefix."_radaronly.tiff";
	
	//
	// Make the temp dir.
	//
	exec("/php_scripts/mk_tmp_warp_dir.sh \"".$name."\"");
	
	//
	// Fetch the radar image from noaa and place it in the temp dir.
	//
	$img = "/php_scripts/tmp/".$name."/".$tmpName;
	file_put_contents("/php_scripts/tmp/".$name."/".$tmpName, file_get_contents($url.$name));
	
	//
	// Warp the image and convert it to a png
	//
	exec("/php_scripts/warpimage.sh \"".$url."\" \"".$name."\" \"".$tmpName."\" \"".$gfw."\" \"".$tiffName."\"");
	
	//
	// Send the image to the http response
	//
	header('Content-Type: image/png');
	header('Cache-Control: max-age=86400'); 
	readfile("/php_scripts/tmp/".$name."/".$name.".png");
	
	//
	// Remove the temp dir.
	//
	exec("rm -fR /php_scripts/tmp/".$name);
} catch (Exception $e) {
	noCacheError();
}

exit;

Here are the bash scripts:
mk_tmp_warp_dir.sh

#!/bin/sh

# Vars
dir=$1

# Make temp dir
mkdir /php_scripts/tmp/$dir
chmod 777 /php_scripts/tmp/$dir

warpimage.sh

#!/bin/sh

#
# Capture vars
#
url=$1
name=$2
tmpName=$3
gfw=$4
tiffName=$5
dir=$2

#
# Copy the world file into the temp dir
#
cp /php_scripts/gfw/$gfw /php_scripts/tmp/$dir/$gfw
chmod 777 /php_scripts/tmp/$dir/$gfw

#
# warp the radar gif using the world file to Google Maps projection
#
/usr/local/bin/gdalwarp -dstalpha -ts 840 800 -s_srs EPSG:4326 -t_srs "+proj=merc +a=6378137 +b=6378137 +lat_ts=0.0 +lon_0=0.0 +x_0=0.0 +y_0=0 +k=1.0 +units=m +nadgrids=@null +
wktext +no_defs" /php_scripts/tmp/$dir/$tmpName /php_scripts/tmp/$dir/$tiffName

#
# Convert the tiff to a transparent png
#
/usr/bin/convert /php_scripts/tmp/$dir/$tiffName -transparent white /php_scripts/tmp/$dir/$name.png

File structure on the server

[ec2-user@ /]$ ls -alR /php_scripts/ | cat
/php_scripts/:
total 24
drwxrwxrwx  4 root root 4096 Aug 21 19:40 .
dr-xr-xr-x 25 root root 4096 Aug 31 03:28 ..
drwxrwxrwx  2 root root 4096 Aug 17 10:39 gfw
-rwxrwxrwx  1 root root  103 Aug 17 12:41 mk_tmp_warp_dir.sh
drwxrwxrwx 35 root root 4096 Aug 31 16:41 tmp
-rwxrwxrwx  1 root root  691 Aug 17 12:47 warpimage.sh

/php_scripts/gfw:
total 80
drwxrwxrwx 2 root root 4096 Aug 17 10:39 .
drwxrwxrwx 4 root root 4096 Aug 21 19:40 ..
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root  459 Aug 17 09:47 abc_radaronly.gfw
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root   98 Aug 16  2005 acg_radaronly.gfw
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root   98 Aug 16  2005 aec_radaronly.gfw
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root   98 Aug 16  2005 ahg_radaronly.gfw
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root   97 Aug 16  2005 aih_radaronly.gfw
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root   97 Aug 16  2005 akc_radaronly.gfw
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root  136 Aug 16 20:16 alaska_radaronly.gfw
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root  115 Aug 16 20:16 centgrtlakes_radaronly.gfw
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root  119 Aug 16 20:16 hawaii_radaronly.gfw
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root  100 Aug 16  2005 hki_radaronly.gfw
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root  100 Aug 16  2005 hkm_radaronly.gfw
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root  100 Aug 16  2005 hmo_radaronly.gfw
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root   94 Aug 16  2005 hwa_radaronly.gfw
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root  115 Aug 16 20:16 northeast_radaronly.gfw
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root  117 Aug 16 20:16 pacnorthwest_radaronly.gfw
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root  119 Aug 16 20:16 pacsouthwest_radaronly.gfw
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root  117 Aug 16 20:16 southeast_radaronly.gfw
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root  117 Aug 16 20:16 southmissvly_radaronly.gfw

I downloaded the world files (*.gfw) here: http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/Conus/RadarImg/
Example: http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/Conus/RadarImg/alaska.gfw

The following website is a good resource to find gdalwarp projection parameters: http://spatialreference.org/

Here is the one I used for Google maps: http://spatialreference.org/ref/sr-org/7094/

Marine Weather gets a new look. Thanks for the awesome design Jessica Fleming.