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Archaeology Travel

I had the chance this year to meetup with my client Thomas Dowson from “Archaeology Travel Media” at the Travel Innovation Summit in Seville.

Over the past 2 years we have been revamping all the content from archaeology-travel.com and integrated a sophisticated travel itinerary builder system into the mix. We are almost feature complete and are currently fine-tuning the system. New explorers are welcome to signup and testdrive our set of unique features.

It was so nice to finally meet the whole team in person and celebrate what we have accomplished together so far.

What is Archaeology Travel all about?

Directly taken from the front-page :)

EXPLORE THE WORLD’S PASTS WITH ARCHAEOLOGY TRAVEL GUIDES, CRAFTED BY EXPERIENCED ARCHAEOLOGISTS & HISTORIANS

Whatever your preferred style of travel, budget or luxury, backpacker or hand luggage only, slow or adventure, if you are interested in archaeology, history and art this is an online travel guide just for you.

Here you will find ideas for where to go, what sites, monuments, museums and art galleries to see, as well as information and tips on how to get there and what tickets to buy.

Our destination and thematic guides are designed to assist you to find and/or create adventures in archaeology and history that suit you, be it a bucket list trip or visiting a hidden gem nearby.”

More Details
About
Mission & Vision
Code of Ethics

What is next?

We are constantly expanding our set of curated destinations, locations and POIs. Our plan is it, to make it even easier to find unique places for your next travel experience.

We are also working on partnerships to enhance travel options and offer a even broader variety of additional content.

Looking forward to all the things to come, as well as to the continued exceptional collaboration between all team members.

Lets continue to help bring the world’s past to the future :)

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Extending iPanorama 360 can be a challenge, as none of the events are documented. You can talk to the developer or ask for support to get things done.

You can also read up on the core assets used:
ipanorama.min.js
jquery.ipanorama.min.js.

You can easily search for the events and figure out the parameters passed. Here a quick reference for things I used so far.

Main Events

Tooltip Events

Popover Events

Scene / Camera Events

Some Examples

Lock rotation

Custom Marker Click

Custom loading

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WHAT IS IPANORAMA 360?

iPanorama 360 for WordPress is a specialized plugin that enables users to create and display interactive 360-degree virtual tours or panoramic images on WordPress websites. It extends the functionality of the WordPress content management system by providing a user-friendly interface and a range of features specifically tailored for creating and showcasing 360-degree content.

With iPanorama 360 for WordPress, you can upload panoramic images or sets of photographs and convert them into interactive virtual tours or panoramic sliders. The plugin offers customization options to adjust the appearance and behavior of the panoramas, such as controlling the speed of rotation, choosing navigation controls, adding hotspots, and incorporating multimedia elements like images, videos, or audio.

The plugin integrates seamlessly with WordPress, allowing you to embed the created virtual tours or panoramic images directly into your website pages or posts. You can also customize the tour settings, such as enabling or disabling auto-rotation, adjusting the initial zoom level, or defining the starting viewpoint.

iPanorama 360 for WordPress typically provides an intuitive visual editor that enables users to create and edit their virtual tours or panoramas using a drag-and-drop interface. This makes it easier to add hotspots, link to other panoramas or external content, and customize the appearance and functionality of the tour.

IPANORAMA 360 FEATURES

  • 3 Scene Types – cube, sphere and cylinder
  • HotSpots – allows you to mark different areas that you want to point out
  • Virtual Tour – travel from one to another scene by clicking on special hotspots
  • Tooltip System – the plugin has a build-in powerful tooltip system
  • Compass – you can be sure to look forward
  • Preview Image – you can set an image that will show as a preview
  • Fullscreen – you can toggle from the normal state to fullscreen and back
  • Mouse Wheel – zoom with mouse wheel scrolling
  • Keyboard – arrows can be used for navigation through the scene
  • Touch – touch was used for navigation tasks
  • Autoplay – the scene autorotate around a vertical axis
  • Awesome Looks – 2 predefined themes
  • View customization – create your own theme

You can testdrive iPanorama 360 using the Lite version or get the Pro version. The only limitation for the Lite version, is the ability to only create one panorama.

