_Finance::Quote Release 1.17_

Last modified on : 5.10.2009

Today Finance: :Quote hit CPAN.

You can find it here.

This version should enable GnuCash users to get quotes from websites again. Other work went to integrating HU.pm (Hungarian stocks) and bug fixes due to website modifications.

Finance::Quote is known to work nicely with Finance::QuoteDB for keeping your quotes easily in a database. Finance::QuoteDB uses DBIx::Class and therefor it is database independent. A frontend script (fqdb) is available if you just want to start downloading stocks to a personal database. Historical quotes are also available through the use of Finance::QuoteHist which is also supported in Finance::QuoteDB. An interface to GeniusTrader is also available.

Futur work goes to the porting of GeniusTrader to CPAN. A alpha version has already been posted to CPAN but non-developpers should stick to the current stable release of GeniusTrader

_Working on Finance::Quote_

Last modified on : 30.09.2009

I'm back to work on the next Finance::Quote release. Maintaining a module like F::Q seems more time consuming than I originaly thought. Mainly due to modifications in websites which make submodules fail. This is somewhat a surprise to me as I didn't use all modules before taking over the maintenance. Also release 1.16 has seen some additional submodules come to life, which also need maintenance for the same reason. I know now that an important of maintenance time has to go to checking submodules and keeping them on track with their respective websites.

The next release adds another job to be done. I recently subscribed to the GnuCash mailing list. The GnuCash project uses F::Q for retrieving quotes (which certainly is a very good idea). It seems some GnuCash users have problems making F::Q work from GnuCash. So I'd like to do some work for these users also.

I certainly don't have to do all the development on my own. Thanks to other users/developers for sending patches!

That definitely makes me try to free more time for this module, but also keep on working on Finance::QuoteDB and Finance::GeniusTrader!

_Installing wxPerl on Snow Leopard (works also for 64bit processors)_

Last modified on : 27.09.2009

I needed to run wxPerl on my new Macbook Pro with 64bit capable processor. wxWidgets doesn't support 64bit so I needed to compile everything in 32bit. Here comes how...

Fire up a Terminal and do the following: (you might prefer to create a temporary directory for doing all this)

Start with installing perl in 32bit

Download the current perl.tar.gz from perl.com.

wget http://www.cpan.org/src/perl-5.10.1.tar.gz

explode the archive and move into the created directory
```
tar -xvzf perl-5.10.1.tar.gz
cd perl-5.10.1
```
specify the SDK you wish to compile perl against (this is not really needed)
```
export SDK=/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.6.sdk
```

Configure the build instructions

./Configure -Dcc="gcc -m32" -Dprefix=/usr/local -Uloclibpth -Dlibpth=/usr/lib -Accflags="-arch i386 -g -pipe -fno-common -DPERL_DARWIN -fno-strict-aliasing -I/usr/local/include" -Aldflags="-arch i386 -L/usr/local/lib" -Alddlflags="-arch i386 -bundle -undefined dynamic_lookup -L/usr/local/lib" -d

Build and test
```
make
make test
```
install perl as superuser
```
sudo make install
```
use the newly installed perl by default: Add /usr/local/bin to the PATH

Use your favorite editor to edit $HOME/.profile. Then add this line to the bottom of the file :
```
PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
```

Now build wxWidgets
- Download wxwidgets 2.8.10: Open this link in your browser: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wxwindows/wxWidgets-2.8.10.tar.gz
- explode and move into directory
```
tar -xvzf wxWidgets-2.8.10.tar.gz
cd wxWidgets-2.8.10
```
- Configure the build instructions
```
arch_flags="-arch i386"
./configure CFLAGS="$arch_flags" CXXFLAGS="$arch_flags" LDFLAGS="$arch_flags" OBJCFLAGS="$arch_flags" OBJCXXFLAGS="$arch_flags"
```
- Build and test
```
make
make test
```
- install wxWidgets as superuser
```
sudo make install
```
Install stc
- While still in the wx source directory, go to contrib/src/stc subdirectory
- Compile and install
```
make
make test
sudo make install
```

Then install Alien::wxWidgets

Get the archive

wget http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/M/MB/MBARBON/Alien-wxWidgets-0.44.tar.gz

explode and move into directory

tar -xvzf Alien-wxWidgets-0.44.tar.gz
cd Alien-wxWidgets-0.44

Configure the build instructions
```
perl Build.PL
```
answer 'no' when asking to refetch and install wxWidgets
Build and test
```
perl Build
perl Build test
```
install as superuser
```
sudo perl Build install
```

install Wx from cpan
- only one step for this ;)
```
sudo cpan Wx
```

_Work on CPAN integration of GeniusTrader_

Last modified on : 25.07.2009

After some discussion on the GeniusTrader mailing list, there surely seems to be interest in integrating GeniusTrader to CPAN.

While waiting for an official 'cpan' branch on the svn repo, I started a private and temporary repo on github. I'll probably keep working in this repo and commit to the svn repo (if I get a commit bit), otherwise submitting patches.

This work is focused on the sole purpose of this integration. It is the intention to track commits to trunk and integrate those directly in the cpan-branch. Once the work is done I hope the cpan branch will replace trunk.

The work flow:

Create the module directory layout and add missing files (Done)
Port the module (.pm) files. Essentially changing the namespace and remove all those use lib '..' statements
Look into external dependencies: GD, ImageMagick... (I might be missing some here)
Port the script files.
Write test script skeleton based on Test::More
Port the existing test-script. I think there currently is only one ;-)

_Catalyst Framework 5.80001 is out !_

Last modified on : 19.04.2009

Catalyst Framework version 5.8001 is out! This is a major step forward as Catalyst now incorporates full support of Moose object oriented framework.

