Now I have been working around with flash actionscript 2 for a few months now and last week I was trying to connect to google analytics using flash actionscript 2, I know there’s already Actionscript 3 but its AS2 that was required for the project After a few days of trial and error, finally got the stupid code to work, my initial code was not able to properly remove the white spaces from the returned IDs sent by Google. Weird thing is as I googled around the web, people seem to have a problem logging in and authenticating google AuthID through flash AS2 and AS3. As I understand it, there was supposed to be no way of authenticating the AuthID unless google add an option in their crossdomain.xml.

Well… seems like I was able to login and authenticate using the google account’s AuthID and retrieve my Profile list as well as used the profile data to retrieve the analytics data from my account =)

Codes are shown below on how I was able to login and authenticate the AuthID. One note, ALWAYS remove the white spaces (\r and \n) that was returned after initial login process (email & pass).

Note this is just a proof of concept and I didn’t do any clean-up,etc…
This will also work with Actionscript 3…

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var authId:String = "";
gProfile = new LoadVars();
 
gData = new LoadVars();
 
gLogin = new LoadVars();
gLogin.Email = "yourgoogleaccount@email.com.here";
gLogin.Passwd = "password goes here";
gLogin.service = "analytics"; // what service your accessing, analytics for google analytics, mail for gmail, and so on...
gLogin.accountType = "GOOGLE"; // this should be default to GOOGLE
gLogin.source = "proj-name-0.1"; // anything goes heres, just a string for your proj
 
gLogin.onLoad = function(success) {
    if (success)
    {
        logs.text += "\ryay!";
 
    } else {
        logs.text += "\rtry again";    
    }
}
 
//header content type should be of application urlencoded form
headers = new Array(["Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"]);
 
gLogin.onHTTPStatus = function(httpStatus:Number) {
       logs.text +=  "\r" + httpStatus;
    }
 
 
//address where to login using the username and pass
gLogin.sendAndLoad("https://www.google.com/accounts/ClientLogin", gLogin, "POST");
 
var myAuthID:String;
 
gLogin.onData = function(ret:String) {	
	var auth:Array = ret.split("Auth=");
	authId = auth[1];	
	authId = authId.split('\n').join('');
	var auth:String = "GoogleLogin auth=" +  authId;
	logs.text += "\r" + auth;
	myAuthID = authId;
 
	//for the authentication and profile retrieval, add the "Authorization" header and the google login authid we received 
	// from google after logging in a few seconds ago. We also add X-HTTP-Method-Override with a value of "GET" to force
	// the server to accept our data as GET insted of POST method, if we don't do this, the Authorization fails.
	gProfile.addRequestHeader(["X-HTTP-Method-Override", "GET", "Authorization", "GoogleLogin auth=" + authId]);
 
	//debugging trace of the customer headers
	trace("_customHeaders = " + gProfile._customHeaders);		
 
	//authorization and profile retrieval address
	gProfile.sendAndLoad("https://www.google.com/analytics/feeds/accounts/default", gProfile, "POST");
}
 
String.prototype.replace = function(searchStr, replaceStr):String {	
    var arr:Array = this.split(searchStr);
    return arr.join(replaceStr);
};
 
gProfile.onData = function(ret:String) {
    trace("----->" + ret);
	//everytime you retrieve data/profile from google analytics, always add the Authorization header as this will 
	// be used to authenticate your account.	
	gData.addRequestHeader(["X-HTTP-Method-Override", "GET", "Authorization", "GoogleLogin auth=" + myAuthID]);
	trace("_customHeaders = " + gData._customHeaders);		
 
	//here is the string to query analytics data from a certain project, ids is the table/proj id to retrieve the metrics
	// you can read more from analytics developer api docs on how to manipulate your data retrieval...
	var str:String = "&ids=ga:1234567&dimensions=ga:source,ga:medium&metrics=ga:visits,ga:pageviews";
	gData.sendAndLoad("https://www.google.com/analytics/feeds/data?start-date=2009-10-01&end-date=2009-10-31" + str, gData, "POST");
 
}
 
gData.onData = function (ret:String){
 
	trace("======" + ret );
 
}
 
gProfile.onHTTPStatus = function(httpStatus:Number) {
       logs.text += "\r" + httpStatus ;
    }

Any suggestions and comments are very welcome.

Update: I’d like to add that this only works on your local machine, if you upload this to a live server or website, you will need a crossdomain.xml from www.google.com to allow your site.

