Default Config:

Host: Host IP or FQDN Port:389 – (Default Port)
Name:BindAccount@domain.local Password: BindAccount Password
Base: CN=Users,DC=domain,DC=local (Make sure you follow exact case – i.e. OU=DomainUsers,DC=domain,DC=local)

User Login Filter:(sAMAccountName=%uid)

User List Filter: (objectclass=person)

Display Name Field: sAMAccountName

Don’t touch the other fields unless you are using TLS

Custom Config:

Host: Host IP or FQDN Port:3268 – (Port used for user filtering below)
Name:BindAccount@domain.local Password: BindAccount Password
Base: CN=Users,DC=domain,DC=local (Make sure you follow exact case – i.e. OU=DomainUsers,DC=domain,DC=local)

User Login Filter: (&(sAMAccountName=%uid)(objectClass=person)(memberOf=CN=ownCloudAccess,OU=DomainUsers,DC=domain,DC=local)(!(userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.804:=2))) – Make sure you fill in with your content, this example assumes the security group of ownCloudAccess in the DomainUsers OU

User List Filter: (&(objectclass=person)(memberOf=CN=ownCloudAccess,OU=DomainUsers,DC=domain,DC=local)(!(userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.804:=2))) – Make sure you fill in with your content, this example assumes the security group of ownCloudAccess in the DomainUsers OU

Display Name Field: sAMAccountName

Don’t touch the other fields unless you are using TLS

(sAMAccountName=%uid)

This is a follow up to Creating a Barcode Checkin App

To get started you must have a basic knowledge of how web services work. Most common web services use RESTful APIs that implement HTTP and the principals of REST.  The most common public APIs literally just let you retrieve data to manipulate in your own application i.e. Twitter Public API.  If you look in the table at RESTful Web Service HTTP methods it states what all the HTTP methods do with RESTful web services.  All these methods are implemented in FRAPI.

To get started with FRAPI please check out The Developer’s Handbook. Also the video located at the http://getfrapi.com is a great 5 minute tutorial.

In my code I’m just using the POST method to update my database as it is already a pre-populated table, although I did create a web app to edit the ticket.  With my app all we are doing is scanning the barcode to get the ticket number to check that student in and out.  Here’s my simple table sql:

CREATE TABLE `tbl_tickets` (
    `id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    `name` varchar(255) DEFAULT '',
    `prom_checkin` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
    `prom_checkout` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
    `pprom_checkin` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
    `pprom_checkout` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (`id`))
ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

In FRAPI I created four actions:

• /promin/:id
• /promout/:id
• /ppromin/:id
• /ppromout/:id

The :id is the scanned ticket number and gets processed in each action.  One thing to note is when creating actions in FRAPI it creates a new class for each action I’m still learning FRAPI so I’m sure you can create just one action (class) to handle everything but I also wanted to get this going quickly so I just created four actions. Here’s what an example action class would look like after you use the admin panel that comes from installing FRAPI:

/**
* Action YourActionHere
*
* check into Prom with passed :id using $this->getParam(\'id\')
*
* @link http://getfrapi.com
* @author Frapi <frapi@getfrapi.com>
* @link /YourActionHere/:id
*/
class Action_YourActionHere extends Frapi_Action implements Frapi_Action_Interface
{

    /**
    * Required parameters
    *
    * @var An array of required parameters.
    */
    protected $requiredParams = array();

    /**
    * The data container to use in toArray()
    *
    * @var A container of data to fill and return in toArray()
    */
    private $data = array();

    /**
    * To Array
    *
    * This method returns the value found in the database
    * into an associative array.
    *
    * @return array
    */
    public function toArray()
    {
        return $this->data;
    }

    /**
    * Default Call Method
    *
    * This method is called when no specific request handler has been found
    *
    * @return array
    */
    public function executeAction()
    {
        return $this->toArray();
    }

    /**
    * Get Request Handler
    *
    * This method is called when a request is a GET
    *
    * @return array
    */
    public function executeGet()
    {
        return $this->toArray();
    }

    /**
    * Post Request Handler
    *
    * This method is called when a request is a POST
    *
    * @return array
    */
    public function executePost()
    {
        return $this->toArray();
    }

    /**
    * Put Request Handler
    *
    * This method is called when a request is a PUT
    *
    * @return array
    */
    public function executePut()
    {
        return $this->toArray();
    }

    /**
    * Delete Request Handler
    *
    * This method is called when a request is a DELETE
    *
    * @return array
    */
    public function executeDelete()
    {
        return $this->toArray();
    }

    /**
    * Head Request Handler
    *
    * This method is called when a request is a HEAD
    *
    * @return array
    */
    public function executeHead()
    {
        return $this->toArray();
    }
}

Since my app is just updating ticket number row in my sql table the only method that is really used is the HTTP POST. Hence the function method below from our prom checkin action:

public function executePost() {
    $db = Frapi_Database::getInstance();
    $id = $this->getParam('id');
    $chckin = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
    if($db->exec("UPDATE tbl_tickets SET prom_checkin = '".$chckin."' WHERE id='".$id."'")){
        $results = $db->query("SELECT * FROM tbl_tickets WHERE id='".$id."'");
        $row = $results->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
        $this->data['name'] = $row['name'];
        $this->data['success']=1;
    } else {
        $this->data['success']=0;
    }
    return $this->toArray();
}

All the executePost() functions in all the FRAPI actions are similar to above.

