What A Difference A Day Makes (Crunch Time)

Almost finished! Things are starting to look a lot better now, and most of the functionality is there. I ran into an issue that I'm hoping I can solve related to encoding the search query to ensure I correct information from Last.fm. Tomorrow I will try to finish that, try to implement the artist biography section, format the search results a little more, and set up the front page.

If I have time I'll update the API documentation for easy reference.



A screenshot of the top portion of an example search result page.


Same search, middle portion of the page.


Again, same search, bottom portion of the page.

Project Update Two (new Project Name)

A very quick project update. Most of the functionality is finished, I'm just trying to get the formatting finished (CSS headaches). The only real problems I think I'm facing are: I still don't have a source to pull an artist bio from, and I want to use Yahoo! Maps to plot the searched artist's tour (if they are on the road). I guess I could qualify my difficulties with CSS as a small problem, but it really is completely separate from functionality so it isn't quite as important.

I've decided to drop some of the vanity/narcissism in the title and name it django, after the famous Jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. I wanted the title to be somewhat esoteric but still music related, and give a very small insight into the nature of the service.


Here's a new picture of the header, including the Web 2.0-esque logo created in Inkscape.


Here's an example of the current search return page (missing a few functions as their format has not been finalized)...


This is a continuation of the search return displaying the upcoming events from Upcoming.Org.


Finally, a picture of the slightly revised footer. Not much has changed, just a small gray buffer bar.

Also, if you want to take a look at the XML format of a few of the functions I have implemented head on over here.

Project Update

I've decided to post a few pictures of my prototype project. It was hosted on the engineering servers but those machines don't have PHP 5 so I had to jump ship. Keep checking back for further updates. I've just started implementing the functionality...

 

Above is a picture of the header and the search field.

 

This is a picture of the results of the query for "Ryan Adams," which as you can see returned a few things from Last.fm. At the moment nothing is done with this information, it is simply displayed.

 

A novelty photo of a simple hover over effect on the elements displayed on the page.

 

And finally, an embarrassing picture of the footer.

Videodrome.

It is amazing how quickly time goes by. I'm embarrassed I've only written two entries related to the course. I've spent some time thinking about my final project, and though it has changed quite often in my mind, I think I finally have made a decision.

I would like to develop a Java application that will, given a directory, search for locally stored movies and store references to them in an XML document. I am hoping to pilfer the approach that XMBC uses for IMDB Lookups as IMDB does not have a public API and I am more or less in the dark as to how to approach the problem. I suppose I could try to use Amazon's public API to receive at least some of the information I would need and attempt to supplement the rest with data from IMDB.

The program would attempt to populate various fields for each found film stored in the system, particularly: director, genre (or genres), starring actors, formal title, and release date (just to name a few). Ideally, the program would support user defined tags and ratings that could be used to search for specific films and differentiate films in a more personal way. For example, a user might have tagged the film "Mulholland Dr." and "Dogville" with "cannes," allowing them to search for "cannes" instead of say "drama" or search by director. This concept allows users the freedom of personal descriptions for the purpose of creating artificial separations beyond the normal criterion (director, genre, etc).

The interface will be a simulated web application, which is created on the fly using XSLT and XML. The idea is to be as unobtrusive as possible, with perhaps a very simple search field at the top of the page and multiple tabs for sorting results (or merely browsing the stored files). It is desired that users could sort films by genre, director, and decade (hopefully more if I have the time/the know how). It would also be ideal if users could search for something, and be able to sort the results in the same manner (by director, genre, decade, tags, etc).

I had initially hoped to use PHP for the project before I had settled on this idea. I am planning to utilize Java for development simply due to familiarity and relative experience in a program semi-similar in nature to this one. It is my goal to write all code myself without use of third party open source software.

I suppose we'll see how it turns out. I will try to post sketches and general prototype pictures once I start truly developing (hopefully within the next few days) mostly for the purpose of documenting the process and evolution of the project (since I will not disillusion myself with the notion that anybody is reading, it is primarily for my own edification).