ADDING AN ARIAL / FLOOR MAP TO IPANORAMA 360!

portalZINE NMN | Development meets Creativity | cubicfusion hotspot8

I have tested many different solutions for 360 panoramas in the past and many have been lacking in one or more areas. I always seem to be coming back to iPanorama 360 for my projects, due to its solid editor and support.

One major problem for iPanorama 360 has been the ability to attach an Arial-map / Floor-map to the panorama. Others tried to fill that void, but mostly failed on Mobile.

There are solutions out there that could be reused (Image Map Pro / ImageLinks ) and integrated with iPanorama 360.

I decided to build an image hotspot solution myself, that can also tie into iPanorama. I am building out all the things I need and more :)

CURRENT & PLANNED FEATURES

  1. Hotspot drag and drop positioning.
  2. Image Hotspot or SVG based hotspots (Size, Fill , Border, Color).
  3. Hotspot in and out animations.
  4. Tooltip system, supporting full Media and HTML. Still expanding on that. I am not sure yet, what will finally be in the first version.
  5. Popover option.
  6. iPanorama 360 – Add arial / floor map support. Guided setup, with full automatic integration in the future. Only 1 week into development, so this might change.
  7. iPanorama 360 – Radar view, which hooks into the current camera view and shows you what you are seeing on the map.
  8. External link support.
  9. Custom ID and classes per hotspot, to allow additional hooks or visual changes.
  10. Hotspot JS Events (Click, Over, Out and Active)
  11. REST Api
  12. Shortcode support. Fully detached from iPanorama, which allows to add it to a popover, slideout or any other design construct you envision.
  13. TWIG Template support, for the shortcode, to easily tweak the layout.
  14. Elementor support.
  15. Gutenberg support.

The first version is basically done and I will be using it for a client shortly. If you are interested, please feel free to get in touch. Will setup a demo page soon or link to the client using it ;)

PREVIEW

Cheers

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What is Bookstack

BookStack is an open-source, web-based platform for organizing, storing, and sharing knowledge and documentation. It was developed to provide a user-friendly and intuitive interface for creating and managing knowledge bases, wikis, and other types of structured content.

BookStack allows users to create books, chapters, and pages, and to organize them hierarchically. Users can also add images, files, and links to their content, and collaborate with others by assigning roles and permissions. BookStack also supports full-text search, version control, and commenting, making it easy to find and update information.

BookStack is written in PHP and uses the Laravel framework, and it is available for free under the MIT License.

What are you using it for?

This is my internal homelab documentation system, I use it for private and client related content. Bookstack is fast, clean and well documented. It has really elevated the way I store and access important reminders / how-tos and documentation.

The system provides API access and has many ways to tweak it. Bookstack documentation.

Why display CSV files?

CSV stands for “Comma-Separated Values”. It is a simple file format used to store tabular data, such as spreadsheets or databases, in plain text. In a CSV file, each line represents a row of data, and each column is separated by a comma (or sometimes a semicolon or tab).

There are always CSV exports or other data stored in CSV format, that i need quick access to sometimes.

Bookstack allows to add files to pages and insert links to them, but it does not embed or parse those files in any way. There are similar hacks to mine, this example allows to embed PDFs and here the main Hacks page.

Lets get started!

We need something to parse the CSV file and something to display the information in a nice visual & flexible grid.

  1. I am choosing Papa Parse for the CSV parsing, wrote about it a long time ago and still using it actively for many projects.

    Papaparse can handle CSV files with different delimiters, encodings, and line endings, and can also handle complex data formats, such as quoted values, escaped characters, and multi-line cells. The library is widely used in web applications, data analysis tools, and other software that deal with CSV data.
  2. Grid.js is my library of choice to display the parsed information in a nice grid.

    Grid.js is a modern and open-source JavaScript library for building responsive and customizable data tables in web applications.

    It provides a simple and intuitive API for creating, styling, and populating tables with data from various sources, including JSON, CSV, and Excel files.

    Grid.js supports features such as sorting, filtering, pagination, column resizing, and cell formatting, as well as advanced features such as tree grids, custom renderers, and editable cells. The library also includes built-in plugins for exporting data to different formats, such as CSV, Excel, and PDF.

Include the file in Bookstack

Included and linked CSV files look something like that in source.

