Shameless self promotion here:

I created a rails app, WeeMap, for rating/tagging/commenting on maps. Right now it's very simple, and user registrations are invitation only. I could handle a few more users though, so if you're interested, reply here and I'll see what I can do about invites.

Hi there. I have played with it briefly (more to come, but I am out most of the w/e). This is looking great! And I love how it has changed so much in the last 24 hours alone!

Can't wait for the tags to become usable as filter. Quick suggestions: Make the landing page reflect if one is logged in or maybe even point directly to the maps in that case.

"Nutrition info" is hilarious :)  Keep up the good work.

Love that you used Ruby for it.  :)  But since you're being shameless and promoting: Ramaze, another [better?] Ruby web framework.

Thanks for the heads up on ramaze. I'll check it out. As for the rapid-fire updates, I pretty much spent my entire weekend last week working on the app! It took me a few tries to get the deployment down, but I'm getting pretty quick with it.

I have a question about an API bug (should probably be in it's own thread, but whatever) the game data returned with the example api query for game 77024 has an extrah http://www.weewar.com in it: <url>http://weewar.comhttp://battleground3.weewar.com/game/77024</url>

thanks for pointing it out. We'll see to have that fixed with the next update

Speaking of updates, I give you WeeMap 0.0.4

care to spread the alpha test sugar, bm5k?

if you are still looking for alpha testers, i'm game

I'll need your weewar screen names to create the invite codes.

BM5k: "Pistos" for me, of course.

pistos your code is [removed]

I've set up weemap@bustikated.net for all your future invitation requests. Send a message with your weewar screen name, and I'll reply with your invitation code.

If you get a mail delivery failure notice, ignore it. For some reason my server is delivering the messages, and sending out failure notes!

BM5k: http://weemap.bustikated.net/users/new/ looks sorta broken.

hrm that's not good  I'll check it out

All better now. I was screwing around in Server Admin... sorry about that.

mine is kersplat - sending an email request right now

BM5k: "The change you wanted was rejected."  Check your server logs, I guess.  And BTW, I can't access my Weewar API token, it is no longer being displayed in the ACcount page on weewar.com.

Looking into the logs now... Might still be something screwed up in Server Admin. As far as the API token goes, they're used to let users have the same name in weemap as weewar, it makes keeping track of people easier.

Well, I hope it's optional, because, as I said, I can't get mine.  :)  (I used to, though.)

Pistos, the API token is on its own page now - click on You at the top and then Manager API Key from your profile.

kersplat: So it is!  So it is.  Thank you.

Now if only they could update the text on this page: http://weewar.com/api

Pistos: Glad that you found it. I reset the app too, it looks like the problem you were having earlier was session-related.

Ha yeah, updated documentation is always helpful. Glad you found it.

BM5k, so far this is fantastic. It's working perfectly for me. IMO, there was a big hole in the custom map functionality that this fills very nicely.

The one thing that is a little frustrating is the Home link - it takes me out of the system and I have to log back in. I would expect it to take me to the first page after I was logged in. Not a major issue, but catches me off guard.

BM5k: Still getting that error.

It looks like tags are dropped when adding a new map. I added Lake Wee War (25155) and added the tags (land, air, sea, lake) and submitted a comment. Everything is there except for the tags - Can't search for those tags either.

BM5k: Okay, it looks like the problem was browser specific.  I was able to activate from Firefox.

kersplat you have to press enter to save the tags

Pistos: what browser gave you trouble?

Opera 9.50 beta 2 on Linux.

I do believe I'm accepting cookies, so... dunno what the problem could be.

Could you submit a ticket to my lighthouse? If you can, include your error message and I'll look into it.

Crap, sorry about that - it even says "Enter to save"! Sorry about that.

as far as the home link, that is something I'm working on right now. It shouldnt end your session tho, so you can click maps from that page without logging back in (I think...)

the interface is 100% up in the air right now... I've been doing just enough "design" to make everything work.

I've been sitting on this project since the end of January. My old web host (godaddy) had crappy rails support. When I couldn't get this to run on their system it was kind of the last straw. So I bought my own server, and finally got around to working on this again.

BM5k: I can't seem to sign into lighthouse.  (Yes, I know that's neither your fault nor your problem.  :) )

Not a problem. I've entered a ticket for this.

@kersplat thanks for the kind words, btw.

Absolutely, you've done a great job and hopefully more people are able to take advantage of it.

The site basically doesn't work under Opera [9.50 beta 2].  Maybe it has something to do with how you issue controller action redirects or something.  I always get that error page for nearly every POSTed action.

I haven't had a chance too look into it much more, I'm not using any "special" POST calls. I don't have a copy of Opera to test under, but I do plan on looking into it. Hopefully (for me) it is a well documented Rails/Opera issue, and not an "I did something retarded" issue...

We were out most of the afternoon, and I've been working for the last 4 hours to bring you WeeMap 0.1

Your latest post has me thinking that rails' way of handling POST calls is to create a hidden form field with the name method and the value post, and then look for that. IIRC this is to overcome browsers that don't properly handle specific POST method URLs. Could be something with the Opera beta breaks this?

Pistos, I've downloaded and installed Opera 9.50 beta 2 for OS X and am having no issues? Is there anyway to reset your browser's cache/delete cookies?

I've got a live-boot Ubuntu CD at work, I'll snag it and try Opera under linux if you continue to have issues.

For more shameless self promotion, I threw together a quick (~90 sec) screencast showing off the new version, in Opera.

Nice.  I admire your work ethic, and thank you for looking into an issue with a minority browser.  :)  I'll triple check my cookie settings and stuff.  (I do browse with some strict settings.)

If you could tell me any information from the logs, that might help.  The error message I see is:

---------

The change you wanted was rejected.