All code located here:
https://github.com/marcusmyers/BarcodeCheckin

I wanted to get started with something easy that didn’t need much of an extravagant database.  So I had a project from my junior class advisor, I work at a school district, who wanted a better way to keep track of who is currently at prom instead of the people taking the tickets and putting a check mark by their name on a printed excel file.  All the tickets are numbered and have the students on them with a printed label.  Right away in my mind I thought why add a barcode on the label that is simply just the ticket number.  Then when the students come to the prom we can just scan the barcodes with a device and have them as “checked in” to the prom.  They also “check out” of the prom so we know that they have left dance.  When the student checks out of the prom the have 40 minutes to get back for post-prom otherwise they are not allowed to attend.  This logic has to be used with the app too so they must be also check into post-prom and also check out so we know they left. The junior class advisor thought this would be perfect so I got started.

I will be posting on how to use FRAPI and ZBar in later post.

Resources

• http://github.com/marcusmyers/BarcodeCheckin
• http://getfrapi.com
• http://zbar.sourceforge.net/iphone/

Video

In 2009 we virtualized our servers using VMWare, we went from 5 physical servers to, at the time, 23 virtual servers.

In 2010 we stopped using the email service from our ITC to setting up our Exchange Server and installing well over 45 SMARTBoards.

In 2011 we setup a document management server for all our records and setup disaster recovery for our virtual server setup.

We recently passed a levy for new school facilities that will be a total of a three to four year project.  We are also moving our current student information system to PowerSchool from Pearson.

It seems the projects never end.

I’ve been using Twitter for about 4 months just trying to wrap my head around its applications, it wasn’t until a few tech coordinators in the state came up with the idea to use a “twitter-bot” to communicate with other tech people at a conference about cool sessions or vendor give-a-ways (Ryan Collins – Group Twitterbot). It was a good experiment and sparked some interest for me on one of my drives into work. Someone mentioned the hash tags for Twitter and how they are cumbersome (eTech Ohio Twitter-bot) and I thought what if the hash tags where used for tagging events or tasks.

Most articles I’ve read about Twitter-bots have been based on using checking an email account and converting those email notices much like Ryan Collins – Group Twitterbot article. The only problem with this, like Ryan mentioned in his article, there’s now real way to check the validity of where the message came from which means a possibility of spam submitted to you bot. Plus it keeps you from being blacklisted.

If you made more than your allotment of requests (which is up to 20,000 per hour for whitelisted IPs and accounts), our operations team may very well block your IP or IP range…

When I created my bot I decided to use the full Twitter API which even gives you the ability to delete direct messages. I use a cron job on a linux box to run the bot script every 60 seconds which only creates a total request less than 2000.

Let me explain the process of my bot first then go into more details as to how to use it.

1. Create a Twiiter Account common to your department or business.
2. Create a scheduled task (a possible future post) to run every 60 seconds to check for direct messages to the above account.
3. If there are any direct messages to the created Twitter account those messages are processed on hash tag

It’s a pretty simple process, the hard part his defining your hash tags. We currently are using 3 hash tags in our department:

d deptacct heading to building1 to fix helpdesk ticket 123456 #update

Everyone then gets a device update that might looks like this:

deptacct: user1 is heading to building1 to fix helpdesk ticket 123456

d deptacct update network documentation #todo

To assign an item to another person in the department:

d deptacct @user2 test server restore from backups #todo

If you don’t put a user account in front of the todo item it does a direct message to your twitter account. I find this very useful for todo’s for the following day or while sitting at home or disconnected from the web and just text it via Twitter’s short code (40404).

d deptacct 0012345 from Library to Room 134 #inventorymove

It’s then reposted to the deptacct as a tweet that looks like this:

user1 moved 0012345 from Library to Room 134 #inventorymove

The possibilities are endless I hope to keep releasing new code with new features soon. The coding process can be a little different depending on what you are use to using. Since I’m a Zend Certified Engineer (PHP5 Certification) I’m using the Zend Framework for all of my php programming as it offers a lot as far as frameworks goes. One of the services objects it has is a Twitter API object, and much more and I’m using it for my bot. I understand that a lot people may not know how to work with the object oriented side of PHP with frameworks so I also attached a zip file that uses the same twitterbot class from Ryan’s post just modified to delete direct messages after they are retrieved. The zip file also has the php script that you can run as a scheduled task or cron job.

Code

• Twitter-bot
• Twitter-bot Zend Framework (Right-Click Save As)

Resources

• Lifehacker – Twitternotes
• RTM – Twitter Service
• John Schinker – Many-to-Many
• Ryan Collins – Group Twitterbot
• Delicious Links

• Linus Foundation
• Leipsic Local School District