Tweak the header

The settings allow you to add custom code to your instance. Another option would be to tweak template files, but its easier to do these light tweaks using the header customizer.

This can be found under: https://bookstack.instance/settings/customization

Add required libs

Either link them externally or better use locally stored versions of these.

Papa Parse
Grid.JS

Find CSV links in the page and append to link

  1. This searches the page_content for elements that have “.csv” in their textContent.
  2. Gets textContent and the href of the link.
  3. The link is passed to Papa Parse for processing.
  4. On completion the data result is split into the header row and the rest.
  5. That data is passed to Grid.JS and added to a container element after the link.
    Grid.JS provides a ton of configuration options, I added the most common as a starting point. This includes different ways to style the grid.

Github: Will be adding more hacks, as I clean some of them up :)

A bonus

You can use the title attribute to pass some config data, in JSON format. Currently only to strip columns, but will extend that a bit more for flexible usage ;)

portalZINE NMN | Development meets Creativity | json grid js

The result

Should look something like that …

portalZINE NMN | Development meets Creativity |

Enjoy coding …

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What is Übersicht?

“Übersicht” is a German word that means “overview” or “summary” in English. The name of the software was chosen because it allows users to have a quick overview of various information on their desktop. It’s also a play on words, because in German the name of the software can be translated as “super sight” which refers to the ability to have a lot of information at a glance.

Übersicht is a lightweight and powerful application that allows users to create and customize desktop widgets using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. With Übersicht, you can create widgets that display information such as the weather, calendar events, system resource usage, and more. The widgets can be customized to display the information in any format and can be positioned anywhere on the desktop, allowing you to create a personalized and efficient workspace.

Übersicht widgets are created using a simple and user-friendly interface that allows you to preview and edit the widget’s code. The widgets are also highly customizable, allowing you to change the appearance and behavior of the widgets to suit your needs. Additionally, Übersicht widgets can be shared with other users, and there are a variety of widgets available for download from the developer’s website.

The application is open-source and free to use, and it’s also lightweight, it won’t affect your computer performance. Overall, Übersicht is a powerful and versatile tool for creating custom desktop widgets on macOS.

Custom Desktop Widgets / MenuBar Enhancements

There are several other tools similar to Übersicht that allow you to create custom desktop widgets. Some of the most popular alternatives include:

  1. Geektool (Mac): is a powerful and flexible tool for creating custom desktop widgets on macOS. It allows you to display information such as the weather, calendar events, system resource usage, and more.
    I used it for a while, but never really got into it any deeper. It has been a resource hog for some as well.
  2. xbar (Mac): is an open-source tool that  lets you put the output from any script/program in your macOS menu bar. This is a complete rewrite of BitBar in Go.
    This will also make into my workflow :)
  3. SwiftBar :Add custom menu bar programs on macOS in three easy steps: Write a shell script.Add it to SwiftBar … there is no 3rd step!
  4. Conky (Mac / Limnux) is a free, light-weight system monitor for X, that displays any kind of information on your desktop. It can also run on macOS, output to your console, a file, or even HTTP.
  5. Hologram Desktop (Mac / Free / InAppPurchases)
  6. WidgetWall (Mac / Paid) : Looks nice, but too limited for me.
  7. Beaconly (Mac / Free / InAppPurchases ): Beaconly is a flexible, easy to use data aggregating menu app that ties relevant information to you, beautifully one click-away in your macOs menu bar.
  8. Rainmeter: is a Windows-only tool similar to Übersicht. It allows users to create custom desktop widgets using a variety of pre-built skins or by creating your own skins using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
    This is the goto solution for any Windows user!

What are you using these for?

With many external systems in play, its always crucial to keep an eye on things. I have build nice dashboards, using Grafana, InfluxDB, NetData and Prometheus. But they are either displayed in a browser window or on a separate screen.

If you have 2 / 3 monitors or an ultra-wide screen, you have a lot of Desktop real-estate you can use.

That is something that I have been looking at for years, but only tried for a short period of time. This year I want to really build out desktop and menu widgets , that help me to get an even better overview of things and help reduce repetitive tasks.

I will share links to things I like and share access to the widgets I build myself or tweaked.

Übersicht – desktop widgets / working & planned

These are the current things that are in progress or planned.

