The rest is up to you to figure out.
With my last entry, I announced the start of the work for an OCS library for the KDE Community Forums. Today I’d like to blog again about the recent developments.
First of all, now there isn’t one, but two Python modules:
- ocslib, a pure Python module that can be used to interface with OCS-based forum systems;
- ocslibkde, a PyKDE4 based module that can be used to interface with OCS-based forum system in KDE applications.
Currently ocslib supports reading and posting, while ocslibkde only reading (as of now). Both can be retrieved from the kde-forum-mods repository under the ocs-client subdirectory. The Python lib needs unit-testing, then I’ll be able to push a tarball soon for people to test (but you can always check out the Git repository). With regards to the PyKDE4 library, I plan on making a proof-of-concept plasmoid soon that shows how to use the API.
Speaking of API, here are some examples using ocslib:
>>> from ocslib import service# Connect to OCS
>>> ocs_service = ocslib.service.OCService("http://www.example.com")
#Retrieve all forums
>>> forums = ocs_service.list_forums()
# Elements have attributes for name, posts, etc.
>>> print forums[0].name
"Test forum"
#Retrieve threads for forum 15
>>> threads = ocs_service.list_forum_threads(forum_id=15)
# Retrieve thread 8945 from forum 15
>>> messages = ocs_service.show_thread(forum_id=15, topic_id=8945)
>>> print messages[0].text
"Hello world!
#Post to a forum - requires authentication
>>> ocs_service = service.OCService("http://www.example.com", username="foo", password="bar")
>>> message = "Hello, KDE people!"
>>> subject = "Test message"
>>> ocs_service.post(forum_id=15, subject=subject, message=message)
True # Return code of operation
Feedback (especially on the API) welcome!
For KDE developers, web-based forums are often uncommon workflows. Indeed, for communication among developers mailing lists are much better tools, especially since you can handle everything inside a client (most of the time), compared to forums where you have to use a web browser. The ways of reading, replying and interacting with posters are dramatically different. And that is why some developers find themselves uncomfortable with the KDE Community Forums.
A dedicated application would be usually much better than a browser, because you can work around the intrinsic limitations of the browser itself. The problem is that you can’t really access a forum with anything else than a browser. That is, it used to be like this, but now things are changing.
In the past months fellow administrator bcooksley has been working quite hard implementing the Open Collaboration Services (OCS) specification in the KDE Community Forums. For the uninformed, it’s the same API that powers OpenDesktop.org and related web pages. This means that you could access the forum contents programmatically using a REST API and parsing the XML that is returned by the service.
Unfortunately, bcooksley had no time to implement a client that would make use of this newly-made service.
That’s where I stepped in. This morning I committed in the kde-forum-mods repository the first implementation of a backend to access the forums’ OCS service. Currently it’s extremely basic – just a few classes to wrap the XML responses into decent data representation, and a basic class to perform reading requests: that means that technically it is possible to request forum listings, thread listing, and posts. I’m still working on the ability of replying and posting messages.
Being a Pythonista, the backend is written entirely in Python: currently it uses the standard library plus dateutil and lxml to do its bidding, but the next steps would be to turn it into a PyKDE4 library to access all the KDE related goodness (hello, KIO!). Bear in mind that currently there is no application using this: I merely completed (part of) the backend.
If you’re interested, the code can be found on gitorious.org, in the ocs-client directory, branch experimental, inside the kde-forum-mods repository.
In the past weeks and days, the KDE Community Forums staff has been working to bring new features to improve even more the user experience. A few months ago, the staff was discussing the idea of finding a way to guide users to the most appropriate forum to post their questions or discussions. Now, thanks also to the return in service of one of our admins (welcome back, sayakb!) the feature is now being implemented, as the screenshots below will show.
Bear in mind that everything for now is running on a testing server, to make sure it doesn’t break anything. Once the tests and the implementation are complete, we’ll integrate the feature in the forums. How soon we are not sure, but it won’t be too long.
"Help me post a topic"
Upon logging in, you will be greeted by a new "New Post" button:
You can either click on the arrow to quickly post an idea for Brainstorm, a new discussion, access the "getting started" forum or contact the staff:
Or if you just click on the button itself, you access the guided post section:
The "Share an idea" and "Chat and discuss" buttosn will bring you to the relevant forums (Brainstorm and Discussions and Opinions), while "Ask a question" will bring about an additional screen:
You’ll be able to select your favorite application and you’ll be able to post directly in the relevant forum.
Open Collaboration Services
But that’s not all. Thanks to the hard work of Ben Cooksley (fellow admin and System Settings maintainer) there is also an implementation of the Open Collaboration Services (OCS), the same system that powers the well-known Get Hot New Stuff connected to OpenDesktop.org. This will mean, in principle, that you could access forum posts and discussions in a programmatic way, using a REST API. This opens up possibilities like Brainstorm plasmoids, other means to access the forum (like an Akonadi resource – there’s some ongoing work in KDE SVN). If you’re interested in testing the OCS for the forum (or if you want to develop some kind of application that ties to the forums themselves), let us know on IRC (#kde-forum on freenode).
