You Either Surf Or You Fight

You Either Surf or You Fight: Integrating Library Services With Google Wave
Sean Hannan
Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University

Google Wave
http://wave.google.com
Collaborative platform

Why Library Services there?
You can’t always force users to come to you
Go where they are

Wave Apps
Two types
Gadgets
Like existing iGoogle gadgets
Robots
Real-time interaction
Let’s go for the real-time interaction

Already on Wave?
Invite uncle-milty@appspot.com to a conversation

Creating a Wave Robot
Libraries for Java and Python
Deployment using Google AppEngine

App Engine
http://appengine.google.com
Google’s cloud-computing platform
Free for up to 1.3 million requests per day

Set up the Application
Create an application at appengine.google.com
Set up an application identifier <app>.appspot.com

App Engine SDK
Download the App Engine SDK from http://code.google.com/appengine/downloads.html
Start the App Engine Launcher and create a new application

Set up the app.yaml
application: uncle-milty
version: 2
runtime: python
api_version: 1
handlers:
- url: /_wave/.*
script: uncle-milty.py
- url: /assets
static_dir: assets

Wave Robot API
Download the files from svn:
svn checkout http://wave-robot-python-client.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/waveapi waveapi
Drop it in the application directory

Wave Concepts
Wavelet
The conversation taking place within Google Wave
Blip
Every message as part of the wavelet
Hierarchical
Each of these have unique identifiers that can be used to programmatically address them

Project Overview
A simple chat bot
Searches the library catalog for results

Code it up!
Available on github: http://github.com/MrDys/uncle-milty

External Libraries
External libraries are a-okay
Just drop it in the project directory
Going to use BeautifulSoup to scrape the OPAC

Imports
from waveapi import events
from waveapi import model
from waveapi import robot
from waveapi import document
from waveapi.ops import OpBuilder
import logging
import urllib2
from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup

OnRobotAdded Function
def OnRobotAdded(properties, context):
"""Invoked when the robot has been added."""
logging.debug("created")
root_wavelet = context.GetRootWavelet()
root_wavelet.CreateBlip().GetDocument().SetText("Hi, I'm Milton S. Eisenhower and I'd be happy to help you with your research. I will search the JHU catalog for anything that you say to me and I'll let you know if I find anything.")

OnBlip Submitted Function
def OnBlipSubmitted(properties, context):
blip = context.GetBlipById(properties['blipId'])
page = urllib2.urlopen("https://catalog.library.jhu.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?menu=search&aspect=subtab22&npp=5&ipp=20&spp=20&profile=general&ri=&index=ALTITLE&term=" + blip.GetDocument().GetText() + "&x=0&y=0&aspect=subtab22")

OnBlipSubmitted Function con’t
soup = BeautifulSoup(page)
results = soup.findAll(title="View more information")
sub_blip = context.GetRootWavelet().CreateBlip()
sub_blipdoc = sub_blip.GetDocument()

OnBlipSumitted Function con’t
outputstr = ""
count = 0
for i in results:
if count >= 5:
break
else:
itemstr = str(i)
itemstr = itemstr.replace('class="smallBoldAnchor"', '')
outputstr = outputstr + itemstr + "<br/>"
count = count + 1

OnBlipSubmitted Function con’t
logging.debug(outputstr)
sub_blipdoc.SetText(" ")
builder = OpBuilder(context)
builder.DocumentAppendMarkup(sub_blip.waveId, sub_blip.waveletId, sub_blip.blipId, outputstr)
logging.debug(sub_blip.waveId + " " + sub_blip.waveletId + " " + sub_blip.blipId)

Register Event Handlers
if __name__ == '__main__':
myRobot = robot.Robot('Milton S. Eisenhower',
image_url='http://uncle-milty.appspot.com/assets/milty.png',
version='2',
profile_url='http://uncle-milty.appspot.com/')
myRobot.RegisterHandler(events.BLIP_SUBMITTED, OnBlipSubmitted)
myRobot.RegisterHandler(events.WAVELET_SELF_ADDED, OnRobotAdded)
myRobot.Run()

Gotchas
CSS
Doesn’t really like it, so keep it simple
HTML Links
Won’t let you do it directly, must use OpBuilder

Deployment
Just hit ‘Deploy’ in the App Engine Launcher

Debugging
Use the logging library
View the log results in realtime on http://appengine.google.com

What next?
Could be improved in a lot of ways
More services integrated
Create a menu-like system to select options

Q&A
Questions?

You Either Surf Or You Fight

by MrDys on Feb 25, 2010

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