JSPatterns.com

In the previous post I announced that one person will win a copy of the Brazilian Portuguese translation of JavaScript Patterns. So here's the winner:

@LouMintzer

He wins a signed copy of "Padrões JavaScript". Waiting for your mailing address, Lou

Update: Lou Doesn't speak Portuguese, so he gets an English copy. The second winner is:

@puresight

Update: Monty is not too proud of his Portuguese skills either, so third is

@abozhilov

Asen is an awesome JavaScripter, who actually reviewed the book (thanks a million!) and he already has a copy. Next.

@mexitek

How I picked the winner

By writing some JavaScript in the console, of course.

The winner was to be randomly picked from all those who retweet my tweet or post a comment in the announcement. So I had to collect those.

Twitter

The tweet page says there has been 27 retweets (worded a bit like 28, but looks like it's 27). The page only shows about 15 people though and I need all of them. Given how Twitter doesn't let you search older stuff, I was afraid it was too late. I had to check the API first. I was expecting I can hit a few URLs and get the data I need. Tough luck. All these auth keys, tokens, secrets and stuff got me floored.

Luckily Twitter's UI is also using the APIs. Checking the network traffic I was able to spot the request I need!

The URL is:
http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/49323240014872576/retweeted_by.json?count=15
I only needed to change the count to something over 27, so I made it 30. Lo and behold I got the data!

The rest of the stuff I did in Safari's Web Inspector console.

Visiting the URL:
http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/49323240014872576/retweeted_by.json?count=30

We have a JSON array as a document.

>>> var a = document.body.innerHTML
>>> a
"<pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;">[{"profile_link_color":"0084B4","verified":false,"not....]</pre>"

Safari puts all in a PRE behind the scenes, so this is how we get the data:

>>> var source = $$('pre')[0].innerHTML;
>>> source
"[{"profile_link_color":"0084B4","verified":...]"

eval() it:

>>> source = eval(source)
[Object, Object...]
>>> source.length
27

Sounds right. Now let's move all usernames into a new array using the new ECMA5 forEach fancy-ness:

>>> var all = [];
>>> source.forEach(function(e){all.push(e.screen_name)})
>>> all.length
27
>>> all
["jrfaqcom", "gustavobarbosa", "gabrielsilva", ...."vishalkrsingh"]

Blog comments

I had 4 comments on the original post. WordPress puts all comments in a div with class commentlist, so this allows us to grab all comments:

>>> var comments = $$('.commentlist cite a')
>>> comments.length
4

Now let's only grab the names, they are in the href's innerHTML:

>>> var all = [];
>>> comments[0].innerHTML
"Fabiano Nunes"
>>> comments.forEach(function(e){all.push(e.innerHTML)})
TypeError: Result of expression 'comments.forEach' [undefined] is not a function.

Eh? What? Oh, the list of HREFs is not an array but a NodeList:

>>> comments
[
<a href="http://fabiano.nunes.me" rel="external nofollow" class="url">Fabiano Nunes</a>
,
<a href="http://www.gabrielizaias.com" rel="external nofollow" class="url">Gabriel Izaias</a>
,
<a href="http://www.jrfaq.com.br" rel="external nofollow" class="url">João Rodrigues</a>
,
<a href="http://www.jrfaq.com.br" rel="external nofollow" class="url">João Rodrigues</a>
]
>>> comments.forEach
undefined

So, list of nodes converted to array:

>>> comments = Array.prototype.slice.call(comments)

Now forEach is usable:

>>> comments.forEach
function forEach() {
    [native code]
}
>>> comments.forEach(function(e){all.push(e.innerHTML)})

So we have a list of all names. Lets serialize it, so it can be pasted to the other window where we had the Twitter data.

>>> all
["Fabiano Nunes", "Gabriel Izaias", "João Rodrigues", "João Rodrigues"]
>>> JSON.stringify(all)
"["Fabiano Nunes","Gabriel Izaias","João Rodrigues","João Rodrigues"]"

(Simple array join and then string split will do too in this simple example)

All together

Back to the twitter window. Deserializing the comments array:

>>> comments = JSON.parse('["Fabiano Nunes","Gabriel Izaias","João Rodrigues","João Rodrigues"]')
["Fabiano Nunes", "Gabriel Izaias", "João Rodrigues", "João Rodrigues"]

Merging the two arrays

>>> all = all.concat(comments);
["jrfaqcom", "gustavobarbosa", ...."João Rodrigues"]
>>> all.length
31

Perfect. 31 entries. Just as many as the days in March when I announced it. So let's take the 19th array element to be the winner.

But shuffle the array a bit first.

Suffle

Sorting the array by randomness. (I shuffled and reshuffled it three times, just because.)

>> all.sort(function() {return 0 - (Math.round(Math.random()))})
["ravidsrk", "anagami", "lpetrov", ...]

And the winner is:

>>> all[18]
"LouMintzer"

I've been terrible at promoting this book. But that should change starting today

So today I got a copy of "Padrões JavaScript" - the Brazilian Portuguese translation of JavaScript Patterns. Happy, happy, happy!

Given that I already got two copies few weeks ago, kept one and sent one to my mom for her collection, I thought I should give this one away.

If you want to enter for a chance to win a signed copy of the Brazilian Portuguese translation of JavaScript Patterns, you can do one or more of the following:

• Leave a comment below, or/and
• Retweet this

That's it, shipping's on me. Boa sorte!

pssst, here are two PDFs: table of contents and about half of chapter 1 for you evaluation pleasure

The JavaScript Patterns book is to be sent to the printer next week and will be available as expected (and mentioned on Amazon) on or before Sept 28. Yey!

Dunno who said: writers don't like to write, they like to have written. Exactly how I feel today.

And let me share a quote from my favorite Kurt Vonnegut along the same lines. The book is Bluebeard.

    She asked me what had been the most pleasing thing about my professional life when I was a full-time painter -- having my first one-man show, getting a lot of money for a picture, the comradeship with fellow painters, being praised by a critic, or what?
    "We used to talk a lot about that in the old days," I said. "There was general agreement that if we were put into individual capsules with our art materials, and fired out into different parts of outer space, we would still have everything we loved about painting, which was the opportunity to lay on paint."
    I asked her in turn what the high point was for writers -- getting great reviews, or a terrific advance, or selling a book to the movies, or seeing somebody reading your book, or what? She said that she, too, could find happiness in a capsule in outer space, provided that she had a finished, proofread manuscript by her in there, along with somebody from her publishing house.
    "I don't understand," I said.
    "The orgastic moment for me is when I hand a manuscript to my publisher and say, 'Here! I'm all through with it. I never want to see it again,' " she said.

So - whew!

Expect a more detailed post about the book (and the wonderful team of JS guru tech reviewers!), after all I have to start promoting it, don't I?

A little something from my forthcoming book "Object-Oriented JavaScript" I thought would be nice to share.

From YUI blog today, there is a free chapter of Douglas Crockford's JavaScript book.

It's a great read. I had the pleasure of reading drafts of the book and giving some inputs (Whoa, giving Doug Crockford input with his JavaScript book! Yeah, I know.) and I can only highly recommend the book. But don't take my word for it, go download the free chapter and decide for yourself.