The development wiki has some nice tutorials etc. if you want to build websites with this cool framework.

Take a visit at the Catalyst homepage for further info.

_The Belgian Perl Workshop 2009 - 28.02.2009_

Last modified on : 01.03.2009

Thanks to the personal investment of Dirk and Chris the second Belgian Perl Workshop was a success. Two rooms and 40+ attendees! Great speakers talking about interesting stuff. Here's a snapshot of the talks I attended in the second room.

Yuval Kogman

First speaker was Yuval Kogman. He introduced us to the Kiokudb object storage engine. The project is young (first publication on cpan is from december 2008) and very promising. Object storage is an alternative to relational database like DBIx::Class. Both are a layer between your program and the database backend. Currently Berkeley DB and DBI are supported by KiokuDB.

The main difference between the two is the absence of a schema when using object storage. You actually define and create objects using Moose and then just tell a KiokuDB instance to save the object. KiokuDB then offers you methods to find, list, delete etc objects. Relations between the objects are stored with the objects. That means that a link to a client is maintained when saving an invoice object, and thus when recalling the invoice from the storage.

Eriam Schaffter

As a wxPerl user myself, I can fully agree with the "wxPerl rocks!" slide of Eriam. Desktop applications are not dead. The world is more than browsers and wxPerl brings cross-platform GUI layout with native look to the Perl programmer. It supports Linux (using Gtk widgets), MacosX and even Windows (for those still working on that platform).

A nice replacement to the wxPerl event loop is the POE module POE::Loop::Wx which brings all POE components to the wx platform. For RAD-way development you can use wxGlade (which is a Python application. indeed that sucks, but hey, we are not in charge of maintaining the code ;) ). As some other wxPerl users, I don't use wxGlade and I'm used to code the dialog boxes. That eases my way of maintaining code with tools like Git.

Eriam also mentions the XRC module which builds UI based on XML files. Drawback of this approach is a slower loading of your app.

Coding in wxPerl looks a little C-ish. That's why a module named wxPerl::Styles is available on CPAN. It's a layer so this is probably using more resources.

Abigail - regular expressions and Unicode Guru

Great talk for those who didn't know unicode and regular expressions suck. That said, Abigail made me realize I don't use a tenth of the possibilities of Perl regexp. i.e. \h, \v, {isDigit1}, [[:upper:]], placing the "-" character when using ranges etc.

For those who couldn't follow or didn't assist there are tons of examples on Abigails slides! A link should be available shortly on the bpw2009 site.

Simone Brunozzi - demo AWS

As a dessert after lunch, Simone Brunozzi demoed the Amazon Web Services internet site shortly. Great stuff out there.

Chris Vertonghen - Perl & Amazon SQS, SimpleDB, S3

AWS does have a lot of potential. AWS can be used for storage (i.e. images, css-files etc) or even streaming to make your internet server faster by serving some content from AWS. There are multiple implementations of the API on CPAN. According to Chris, Net::Amazon::S3 is the most mature and still maintained module. It includes methods for opening a connection to a bucket, putting, getting, listing, deleting files etc.

For queuing there is the Amazon::SQS::Simple module.

Matt Trout - Catalyst

Matt Trout is one of the key developers of Catalyst and also DBIx::Class. He animated the whole afternoon talking about the Catalyst MVC framework.

Catalyst is aimed at creating complicated websites and therefor shouldn't be compared to RoR (I won't put a link to the page here ;)). It provides the ability to keep a clean code base and that's one of the most important features. Development of Catalyst is still going on and Matt tells us that version 5.8 will be using Moose, producing even more maintainable code.

However the Catalyst team wants Catalyst to be backward compatible. This is a major requirement. You should not get an error when upgrading. "So please report it and it will be fixed!" But still, it is probably a bad idea to upgrade a production server without keeping the old server code available in a separate tree.

Writing code for important websites implies writing tests. Tests tell you that things are working now, but also tells you you didn't break old code when implementing modifications. When using Catalysts' scripts for creating views etc, test-files skeletons are automatically created for you. You only have to edit the files and create tests. For testing websites you can use the Test::WWW::Mechanize::Catalyst module in your tests.

Also think about documenting your code (you should use pod syntax for this). This will help you find out what you actually wanted to achieve in particular code. Keep in mind that your application will grow!

Matt Trout - Catalyst & AWS

In the Catalyst way of doing things, AWS' SimpleDB and SQS are just other model backends. The modules for accessing those are on CPAN. There's nothing more to say about this point except that you shouldn't trust the cloud.

What happens if AWS dies? What about backup? Can you actually test AWS backup? No! Nobody actually guarantees that your data will come back! You should keep your data with you and also have your own backup AND you should test the restore of the data.

What about connectivity? Performance? What if Amazon has a problem? You should be able to serve your data even when AWS is down.

So why could you use AWS?

AWS gives you CPU and CACHE. Use it to serve your data by syncing it upwards to AWS. You keep the data at your place and back it up. That's what you need. AWS redundancy is good because it is actually another copy of your data.

The End

The Belgian Perl Workshop ended with a bunch of great Lightning Talks and an auction for allowing bpw to happen again. Thanks to all participants and speakers for this unforgettable event!

_Finance::Quote resurected ?_

Last modified on : 17.09.2008

It seems that the Finance: :Quote Perl module is getting a second life.

Look at the discussion on the mailing list.

Hope to read you there !

_perl regular expressions_

Last modified on : 21.07.2008

A very clean summary of regexps.