I’ve spent a lot of time programming to get control of a thing using webthings APIs in Python. I’d like to share the getting-started process but I don’t see community blogs or how-tos. Is there a platform for these kinds of articles? I could put it on my own blog but it would be more useful here, where people are looking for this kind of help.
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I’d like to read your article. I’m still wallowing in “how to get started programming WebThing APIs in Python” mode.
I agree that articles like this would be more useful here, rather than on some unrelated site.
What you could do is post to your own blog and then post a link here (or open an issue on the webthing-python repo). I’d be happy to include a link in the README. That might be the highest visibility, as it would also be visible on the PyPI page.
Also, @wlarmon, is there anything I can help with? I’ve created several examples (and a blog post) which may help.
- Blog: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/05/creating-web-things-with-python-node-js-and-java/ (maybe a bit outdated, but still useful)
- Examples:
- MPD
- Photo frame
- micro:bit (this is JS, but the API is essentially the same)
@twobraids also wrote up a long series of blog posts last year, some of which use the Python webthings library (or pywot, his layer on top).
@mrstegeman, thanks for your reply. I’ve already read your blog post about adding a web thing wrapper around MPD. (I have a tab open to Web of Things Articles at all times and keep checking to see if any new ones have been added.) My problem with the MPD example is I’ve never used MPD so it was difficult to wrap my head around it. Ditto for micro:bit
I’ve read @twobraids excellent series of blog posts several times and really appreciate them. But the first series of Python examples are written around the Weather Underground free weather API and the free version no longer exists. I know about the Open Weather Map API but I couldn’t wrap my head around learning modern Web Things Python and translating from Weather Underground API to Open Weather Map’s API. And @twobraids indicated that his pywot library was unfinished and we should wait until he announces that it is finished.
I hadn’t seen your Photo Frame example for viewing a directory of JPEGs before. This might be more approachable to me. I know how to look at a directory of JPEGs.
Tutorials are greatly appreciated (!) but it is difficult when tutorials teach two unrelated complicated things at once. If you don’t already know at least one of the complicated things first.
Thanks, I’ll post it in my own blog. I would still suggest that Mozilla add a blog or how-to article feature; it’s common in virtually every other community in which I participate.
We have online docs which you can contribute to on GitHub and a wiki if you’d be interested in contributing to those.
For the future we’re working on a more polished central developer portal as part of a Mozilla-wide effort to provide developer documentation.
@wlarmon feel free to file issues on the webthing library repo (or ask here) if you need assistance. I’m always happy to help.