The Chandler plugin framework allows developers to extend the application’s functionality in new and fun ways. For example, I have been working on a Google Calendar sync plugin (more about that in another post) and a plugin to hook into Twitter. Twitter is sort of a global IM framework, and I thought it would be cool to have Chandler be able to subscribe to Twitter activity and display it in the UI. The first Twitter plugin I wrote used HTTP polling to download Twitter messages, but I have now replaced it with a more general XMPP plugin. XMPP (formerly known as “Jabber”) is an open IM protocol, and is much better suited to real-time data exchange. This plugin enhances the Chandler accounts dialog to allow you to set up an XMPP account. From then on, any XMPP message the account receives (not just Twitter, but Jaiku, etc.) will be added as a calendar event to an “XMPP” collection in the sidebar. These events can be stamped as tasks, dragged to other collections, etc. You can view them either in the Calendar or in the table view.

For example:

The plugin is still considered experimental, and you shouldn’t try it in a Chandler that contains data you care about, but if you’d like to play around with it, the tar file can be downloaded from the python ‘Cheeseshop’ (the central registry for Python packages). Once you have downloaded the file, use Chandler’s “Plugins > Install” menu to select it. Assuming you already have an XMPP/Jabber account somewhere (for instance, I use Google Talk), and you have already linked that account to get notified by Twitter, Jaiku, etc. via IM, you will be able to add a new “XMPP/Jabber” account into Chandler’s “File > Accounts” dialog. After you have closed the accounts dialog, restart Chandler, give it a minute and your Twitter messages should start appearing in the XMPP collection.

The XMPP account settings you’ll need to use Google Talk are:

   User name: username@gmail.com
   Server: talk.google.com
   Resource: (just leave blank)
   Port: 5223, Use SSL Checked

This new plugin will soon form the basis for other IM-based services like instant-sharing.

~morgen

Since people new to the project may be unaware, I thought I would write up a page describing the current state of Chandler’s embedded webserver, along with how to add your own servlets and set up passwords. Please see the ChandlerWebServer Wiki page for details.

I added links to the RSS and Atom feeds for entries or comments to the sidebar. There are also per-author and per-category feeds, which you can get to if you click on an author or a category in the sidebar. FYI the blog is currently set up so anyone can register and start posting entries (which I assume is something we’ll turn off once all the OSAF folks have registered?)

I’m assuming that this new blog will actually replace what we have at www.osafoundation.org — all content currently residing at www could be moved into wordpress “pages” linked to from the “SITE” section of this blog’s sidebar. Which also means we could then move this entire blog to live at www.osafoundation.org. Is that the plan?

Not only is Chandler a client, it’s also a server!

By enabling Chandler’s built-in webserver (provided by Twisted), you can access a few useful included mini web applications called “servlets”. There are two ways to turn on the webserver: either pass the –webserver command line argument, or set the CHANDLERWEBSERVER environment variable to 1 (the number one) before launching Chandler. Once you have done either of those, point your web browser at http://localhost:1888/ where you will see a list of servlets: an RSS reader, a repository browsing utility, and a simple photo album.

To add RSS feeds to Chandler, you may add them through the UI via the File > New Item > New ZaoBao Channel menu, or create a file named inbound.txt in your profile directory and put a list of RSS URLs in there, one per line. Re-run Chandler and it will subscribe to those URLs.

The location of your profile directory depends on the platform:

Linux: ~/.chandler OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/Open Source Applications Foundation/Chandler Windows: C:\Documents and Settings[Username]\Application Data\Open Source Applications Foundation\Chandler