  1. RSS Widget: This allows me to easily fetch the latest news from the websites I visit multiple times each day.
    You can already find a first version of the widget on Github, forked from Eric Dasque.

    I have two widgets currently setup on the left and right of my ultra-wide screen. Gathering information from all my Youtube subscriptions, tech websites and news outlets.

    Its using Go for the command line and i rewrote parts to make it completely template-based to allow flexible output variations.
    I have some other ideas, but those will make it into future versions. This is still based of the Classic widget architecture, but I also plan to move it to the JSX architecture.
  2. Weather widget for Openweather: Straight forward Openweather widget forked from Li Xueli. Displays the current weather and allows to expand to show the next 7 days.
    This is build on the new JSX architecture of Übersicht. I did a couple of tweaks and removed the geo-location. Changes will be shared soon.
  3. Fancy Clock / Date / Week
    I have a basic version working.
  4. Email: Building a widget that combines IMAP, Gmail and local Mail.
    I have a basic version working.
  5. Asana: Pull latest tasks.
    A basic version is already working.
  6. Grafana: Dashboard integration
  7. Netdata
  8. Glances
  9. Uptime Monitoring: Uptime Kuma / UptimeRobot / Statping
  10. Cloudflare: Stats
  11. MQTT / Node-Red / N8N

xbar – Extend Menu Bar / working & planned

Nothing to share yet ….

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Transition

jQuery has provided easy access to complicated core Javascript solutions in the past and has been shielding us from difficult workarounds for legacy browsers. But times have changed and many of those things can be done as easily using Javascript directly.

jQuery is a fast, small, and feature-rich JavaScript library. It makes interactions with HTML documents easy, and is widely used in web development to add features to web pages and to simplify the process of writing JavaScript. With a combination of versatility and extensibility, jQuery has changed the way that millions of people write JavaScript.

5 reasons, why you might want to stop using jQuery!

  1. jQuery is a large library, and loading it can add a significant amount of time to the page load time of your website. If your website doesn’t use many of the features provided by jQuery, it may be more efficient to use smaller, specialized libraries or to write your own code.
  2. Some developers prefer to use modern JavaScript features like classes and modules instead of the functional programming style used by jQuery.
  3. As web development has evolved, many of the tasks that jQuery was commonly used for can now be accomplished with vanilla JavaScript, which is plain JavaScript that does not use any additional libraries.
  4. Using jQuery can make it more difficult for other developers to understand and maintain your code, especially if they are not familiar with the library.
  5. In some cases, jQuery may not work as expected with certain versions of modern browsers, or it may not be optimized for mobile devices.

That being said, jQuery is still a popular and widely used library, and there are many valid reasons to continue using it. It is ultimately up to you to decide whether the benefits of using jQuery outweigh the potential drawbacks in your particular situation.

Benefits to using pure JavaScript

  1. Improved performance: Pure JavaScript code is generally faster than code that uses libraries, because it does not have the overhead of loading and interpreting the library.
  2. Smaller file size: Pure JavaScript code is generally smaller in file size than code that uses libraries, because it does not include the library code. This can result in faster loading times for your website or application.
  3. More flexibility: With pure JavaScript, you have complete control over the code, and you can customize it to fit your specific needs.
  4. Better understanding and control: By writing your own JavaScript code, you can gain a better understanding of how it works and how to troubleshoot any issues that may arise.
  5. Improved compatibility: Pure JavaScript code is more likely to work across different platforms and devices, because it does not depend on a specific library or framework.
  6. Easier maintenance: Pure JavaScript code is generally easier to maintain than code that uses libraries, because it does not require updating or maintaining the library code.

“You might not need jQuery”

Easily search and compare direct Javascript solutions to jQuery ….

How jQuery does it:

Pure Javascript:

Link

or use UmbrellaJS

UmbrellaJS is a lightweight JavaScript library that provides a number of utility functions and features for working with DOM elements and handling events. It was designed to be small, fast, and easy to use, and it does not have any dependencies on other libraries.

Some of the features provided by UmbrellaJS include:

  • Easy element selection and manipulation using CSS-style selectors
  • Support for chaining multiple function calls on the same element
  • A simple event system for handling events on elements
  • Utility functions for working with arrays, objects, and strings
  • Functions for handling AJAX requests and working with JSON data

UmbrellaJS is a good choice for developers who want a simple, lightweight library for working with DOM elements and handling events. It is especially well-suited for smaller projects or for developers who want to avoid the overhead of larger libraries like jQuery.

