Silverlight pulse grok

Silverlightpulse.net A micro app for a micro-blogging world Ian Blackburn www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

What is Silverlightpulse.net? Silverlightpulse.net shows and aggregates live tweets about Silverlight Disclaimer: This isn’t me www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

What’s it look like? OK – it needs some designer love! www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

What is Twitter? Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

No - What is Twitter really? www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

Silverlightpulse.net How quickly and effectively can I create a Silverlight app that shows the Twitter heartbeat for Silverlight ? Disclaimer: Not me, obviously! www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

What am I thinking about? It’s got to be quick to develop! • There are a ton of Silverlight Announcements coming in Mix 09 this week! Could it lead to I want to try the more? Silverlight Charts How easy is the This should be a bit Twitter Search Api? of fun! www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

Disclaimer: Not me, obviously! One evening’s Fix some more More feedback work bugs! Fix some bugs put Blog it/Twitter it it on silverlightpulse.net Buy Blimey – good Silvelrightpulse.net response! and setup DNS www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

What was in that evenings work? • Took a look at the Twitter Search Api – http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Search+API+Documentation – Picked the Json Rest API • Took a look at the Silverlight Toolkit Charts – http://codeplex.com/silverlight – Decided on a simple line chart • Quick architectural choices – No storage (server or ISO) for now – Simple UX – limited choices, if any. No login. – All client based – no server code – because I can! – Do the simplest thing that works and no more – TDD and Unit Tests (oops – fell by the wayside in the rush) • Did “R-TUIT” instead though! – Real-Time UI Testing + lots of refactoring! – Some features didn’t make it • Wordle-like analysis • Map www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

The Code Section • Lets briefly look at – Using the Twitter Search API – The XAML – Some Value Converters – The Chart – Top Twitterers Disclaimer: I don’t look like this (I think!) www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

Using Silverlight with the Twitter Json Search Api www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

I had to do a bit of work for missing values in the response from Twitter Used for things like the ToUser value which is often not present in the response www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

Built a Simple Xaml UI www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

Some Simple Value Converters www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

The Chart • Probably the most work • Needed to aggregate the tweets retrieved from the search so they could be displayed • Used a couple of Linq queries and settled on hard- coded 10 minutes grouping www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

Logic For the Chart www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

Chart Xaml www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

Top Twitters – Linq is your friend! Linq makes these things such a pleasure! www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

Getting the Top 10 Used Words – Linq again! This works but I need to remove common words (‘in’, ‘a’, ‘at’ etc) and create some sort of Wordle UI for it www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

Lessons Learnt • You can do these micro apps quickly and they can have real benefit and impact • Silverlight is great at working with REST API’s • Silverlight is in a great position to take advantage of “the real-time web” and new business models • Linq is fantastic for working with any sort of data • Negatives – Using Google analytics on a Silverlight page doesn’t tell you much! www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

This is me with my family! Disclaimer: Not me www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

Silverlight pulse grok

by Ian Blackburn on Mar 27, 2009

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 1

Statistics

Silverlight pulse grok — Presentation Transcript