Maybe you tried to change something you didn't have access to.

-----------

And this is on this URI: http://weemap.bustikated.net/session

Um... okay NOW it's working.  And... I didn't really do anything.  :P

But let's see if it will work at home.

The error I was seeing earlier (about a day ago) was invalid authentication token, which is stored in a cookie and passed with every request to the server. I had to re-start the server when I deployed the latest version, maybe that helped?

And as far as work ethic, it wouldn't do to have 10% of my user base not be able to use the app with their browser of choice, would it

heh.  :)  Well, I'm trying to get signed onto Lighthouse so I can file tickets properly...

But until then, let me mention that the tilde in the map name of http://weemap.bustikated.net/maps/13878 is not displaying properly on that page.

Good catch, turns out, the API is spitting out this: <name>El Pantano Pequeño</name> which isn't valid xml, so it's throwing this error: 

error on line 2 at column 23: Entity 'ntilde' not defined.

My plan is to eventually allow the map creators to edit the name/description of their maps. 

Damn the forum handles the character fine... lol figures.

The title that is displayed http://weemap.bustikated.net/maps/13878 is exactly what the API returns...

Yeah. Tried fixing it manually in the DB, but it's still not quite right.

Probably not a big deal since I don't imagine a big percentage of maps will have non-English characters.

Just curious: Are you on Freenode or anything?

Hrm... looks like the Lighthouse login problem might ALSO be Opera-specific.  Crumbs.

Lighthouse is another rails app, so I bet they use a very similar system of session management.

I plan on putting up a forum soon, but right now I've got a paying project that's gunna be taking some time.

I do still have room for testers though!

if you are still initing people to weemap, i would like to join, if you don't need to be a weewar pro member to do so

Nope, you just need to send an email to weemap@bustikated.net with your weewar username, and I'll send you an invite code.

Should probably have put that on the home page... Hrm... It will be in the next revision.

BM5k: I think I've uncovered that it is a known issue with 9.50b2 that having a certain cookie setting toggled on caused Opera to always reject new cookies no matter what.  I think that's what was happening to me, because your site, Lighthouse and then a third site caused me problems.  So no need to spend time scouring your code for the login problems.  :)

Cool! Thanks for the follow up!

Ok, if you've sent in an invite request and didn't get a response, it's not because I'm ignoring you, it's because I'm a moron and f**d up my email server. All's well now, but I'm afraid I lost a couple days data. I am still accepting requests.

Ok, I signed up, and I will give feedback eventually.

First thought: I only see 5 maps at a time? Can we not set this to like 50?

And: any chance you could combine forces with Pistos and make his tool to download and upload maps available from your site. This would then become the ultimate map managing tool

I am up for any collaboration efforts.  And since we both develop in Ruby, interfacing should be a snap.  :)

Just a lilttle background: Right now, the images for the maps are loaded off the weewar servers, so in order to reduce server hits, I've set the per-page to 5. I fully intend to cache the images locally in a later rev. When that's set up, the per-page listing will probably default to 10 or 15, and be user changeable.

I'm definitely up with collaboration! pistos, send an email to weemap@bustikated.net, and I'll reply via my personal email.

I've created a bookmarklet for jumping from a Weewar map info page to that map in WeeMap. Drag this text to your bookmarks tool bar/otherwise add this too your bookmarks Jump to Map. When you're on a map page (i.e. here) click the bookmark to open a new window, which will show you the map page from WeeMap.

Further suggestions:

1) the pictures of the maps are skewed. are you using the preview provided by weewar.com?

2) you should predefine all available tags, so that user need to chose from them. will simplify the search in future (1/1, 1vs1, 1-on-1 etc. are all the same.). dont let the user write them. Also, would be nice if we could see the tags outside that editbox.

May I ask how many testers you got? Do you think this could be popular in the future?

• The large map pictures are skewed. This was an attempt to scale large maps to still fit well with the rest of the layout. Unfortunately, it didn't work out so well. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to handle this.
• Not quite sure I agree that users shouldn't be able to create tags. Have you tried searching by tag(s), I may implement this type of tag-list on the maps themselves
• There are more features planned, not all of them 100% map related (might get split into a second project)
• The main reason I've limited the sign ups is I'm not quite sure how my server will handle lots of load. (Mac mini 2x2ghz 1gig ram)
• I've only had about a dozen testers, and not a lot of traffic. I am pretty much sending anyone who asks an invitation code. Ideally I'd love 100 or so users, total, for testing.
• Of course I'd love for my little project to become popular. I am learning ruby/rails and this is my first public project, and my first ever app that interfaces via api with another app/site. I'm quite happy with the results so far, even if it's still very simple.
2008-05-21 11:34:26.0

. o O (I wish tangler supported RSS feeds...)

This one's for the Weewar dev's. Another API bug: Users should be accessible via ID. Making the API call rely on user names is bad, since usernames can change without API-dependent apps knowing. Ex: if use Bob (user id 5) changes his name to Rob, and I try http://weewar.com/api1/users/bob I'll get an error.

The workaround I have involves the current user list API call, which returns a LOT of data. This call has user ids and names, so I can update users by id. However, if I could simply make a call to http://weewar.com/api1/users/5 instead, I'd get the proper info.

Hope this makes sense.

I agree! I think I ran into that problem when I was trying to write my unpreferred list greasemonkey script. There should be an option to get users by ID.

Turns out rebooting my server to fix open directory issues was a bad idea. It never came back online. Down till at least tomorrow.

This issue is so obvious that it was raised from day one when the API was released.  No dice on a rectification to date.

We'll fix this asap

Cool; great; thanks!  :)

Very cool!

Just an FYI server is still down (another reason for the closed test = reliability)

Just because server is down doesn't mean development has stopped: a few new screenshots.