Selector demos:

Documentation
Migrate from jQuery

HTMX might be another way …

HTMX (HTML enhanced for asynchronous communication and XML) is a JavaScript library that allows you to add asynchronous communication and other interactive features to your web pages using HTML attributes and elements. It allows you to make AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) requests and handle responses directly in your HTML, without the need for writing any JavaScript code.

HTMX works by intercepting events on HTML elements and making asynchronous requests based on the attributes you specify. For example, you can use the hx-get attribute to make a GET request to a specified URL, and use the hx-trigger attribute to specify an event that should trigger the request. You can also use the hx-target attribute to specify an element on the page where the response should be inserted.

Here’s an example of how you might use HTMX to make a GET request and insert the response into a div element:

When the button is clicked, HTMX will make a GET request to /some/url and insert the response into the div element with the id of target.

HTMX is designed to be easy to use and flexible, and it can be used to add a wide range of interactive features to your web pages.

I am currently using HTMX in one of my longterm projects and will be talking about it more in a separate article in the future !

HTMX Reference / Documentation


It is ultimately up to you to decide which approach is best for your particular project. Sometimes a combination is needed ;)

Enjoy coding…

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What Google Drive Sharing offers us!

I am doing a Podcast on portalZINE.TV since last year and always host a backup of the MP3 episodes on Google Drive.

The link that you create, when enabling file sharing on Google Drive, can not be used to actually embed it on your website.

The link looks something like that:

To actually use it directly, we need to get the ID. Sure, you  could just extract the ID, but often we just want to copy and paste. The sharing link is also your actual reference to the original file, which I store together with the podcast.

Apply a simple RegEX

We use a simple Regex to extract the ID:

PHP

JAVASCRIPT

Just use it!

This ID can than be used to embed the file directly using HTML5 audio controls.

Its important to use the “https://docs.google.com/uc?export=open&id=” url to open the file, as it provides the direct access to the shared file

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PAPA PARSE

Papa Parse is a powerful, in-browser CSV parser for the big boys and girls :)
If you do need easy CSV parsing and conversion back to CSV, take a look at it!

SIMPLE TESTDRIVE

ABOUT

Papa Parse is the fastest in-browser CSV (or delimited text) parser for JavaScript. It is reliable and correct according to RFC 4180, and it comes with these features:

  • Easy to use
  • Parse CSV files directly (local or over the network)
  • Fast mode
  • Stream large files (even via HTTP)
  • Reverse parsing (converts JSON to CSV)
  • Auto-detect delimiter
  • Worker threads to keep your web page reactive
  • Header row support
  • Pause, resume, abort
  • Can convert numbers and booleans to their types
  • Optional jQuery integration to get files from <input type="file"> elements
  • One of the only parsers that correctly handles line-breaks and quotations

USAGE

I am currently using it to quickly parse Adobe Audition CSV marker files and prepare them for storage for my podcast.


Papa Parse @ GitHUB

Homepage / Demo

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INTRODUCTION

This is not a tutorial, but more like sharing a nice geeky road-trip ;)

I have a pretty good understanding of the Youtube Data API, as I have actively used it on portalZINE TV in the past, to upload videos and dynamically link them to my local post-types.

For one of my latest customer projects (TYPEMYKNIFE / typemyknife.com), the task was a bit more complicated and the goal was to make it as future-proof as it can be with the Google APIs :)

Prerequisites / References to get you started:

portalZINE NMN | Development meets Creativity | youtube data api

THE GOALS

The goal for the setup was to actively synchronize WooCommerce products with linked / attached videos, with their source at Youtube.

As the website is multilingual, WPML integration is critical as well. And as Youtube allows localization of title and description, that can be added into the mix quiet easily in the future ;)

The following product attributes should be mirrored and optimised for Youtube:

  • Product Title
  • Product Description (5000 character limit at Youtube)
    My customer already has a pretty long and detailed description, which is perfect for Youtube!
    We average around 2900-3000 characters.
  • Product Tags (500 character length limit at Youtube)

The following attributes should be integrated into the description to enrich the Youtube description:

  • Introduction
  • Product Link to WooCommerce Product / Shop
  • Socials
  • Legal Information
  • Hash Tags (local post-type to add recurring / important hash tags)
  • Outro

All of these attributes will be collected internally and assigned using a simple template system, which allows the customer to move parts around freely and freely layout the description for Youtube.