Sources:
http://meidell.dk/archives/2005/12/30/http-authentication-with-flash/
http://code.google.com/p/ga-api-http-samples/source/browse/trunk/src/v2/accountFeed.sh

I was following the tutorial from Sun in creating my first JNI and calling my compiled C++ library, I was stuck in the last part where this error popped out whenever I tried to invoke

java HelloWorld

the error was…

java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: no HelloWorld in java.library.path
          at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:1709)
          at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary0(Runtime.java:823)
          at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(System.java:1030)
          at HelloWorld.<clinit>(HelloWorld.java:<line number>)
Could not find the main class: HelloWorld. Program will exit.

one way of fixing this is to include the current location of your newly compiled shared library (ex. HelloWorld.so). I’m using Ubuntu linux,so to include the current folder where your “.so” file is located, invoke…

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

or you can also do …

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

another way is to define the location when running the program…

java -Djava.library.path=. HelloWorld

this will instruct java to locate the native library in the current location. Now call your program again and this time it work execute your native program.

It’s possible that when you execute your program after doing the above steps, another error will come out. This happened to me and the culprit was when I compiled the cpp file. The error would look something like…

java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: <library location>: <library location>: only ET_DYN and ET_EXEC can be loaded
        at java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(Native Method)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary0(ClassLoader.java:1778)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:1674)
        at java.lang.Runtime.load0(Runtime.java:770)
        at java.lang.System.load(System.java:1005)
        at HelloWorld.<clinit>(HelloWorld.java:16)

to fix this, include the “-shared” option when compiling the cpp file.

g++ -shared HelloWorld.cpp -o HelloWorld.so -I /path/to/your/java/include/folder/where/jni.h/is/located -I /path/to/your/java/include/linux/folder/

Do not include the “-c” option, this will skip the linking stage.

e.g.
SELECT value FROM my_table WHERE my_id IN (’1, 2, 3′) is NOT equivalent to SELECT value FROM my_table WHERE my_id IN (’1′, ’2′, ’3′)

So, if you have a table containing values 1 to 3, the first query will return only 1 while the second query will return all values; 1, 2 and 3.

I Googled around and found out that MySQL does not have a native equivalent of PHP’s explode() function. Crap… I had to do it the hard war and create a MySQL stored function to ‘explode’ the values from its delimiter, query the right value from the other table using the exploded IDs, concat them back together and return them as a string.

Below is the function I was able to patch together from different codes I found in the MySQL forum. I added comments below as to make things clearer. I named the function splitAndTranslate since that’s what I was really trying to implement. You can make up your own modifications and function name.

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DELIMITER //
DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS `splitAndTranslate` //
CREATE FUNCTION splitAndTranslate(str TEXT, delim VARCHAR(124))
RETURNS TEXT
DETERMINISTIC
BEGIN
	DECLARE i INT DEFAULT 0;	-- total number of delimiters
	DECLARE ctr INT DEFAULT 0;	-- counter for the loop
	DECLARE str_len INT;		-- string length,self explanatory
	DECLARE out_str text DEFAULT '';	-- return string holder
	DECLARE temp_str text DEFAULT '';	-- temporary string holder
  	DECLARE temp_val VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT '';	-- temporary string holder for query
 
	-- get length
	SET str_len=LENGTH(str);	
 
	SET i = (LENGTH(str)-LENGTH(REPLACE(str, delim, '')))/LENGTH(delim) + 1;	
		-- get total number delimeters and add 1
		-- add 1 since total separated values are 1 more than the number of delimiters
 
	-- start of while loop
	WHILE(ctr<i) DO
		-- add 1 to the counter, which will also be used to get the value of the string
		SET ctr=ctr+1; 
 
		-- get value separated by delimiter using ctr as the index
		SET temp_str = REPLACE(SUBSTRING(SUBSTRING_INDEX(str, delim, ctr), LENGTH(SUBSTRING_INDEX(str, delim,ctr - 1)) + 1), delim, '');
 
		-- query real value and insert into temporary value holder, temp_str contains the exploded ID    		
		SELECT <real_value_column> INTO temp_val FROM <my_table> WHERE <table_id>=temp_str;
 
		-- concat real value into output string separated by delimiter
    		SET out_str=CONCAT(out_str, temp_val, ',');
	END WHILE;
	-- end of while loop
 
	-- trim delimiter from end of string
	SET out_str=TRIM(TRAILING delim FROM out_str);
	RETURN(out_str);	-- return 
 
END//

After creating the stored function, you can now use it normally like any MySQL function inside a query. So what I now do with the new function is…

SELECT splitAndTranslate( g.comma_separated_ids ) real_values FROM my_group_table g;

Thanks to Chris Stubben in the MySQL Forum, I used and modified his code to fit my need.

