Wednesday, July 29, 2020
I can't believe I didn't think of that sooner
Last week I was tasked with running the regession test for “Project: Sippy-Cup” and figure out any issues. Trying to figure out the issues was a bit harder than expected. I had my suspicions but the output wasn't quite conducive to seeing the overall picture. The output was almost, but not quite valid Lua. If it was valid Lua, I could load the data and write some code to verify my hypothesis, but alas, I had to write code to massage the output into a form that could be loaded.
What a drag.
I was able to prove my hypothesis (some contradictory features were enabled, but it's a “that can't happen in production” type scenario, and if it did happen in production it's of no real consequence). I then adjusted the regression test accordingly.
But afterwards, I adjusted the output slightly to make it valid Lua code. That way, it can be loaded via the Lua parser so further investigations of errors can be checked. I'm just a bit surprised that I didn't think of that sooner.
Update on Thrusday, July 30TH, 2020
Interfacing with the blackhole of the Intarwebs
Smirk called last night to ask me how I publish my blog to MyFaceMeLinked BookWeInSpace. I told him I do it by hand. When I post to my blog, I then go to FaceMeLinkedMyBookWeInSpace and manually post the link. It used to be an automatic feature but several years ago MeLinkedMyFaceWeInSpaceBook changed the API. He was curious because he was getting fed up with FaceMeLinkedMySpaceBookWeIn and their censorious ways, and wanted a way to post to both FaceMeLinkedMy SpaceBookWeIn and another website. Here's what I found.
First:
The
publish_actionspermission will be deprecated. This permission granted apps access to publish posts to Facebook as the logged in user. Apps created from today onwards will not have access to this permission. Apps created before today that have been previously approved to request publish_actions can continue to do so until August 1, 2018. No further apps will be approved to usepublish_actionsvia app review. Developers currently utilizingpublish_actionsare encouraged to switch to Facebook's Share dialogs for web, iOS and Android.
New Facebook Platform Product Changes and Policy Updates
For my usecase, I'm still screwed, unless I become an “approved partner:”
On August 1st, 2018, the Live API publish_actions permission, which allows an app to publish on behalf of its Users, will be reserved for approved partners. A new permission model that allows apps to publish Videos to their User's Groups and Timeline will be created instead.
New Facebook Platform Product Changes and Policy Updates
So, I'm still screwed.
You can do a “share dialog” which looks like it may work, but … it looks like it may require the use of JavaScript (a non-starter for me, so I'm still screwed) and the user has to be logged into FaceMeLinkedMyBookWeInSpace for it to work (another non-starter for me). This may work for Smirk, and more importantly, it doesn't require a FaceMeLinkedMyBookWeInSpace app to be written.
Then there's this Pages API thing that looks like it could work (not for me, because I don't think my “timeline” counts as a “page”—man this MyFaceMeLinkedInSpaceBookWe stuff is confusing) but it requires building an app. If what Smirk wants to publish to on FaceMeLinked MyBookWeInSpace is a “page” then this is probably what he wants. While it may look like “Instant Articles” is the way to go, especially since there appear to be plugins for popular web publishing platforms, but the kicker there is: “[t]he final step before going live is to submit 10 complete articles for review by our team.” That may work for The National Enquirer or the Weekly World News, but it won't work for me or Smirk.
And that's for getting stuff into MeLinkedMyFaceBookWeInSpace. As far as I can tell, there's no way to get stuff out! And that's probably by design—LinkedMyFaceMeSpaceBookWeIn is the Intarwebs, as far as it's concerned.