The following stats will be collected for review:

  • Products without a video linked (no relation)
  • Products with the same video linked (duplication)
  • Videos without a product in the system
  • Total amount of videos / amount of video-pages (50 videos max per page)
  • Total amount of products with videos

Youtube SEO

These are the relevant key aspects, that help to get your videos more views.

  • Relevant text featuring at least 1,000 characters
  • Keywords that are relevant on Google Search and YouTube and describe your video
  • Hashtags, can also be used within the text
  • Timestamps Links to related content / affiliate links
portalZINE NMN | Development meets Creativity | youtube data api auth

PREPARING AUTH / OAUTH2 AT GOOGLE

In the past access to the Youtube Data API was far easier and less limited, when it comes to offline / none expiring OAuth2 refresh tokens.

When you are building a server-side application that is only available to your customer or moderators, it makes no sense to run that app through the Google App verification. Your app will never be used in public.

The Youtube Data API and its scopes, are defined as sensitive and therefor require third-party security assessment for public access.

The scopes I am requesting are https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.upload + https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.

Because of that its far easier to just setup OAuth 2 in test mode and restrict access to your customer and specific additional accounts only (up to 100 test users allowed). What all these account need, is access to your own or Brand Youtube Channel.

Preparation in the Google Cloud Console:

  • Activate Youtube Data API
  • Create OAuth2 Client ID
    • Name
    • Allowed Redirects
  • Setup OAuth-Consent Screen
    • Name of the App
    • Support Email
    • Logo
    • Allowed Domains
    • Typ: External
    • Setup all test-users, all of these need access to your Youtube channel already

A detailed description can be found here.

You can circumvent verification for the consent screen, by using an organisation setup at Google. Here some infos about that. With that setup offline refresh tokens should work fine.

Update: Just tried that, but wont work with a branded youtube account, even though the cloud user has admin access to it. Not giving up yet, but Google / Youtube really makes it difficult to just have a simple offline solution for specific tasks ;) BTW also forced the login hint, to make sure the right account is logged in : $client->setLoginHint(‘YourWoreksapceAccount’); !

You might have heard of the “The League of Extraordinary Packages“. It is a group of developers who have banded together to build solid, well tested PHP packages using modern coding standards.

They also offer an OAuth2-client + OAuth2 Google extension that can be used.

SERVER SETUP

On the server, the Google API PHP SDK can be easily integrated using Composer.

In my customer plugin I neatly separated all relevant areas in classes & traits:

  • Online Authentification, with a 60 minute session
  • Offline Authentification, with a 1 week expiration (might explain that in more detail in the future.)
  • Error handling and debug information
  • Listing of videos
  • Updating of videos
  • Updating of tags
  • Updating hashtags
  • Backup old data locally, before update. There should always be an option to restore, especially with 500 videos :)
  • Settings & templates
  • REST routes / endpoints

You can check the expiry time of your access token by accessing:
https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/tokeninfo?access_token=YOUR_TOKEN

“A Google Cloud Platform project with an OAuth consent screen configured for an external user type and a publishing status of “Testing” is issued a refresh token expiring in 7 days.” – Google

Basic Auth example from the SDK:

A simple upload example can be found here .

portalZINE NMN | Development meets Creativity | youtube data api list

UPDATING A SINGLE VIDEO
BULK VIDEO UPDATES

All operations to and from the Youtube Data API are rate limited. What is important for us, are the queries per day.

The default quota is 10.000 queries per day, sounds a lot, but is easily gone after updating 150-200 videos. You can request this limit to be raised, but again a lot of paperwork and questions that are just not needed.

The above limit just means, that you need to cache as many queries as possible, to only query live when needed ;)

Something you learn fast, when experimenting with different things! I hit that limit multiple times in the first few days, with around 500 videos in the queue.