1. Login as root, you can also use “su” though I prefer to login as root.
2. apt-get install sun-java5-jdk
• This will install Java 2 SDK (1.5), ubuntu will start downloading packages that are not found in your system.
3. apt-get install tomcat5.5 tomcat5.5-admin tomcat5.5-webapps
• Of course jakarta-tomcat 5.5, I’m using 5.5 since this supports java 1.5
4. Now here’s the tricky part, location for Java and jakarta-tomcat
• Java’s location is in /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun
• Jakarta-Tomcat’s location is in /usr/share/tomcat5.5
• We will need these location for the export configurations to be written in the .bashrc
5. Now, open .bashrc in your favorite text editor, I used vim
6. At the end of the file add these:
   
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun
export CLASSPATH="/usr/share/tomcat5.5/common/lib/jsp-api.jar;/usr/share/tomcat5.5/common/lib/servlet-api.jar"
export CATALINA_HOME=/usr/share/tomcat5.5

7. Now save the file and exit, then log back in. This is required for the export script to be set.
8. Before starting the server, the default port the installer set is 8180 instead of the 8080 port that Tomcat uses. To change this, go to /usr/share/tomcat5.5/conf/ and open the file server.xml. Locate the line:
   
...Connector port="8180" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192"...

   and change 8180 to 8080. Save and exit. Now your ready to test the server.
9. Now try the server if it starts, /usr/share/tomcat5.5/bin/startup.sh You should see something like this:
   
Using CATALINA_BASE: /usr/share/tomcat5.5
Using CATALINA_HOME: /usr/share/tomcat5.5
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /usr/share/tomcat5.5/temp
Using JRE_HOME: /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun

10. Shutting down the server is just /usr/share/tomcat5.5/bin/shutdown.sh
11. Now, during installation of tomcat, Ubuntu automatically adds a startup and shutdown script for ubuntu to use as it starts up or shutsdown in /etc/init.d/ folder. Filename is tomcat5.5. As the server finishes starting up, you will notice tomcat isn’t running at all. One possible problem is that the script didn’t use the correct path for the java 2 sdk. You can check the boot log in /var/log/. Check if during boot up, tomcat5.5 encountered problems. For the problem stated above, you can fix this by going to /etc/default/ and edit the tomcat5.5 file. Locate the line:
    
    #JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/j2sdk1.4-sun

    remove the ‘#’ and change it to…
    
    JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun

    or wherever your java directory is.After that, restart the server and see if tomcat was successfully started.
    
    /etc/init.d/tomcat5.5 status

Edit: Problem encountered:

• Tomcat does not load in Ubuntu 8.04

Found a little problem loading Tomcat 5.5 under Ubuntu 8.04, it either fails or white screen just appears. I don’t know what happened from 6.04 to 8.04 but once I compared the init.d/tomcat5.5 startup script from 6.04 and 8.04, there WERE changes to the scripts. I replaced the new tomcat5.5 script in 8.04 with the old one from 6.04 and the server started properly after a server restart. I don’t know why but this may have something to do with permissions and I have yet to trace the script.

• java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.jasper.tagplugins.jstl.If

• The problem here is that the above name is incomplete… what it should have been is org.apache.jasper.tagplugins.jstl.core.*
• Now, to fix the problem, locate /var/lib/tomcat5.5/webapps/jsp-examples/WEB-INF/tagPlugins.xml and open it with your text editor… I used vim. Now edit each line of code that has org.apache.jasper.tagplugins.jstl in it and add “.core” after jstl. What you will see after editing the code will be…

org.apache.taglibs.standard.tag.rt.core.IfTag

org.apache.jasper.tagplugins.jstl.core.If

org.apache.taglibs.standard.tag.common.core.ChooseTag

org.apache.jasper.tagplugins.jstl.core.Choose

org.apache.taglibs.standard.tag.rt.core.WhenTag

org.apache.jasper.tagplugins.jstl.core.When

org.apache.taglibs.standard.tag.common.core.OtherwiseTag

org.apache.jasper.tagplugins.jstl.core.Otherwise

org.apache.taglibs.standard.tag.rt.core.ForEachTag

org.apache.jasper.tagplugins.jstl.core.ForEach

• SEVERE: The scratchDir you specified: [folder_path] is unusable.

• Sidenote: took me 2 days to figure out why this was happening (X_x)
• Based from the Catalina logs, the folders under webapps was not accessible by tomcat5.
• Now looking under all processes running ( ps command ), most bootup services were running under root (mysql, apache, etc ) but tomcat5 was not.
• If I start tomcat5 when I logged into the console as root, the problem disappears. This lead me to believe this might have been the Tomcat5 user was not given the correct privileges.
• Work-around 1: Elevate Tomcat5 user to root access level.
• Work-around 2: Go to /etc/init.d/ and open Tomcat5.5 under any text editor ( I used vim ). Locate the line TOMCAT5_USER=tomcat55 and change it to TOMCAT5_USER=root . Restart your server or you can also execute the restart command for Tomcat5.5 in init.d folder

sources:

• Ubuntu/Drapper Remaster
• linux journal
• Ubuntu Install Tomcat
• Net Admin Tools