Hacking at 0300

I finally updated my jQuery widget subclassing code to use the newest version of jQuery UI, which incorporated a lot of the original ideas I outlined back in 2010. The new documentation is now on my github pages, and I've updated the flexcal posts to reflect it.

It is a breaking change; instead of $.namespace.widgetname.subclass('namespace.newwidgetname', {methods...}) you use the real jQuery UI way: $.widget('namespace.newwidgetname', $.namespace.widgetname, {methods...}).

I've also changed all my flexcal-related widgets to the bililite namespace, per jQuery UI guidelines. It's now $.bililite.flexcal instead of $.ui.flexcal, and so on for all the fields in that (like $.bililite.flexcal.tol10n).

Hope not too many people are inconvenienced.

See the code.

jQuery plugin to allow using cdn.rawgit.com to get the latest commit of a github repo

github won't let you hotlink to their site directly; raw.githubusercontent.com sends its content with a X-Content-Type-Options:nosniff header, so modern browsers won't accept it as javascript.

http://rawgit.com gets around that by pulling the raw file and re-serving it with more lenient headers, but the rate is throttled so you can't use it on public sites. http://cdn.rawgit.com isn't throttled but is cached, permanently. Once a given URL is fetched, it stays in the cache and if the file is updated on github, it won't be on cdn.rawgit.com . So having a script tag <script src="http://cdn.rawgit.com/user/repo/master/file.js"> lets you get the script from github, but even when the master branch is updated, the script retrieved will remain the same.

The answer is to use a specific tag or commit in the script tag: <script src="http://cdn.rawgit.com/user/repo/abc1234/file.js"> and change that when the underlying repo is updated. But that is terribly inconvenient.

For stable libraries, that's not a problem, since they should be tagged with version numbers: http://cdn.rawgit.com/user/repo/v1.0/file.js and that's probably what you want. However, if you always want the latest version, that won't work.

$.repo uses the github API to get the SHA for the latest commit to the master, and returns a $.Deferred that resolved to the appropriate URL (with no trailing slash):

$.repo('user/repo').then(function (repo){
	$.getScript(repo+'/file.js');
});

The github api is also rate-limited (to 60 requests an hour from a given IP address), so the repo address is cached for fixed period of time (default 1 hour), with the value saved in localStorage.

$.repo('user/repo', time); // if the cached value is more than time msec old, get a new one
$.repo('user/repo', 0); // force a refresh from github's server

$.getScripts

$.getScript is useful, but it is asynchronous, which means that you can't load scripts that depend on one another with:

$.getScript('first.js');
$.getScript('second.js');
$.getScript('third.js');

You have to do:

$.getScript('first.js').then(function(){
	return $.getScript('second.js');
}).then(function(){
	return $.getScript('third.js');
}).then(function(){
	// use the scripts
});

$.getScripts(Array) abstracts this out, so you can do:

$.getScripts(['first.js', 'second.js', 'third.js']).then(function(){
	// use the scripts
});

It's basically a very simple script loader.

Two new additions to flexcal, which is now at version 2.2. See the code and a demo, that uses my new github pages.

Mouse Wheel

The calendar now responds to wheel events, changing the month with scroll up/down and changing the calendar tab with scroll left/right. I initially tried to throttle it since my trackpad was too sensitive, but that made it too slow. I'm not sure waht to do about that. It works well with an actual mouse wheel, thoug.

Keith Wood's Calendars

Keith Wood is maintaining the jQuery plugin that eventually became the official jQuery UI datepicker. His version, however, handles multiple calendar systems, much like flexcal (though I like my plugin, of course). His code is on github, and the documentation is on his personal site. He has support for many calendar systems, and I wanted to let flexcal use that. I don't use his datepicker code, just the calendar systems.

I'm using a naming convention of language-calendar, like he-jewish for a calendar localized to hebrew, using a Jewish lunar calendar. It's the opposite of Woods, who uses calendar-language, like islamic-ar for a calendar localized to arabic, using the Islamic lunar calendar. For my names, the default language is en and the default calendar system in gregorian. Thus, islamic would be an English language Islamic calendar, and zh-TW would be a Taiwanese Chinese Gregorian calendar (my parser is smart enough to not be confused by the extra hyphen). The language codes are ISO 639 two-letter codes.

There is a new function, $.ui.flexcal.tol10n(name) that creates a localization object with appropriate language and calendar system. It is designed to be transparent; doing

$('input').flexcal({
  calendars: ['ar-islamic']
});

will look in the existing $.ui.flexcal.l10n object for 'ar-islamic', then try to find it in the jQuery UI datepicker localizations (if those are loaded) (note that jQuery UI only uses Gregorian calendars), then Woods's calendars if they exist.

You can use the bridge directly if you want; $.ui.flexcal.tol10n(name) returns a localization object that you can modify as desired and then pass to flexcal.

To use this, you need to include the necessary script files: jquery.calendars.js for the basic code, jquery.calendars.name.js (like jquery.calendars.islamic.js) for the calendar-system-specific routines (these are all in English), and jquery.calendars.name-language.js (like jquery.calendars.islamic-ar.js)for the language-specific localization, or jquery.calendars.language.js for language-specific localization using the Gregorian calendar.

Of note, the text that is used for the "Next Month" and "Previous Month" is localized for the datepicker, not the underlying calendar system, so if you want that included automatically, also include the jquery.calendars.picker-name.js. I have a little hack in flexcal so you do not have to include the entire jquery.calendars.picker.js package; just include the jquery.calendars.picker-mock.js before including the localization code.
It should be clear which files to include if you look at the list.

TODO

His calendar code also has some nice formatting options, which flexcal does not have out of the box, though it is possible with some work. I'd like to get a bridge to work with my code as well.
Some other options that would be nice include: setting the first day of the week (now is fixed at Sunday) and having the option of showing or selecting days from other months.

I'm sure there must be an easier way to run a program from PowerShell, but I haven't found anything simpler than

& "C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe"

with the ampersand and the full path. I could add "C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++" to $env:PATH, but I'd still have to type notepad++.exe file. I wanted some way to make a shortcut to a program name without having to create a new file, either a .LNK or .BAT file.

Turns out you can do this with PowerShell functions:

function npp { & "C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe" $args }

lets me run Notepad++ from PowerShell without nearly so much typing. Stuck that in my Profile.ps1 and now I'm happy.
Hope this turns out to be useful to someone.