Different operation cost you different amount of units

  • A read operation that retrieves a list of resources — channels, videos, playlists — usually costs 1 unit.
  • A write operation that creates, updates, or deletes a resource usually costs 50 units.
    10.000 / 50 are 200 updates per day :)
  • A search request costs 100 units.
  • A video upload costs 1600 units. Glad we are not handling the upload as well, but technically easy ;)

It also helps to use the Google Developer Playground to testdrive the Youtube Data API with your own credentials while optimising your own code.
You can define your own OAuth 2.0 configuration by clicking the cog in the upper right corner.

I setup the bulk updating to allow splitting it over multiple days, if required. For this an offline refresh token is needed, as the standard token expires after 60 minutes.

My customer can also just update a single video, when changes are applied to the product or a new product has been added.

If more frequent updates are required, I will ask for a raise of the queries per day. You can circumvent the limit by using multiple Google Cloud Platform accounts with new OAuth credentials, but really an overkill right now. I have done that in the past ;)

LAYOUT & DESIGN

The GUI is just based of Bootstrap, to make it simple and clean. Using my own wrapper to make it work within the WordPress admin.

For all ajax operations, I am using htmx and _hyperscript, which I will talk about in another article in the future.

Really neat and clean way to build single page interfaces.

The whole plugin runs of its own REST API endpoint. Just love using WordPress as a headless system.

I used TWIG / Timber for the templates, to separate logic and layout. Timber has been my goto solution for years now. It drives my own and many customer websites.

portalZINE NMN | Development meets Creativity | road ends

CONCLUSION

This has been a lot of fun, maybe a bit too much LOL

I do geek-out about many of my projects, but this experience helped me to bring my WordPress toolbox to the next level. This will help to drive other things in the future.

Working so deeply with the Youtube Data API has been fun and feels so easy now, after all remaining problems have been solved.

Would have loved this during my portalZINE TV days ;)

I you read all this, you just earned yourself a badge for completion ;)

Need something similar or something else? Just say hi and we can talk.

ENJOY CODING ….

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26. March 2021

Tracking your body in VR

A new passion!

VR is a new passion of mine, that I play with in my freetime, but also explore as a developer and tech enthusiast.

As video quality has evolved a lot in the past 2 years, the big topic now is full body immersion.

What needs to be tracked in VR?

The following things are becoming more important:

  • Hand-Tracking: hand & fingers, touch, grab & place …
  • Eye-Tracking: left & right eye, focus …
  • Lip-Tracking: speech, facial expressions
  • Body-Tracking: arms, legs, hips …
  • Free Locomotion without boundaries
  • Smell & Taste-Tracking
  • Brain & Neural Tracking

I will use this article to collect things that are already available, diy projects, experiments and things that are in their early stages.

Hand Tracking

Hand & finger tracking is already making its way into consumer products. It is still not widely integrated, but has made big jumps the past year.

Eye Tracking

Eye tracking is not only important to make avatars more life-like, but also to track your eye focus and help to reduce processor load.

Lip Tracking

Lip tracking has made a big jump, with the new Vive Lip tracker and is important for social interactions.

Body Tracking / Tracking parts of the body

Body tracking is one of the areas, that has so many projects attached to it. There are so many neat solutions out there, that almost anyone can use it by now.

  • KinectToVR – Full-Body Tracking with your Kinect for Xbox 360, Kinect for Xbox One or PlayStation Move + Eye
  • SlimeVR – Open Source Full Body Tracking. Crowd Supply / Youtube
  • DecaMove – Hip tracking. They also offer an Android App, to do the same.

Free Locomotion Tracking

Free locomotion is one of the biggest challenges in VR right now. You can increase your playarea, but that is still limiting and requires space. Their are VR treadmills, but none of them really reproduces life-like natural movement yet. And those solutions that come close, are still out of your reach. Most of the tracking above is somehow covered and will be available soon, while real locomotion is really the hardest to solve of them all.

  • Natural Locomotion – Natural Locomotion is an application that emulates the controller thumbstick input (to use in any game), to walk, run and jump more naturally moving your arms or your feet. It includes a driver for SteamVR for this purpose.

Tools & Software

  • VirtualHere – allows USB devices to be used remotely over a network just as if they were locally connected!

Avatars

Always crucial to have the right look for yourself in VR :)

Lets get started ….

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