Monthly Archives: September 2010

microcontroller programming -arduino

Today, I saw an interesting post about the difference between Arduino & Parallax programmable microcontroller.

http://todbot.com/blog/2006/09/25/arduino-the-basic-stamp-killer/

http://www.arduino.cc/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino

http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Buy

http://hacknmod.com/hack/top-40-arduino-projects-of-the-web/

http://hacknmod.com/hack/create-techno-with-a-laser-harp/

http://www.stephenhobley.com/blog/laser-harp-2009/

http://www.critterandguitari.com/content/pocket-piano

http://www.papervision3d.org/

Project SFRWatcher – A Salesforce Externalization Tool

After spending several weeks hacking, I have finally done it and released the project open-source. So, what is this project I am talking about?

It is call SFRWatcher. It is a Salesforce Externalization Tool, allowing you to access majority of the Salesforce data, including Chatter, outside of Salesforce. For example, this app can run on the Amazon Cloud and still talks to Salesforce, including reading and posting Chatter Feeds and Comments. Additionally, it allows you to edit Salesforce object, like, Users, Accounts, Contacts, Contracts, ….

The project source code is on GitHub. Furthermore, the updated GEM is called Ruby ToolKit and the documentation page is http://asf-soap-adapter.are4.us

Project Overview
----------------
Project SFRWatcher is a (WebBased) Salesforce Chatter Externalization Tool.
It facilitates the reading and the posting to Chatter.
1. FeedPosts (Text, URL, and file attachment)
2. Comments

Since Chatter specifies two types of Feeds
1. EntityFeeds - People or entities (groups, accounts) that you are following
2. NewsFeed - News that are generated by you.
This tool provides those two tabs.

Furthermore, this tool allows you to edit Salesforce Data, just like SFExplorer (pc) or
SOQLExplorer (mac). My app follows the SF security model, meaning that things
you cannot edit are marked with red labels.
Read "Salesforce_objects_controller.rb" for details.

Technically, it demonstrates how to call.
1. SOQL (Salesforce Object Query Language);
2. SOSL (Salesforce Object Search Language).
It is a pure RubyOnRails app. And, it does not require you downloading Partner.WSDL
or Enterprise.WSDL to generate the stub class. This is a big advantage over the
Java and C# model apps explained in the Salesforce Web Services Dev Guide.

The baseline technologies are ActiveSalesforceAdapter (ActiveRecord Adapter) and
RForce (used by the adapter, for sending and receiving SOAP requests).

This is very much a personal pet project. But, it does demonstrate that with RubyOnRails, one can use Salesforce like a cloud-based data repository much like a local database. The app is calling SF and retrieving Chatter Feed and other objects via SOQL and SOSL using SOAP.

The demo url is http://parl8-vo.us:3000 (will be back soon, due to change in the hardware).

The detail page for are4.us projects are at http://www.are4.us

The screen shots are below: