Facebook::OpenGraph 1.20 w/ JS SDK's cookie support is now available

Facebook::OpenGraph 1.20 is now available.

Work with JS SDK

Among 2 newly added features, one deals with cookie that is set by JS SDK. Detailed implementation process can be seen at github issue. $fb->js_cookie_name will give you the name of the cookie and $fb->get_user_token_by_cookie( $cookie_value ) will hit auth endpoint and exchange cookie value to user access token. Sample usage is shown as below:

Access Response Header

The other feature deals with response header. $res->header( $header_field_name ) provides access to any given header field. As a shorthand $res->etag is provided since $fb->fetch_with_etag supports access with etag value. Other than ETag header field there are some fields that you should know: X-FB-Rev and X-FB-Debug. As described in official blog entry, X-FB-Rev indicate Facebook Platform's internal revision number. Official document is not provided for X-FB-Debug, but it must be something that help resolving their issue. So when you get error response even though your request seems legitimate, you might want to check $res->header(''x-fb-rev) and $res->header('x-fb-debug') and report them on bug report.

Released Facebook::OpenGraph Ver. 1.13

Today I released Facebook::OpenGraph Ver. 1.13, which contains the addition of exchange_token() to support Generating Long-Lived User Tokens from Server-Side. That's pretty much everything that concerns interface change, but once you see the diffs you'll find many additions and updates of documentation links, POD and comments.

Back in 2009-2010, those were totally outdated and we had to exchange information on official wiki. Even in 2013 they did not provide documentation about appsecret_proof thing so we had to look into official PHP SDK code to find out its implementation and translate it into other language of your choice. It is really frustrating when you have to implement something yourself, but you cannot tell if your implementation satisfy its specification.

Now, however, official documents are getting enhanced day by day. They state more detailed specs and provide more step-by-step sample codes. So what I did is adding more links to corresponding part of documents and more quotes in a form of comments and POD. Quoted comments are directly copied from official documentation and are appended to each corresponding logical part. This way you or future maintainer can see the spec and implementation at once. When this module does not work as expected, compare these comments and implementation to the linked document. If there is any difference the document and spec is updated, but this module is not. The document does not provide updated date anymore so I think this is the easiest way to catch up the spec change.

I hope it helps you better integrate with Facebook Graph API.

Ideas on utilizing Teng#new_row_from_hash

This article is basically a follow-up of my previous article: Teng::Row and data2row.
As of Teng Ver. 0.21, data2row is implemented as Teng#new_row_from_hash. I already introduced a way how I used this method on my previous article, so I am going to introduce 2 different usages.

Examples are as shown on bottom.

The first example describes how to cache column values and then creates table row object with cached values. With Devel::Size I compared the size of row object and column values then I realized that the size of row objects become much bigger. So my idea is to cache only the column values to minimize cache size and then create table row object with the cached values.

The Second example shows how I utilize the table row object's method by creating temporary object. In this case I'm trying to upload image to a certain path and the path is generated based on the filename and campaign_type. I didn't want to generate path in 2 places, but instead I wanted to generate it at one place so I'm not going to mess up by modifying one and forgetting modifying the other.

I like the way Teng enables me to do this kind of things easier.

Benchmarked Sort::Maker's each sort style for my specific purpose

I use various internal and external APIs to build my services. An external API returns content something like below:

{
    "status": 1,
    "error_msg": '',
    "result": {
        "foo1": { .... },
        "foo2": { .... },
        "foo3": { .... },
        "foo4": { .... }
    }
}

After retrieving this, I have to sort the result in result.foo1, result.foo2, ..., result.foo100 order. I'm wondering why they don't return this in array, but I must face it as long as the provider is returning values in this way. Although Perl Best Practices insists on using Sort::Maker, I implemented this in my way because this sort wasn't that complicated.

my %tmp_cache; # for orcish maneuver
my @sorted_keys = sort {
    ( $tmp_cache{$a} //= $a =~ s/\A foo(\d+) \z/$1/xr ) <=>
    ( $tmp_cache{$b} //= $b =~ s/\A foo(\d+) \z/$1/xr )
} keys %{ $content->{result} };

# then sorted results are stored in stash to be displayed
$c->stash->{results} = [ map { $content->{result}->{$_} } @sorted_keys ];

Today, I benchmarked each sort type provided by Sort::Maker and found that using Sort::Maker was much faster. The code is as below. It was a bit surprising that my original method with orcish maneuver is13% slower than Sort::Maker's one with orcish maneuver. Needless to say, other sort types are much faster. So my conclusion is that even relatively simple sort should be implemented with Sort::Maker to increase readability, maintenancibility and performance.

Released Lingua::PigLatin::Bidirectional Ver.0.01

The other day I talked about Lingua::PigLatin and how it works. This module really helped me understand how Pig Latin works, but this module only handled English-to-PigLatin translation. So I created Lingua::PigLatin::Bidirectional. As the name implies, this translates English sentences to Pig Latin, and vice versa.

use Lingua::PigLatin::Bidirectional;
 
warn to_piglatin('hello');     # ellohay
warn from_piglatin('ellohay'); # hello

My IRC bot uses this module so when I want to pig-latinize some sentences or want to see if my pig-latinization is correct, I talk to this bot and it returns translated sentences.

How we should teach how to eat soba noodle

Soba eating experience is totally different from that of spaghetti. It's not just a difference between forks and chopsticks, but it involves the difference of table manners so understanding and mastering soba eating can be an indicator how much he or she understands Japanese culture. Then how should I tell westerners, who grew up with a manner of not making noise while eating pasta, how to eat soba?
Lately I found a good article, "The sound makes the experience," which approaches this problem from both cultural and technical aspects. It describes the reason to make noise as a very polite gesture to acknowledge cook how much you enjoy your meal. And then it describes the technique as follows:

For me, the best way to conceive of the proper slurping technique is like when you are eating a very hot slice of pizza. You take a small bite, and because it's hot, you start to suck in air while chewing. This allows you to eat the food while it is still very hot, while you are breathing in. This is the same manner in which you should eat soba in Japan.

This helped me a lot. For Japanese like me, it is very difficult to teach this kind of basic skills because we all acquire them during our childhood and do not remember how we learned. Even worse, We can't understand why they can't do it.
This leads me to a conclusion that Japanized foreigners are better teachers than Japanese ourselves. I'll catch up those foreign media to learn how I should teach Japanese culture.

Why I think Glocks are not for everyone... especially sport shooters

When I say 'I hate Glocks' to my friends, I'm not just talking about its plastic frame and Good Ol’ ‘merica. I'm at age of 28, and I think I'm not old enough to say that. I'm not even American, after all. Actually I know Glocks have some cool features and that's why I carefully say 'Glocks are not for everyone.' I'm going to explain why I think that way.

Premise: Its Uniqueness

Glock's company history is briefly introduced on a web page, Timeline | GLOCK USA. It started its activity as a plastic and steel parts manufacturer and then, in 1970s, shifted its field to military industry including knives. When this company started gun manufacturing after 1980, it brought its invention of nylon-based polymer, Polymer 2, to gun industry. That's Glock 17. So its origin and design policy are totally different from those of other gun manufacturers with long history such as Colt, Winchester and Smith & Wesson. This critical difference includes weight balance and safety mechanism.

Weight Balance

When I lived in Oklahoma -- BTW, that's why I call myself Oklahomer -- I visited H&H Shooting Sports every other week for sport shooting. My favorite choice of full-size handgun was Sig Sauer P226 and second was Colt M1911. Comparing to those 2 handguns, Glocks are extremely light. The weight of cartridges in magazine don't differ a lot so the lightness of front half stands out. It makes difficult to handle the recoil and aim of the second shot.
I know lightness is important for those who must carry gun with them on daily basis such as police officers, but it doesn't profit me.

Its Mechanical Simplicity and Handling Complicity

Glock's safety mechanism, which is called Safety Action system, is pretty simple and unique. It's all about trigger and it doesn't include anything like M1911's manual and grip safety or P226's decocking lever, which I think is the biggest difference concerning safety.
I understand this Safety Action system is a reliable mechanism, but it's just a mechanism. *WE*, humans, make mistakes. To avoid misfire, I believe we need decocking lever or at least cocking indicator. Of course it should be O.K. as long as the shooter, such as law enforcer, handles only Glocks and has enough time for continual training. For others, like sport shooters, who handles various guns and can't afford to train daily basis, I think they should choose guns with more common safety mechanism that involves cocking indicator and decocking lever.

Conclusion

As I described above, Glocks are very unique in terms of its lightness and safety mechanism. I believe this can benefit law enforcers with adequate training and need of portability, but can disbenefit ocasional sport shooters.
By the way I love Gunny from Full Metal Jacket, lol.