Archive of the old forum

[omz]

I have finally cleaned up the data from the old forum a bit, and turned it into a very basic website:

https://omz-software.com/forum/archive

As I said, it's quite basic, but it should be fast and search engine-friendly. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost the data from 2023/24, but there's still about 10 years worth of discussions about Pythonista (and Editorial) in there that I thought were worth preserving.

If anyone wants to do something more interesting with the data, I've also uploaded a JSON version to this repository.

I've tried to remove all the spam, but it's possible that I've missed some.

[mmccthomas]

Thanks Ole, I’m spending many happy hours browsing the earlier questions.
As the links can no longer work, is there any way to add the numeric id to the subject line to allow finding referenced subjects?

[omz]

That's a good point, I guess I should map internal links to their archived versions. That shouldn't be too hard to do, just not sure when I'll get to it...

[mmccthomas]

Hi Ole, do you have a suggested way to search this archived forum? Google doesn’t really find it.
Best regards,
Chris Thomas

[mmccthomas]

Hi Ole,
Thanks so much for the archive.
I’ve create a simple GUI to more easily browse and search the archive.
Hope it’s useful to someone besides me!

# This Pythonista GUI allows simple browsing
# and searching of the recently released  forum archives
# it uses the json dump of the archive to list and search
# The web links in the json dump are used to fetch 
# individual pages from omz-software.com

# create a view with scrollable textview beside
# webview
# hold both open permanently
# selecting touchview item changes web address
# Chris Thomas April 2025
# https://github.com/mmccthomas

from time import sleep
import json
import ui

BASE_ADDR = 'https://omz-software.com/forum/archive'
JSON_FILE = 'JSON.json'

class WebSelection():
    def __init__(self):
        self.selection = ''
        self.offset = 0
        self.search_text = ''
        self.get_data()
        self.setup_views()
        self.run()
        
    def get_data(self):
        """ get json data dump
        find topic_id number
        and link to web page on omz-software.com
        """
        with open(JSON_FILE, 'r') as f:
            data = json.load(f)
        topics = data['topics']
        self.topic_list = [f'{topic["tid"]}, {topic["title"]}'
                           for topic in topics]
        self.topic_address = {topic["tid"]: f'{BASE_ADDR}/{topic["slug"].replace("/", "_")}.html'
                              for topic in topics}
        
    def setup_views(self):
        """ Create GUI """
        
        lb = ui.ButtonItem(image=ui.Image.named('iob:skip_forward_32'),
                           enabled=True,
                           action=self.to_end)
        lb1 = ui.ButtonItem(image=ui.Image.named('iob:arrow_right_a_32'),
                            enabled=True,
                            action=self.forward_page)
        lb2 = ui.ButtonItem(image=ui.Image.named('iob:arrow_left_a_32'),
                            enabled=True,
                            action=self.back_page)
        lb3 = ui.ButtonItem(image=ui.Image.named('iob:ios7_search_strong_32'),
                            enabled=True,
                            action=self.search)
        lb4 = ui.ButtonItem(image=ui.Image.named('iob:home_32'),
                            enabled=True,
                            action=self.reset_list)
                           
        self.w, self.h = ui.get_screen_size()
        self.main = ui.View(frame=(0, 0, self.w, self.h))
        self.main.left_button_items = [lb4, lb3, lb, lb1, lb2]
        self.main.content_size = (self.w / 2, self.h - 120)
        # Webview container
        self.wv = ui.WebView(frame=(self.w / 2, 0, *self.main.content_size),
                             bordered=True,
                             border_width=2)
        self.wv.load_url('https://omz-software.com/forum/archive/')
        
        # List to select post
        self.t = ui.TableView(
                              frame=(0, 0,  *self.main.content_size),
                              text_color='black',
                              bordered=True,
                              border_width=2)
        self.t.row_height = 30
        self.no_visible_rows = self.h / self.t.row_height - 5
        data = ui.ListDataSource(items=self.topic_list)
        data.action = self.text_input
        self.t.data_source = self.t.delegate = data
        
        # search box
        self.search_view = ui.TextField(
                frame=(self.w / 2 - 400, 0, 400, 50),
                name='textfield',
                bordered=True,
                border_width=2,
                border_color='red',
                autocapitalization_type=ui.AUTOCAPITALIZE_NONE)
        self.search_view.anchor_point = (0, 0)
        self.search_view.action = self.input_text
        
        self.main.add_subview(self.t)
        self.main.add_subview(self.wv)
        self.main.add_subview(self.search_view)
        self.search_view.send_to_back()
        self.main.present('sheet')
         
    def text_input(self, sender):
        self.selection = sender.items[sender.selected_row]
        self.selected_row = sender.selected_row
        return self.selection, self.selected_row
        
    def scroll_to(self, line):
        self.t.content_offset = (0, line * self.t.row_height)
        
    def to_end(self, sender):
        end = len(self.topic_list) - self.no_visible_rows
        self.scroll_to(end)
        
    def forward_page(self, sender):
        if self.offset < len(self.topic_list) - self.no_visible_rows:
            self.offset += self.no_visible_rows
            self.scroll_to(self.offset)
    
    def back_page(self, sender):
        if self.offset > self.no_visible_rows:
            self.offset -= self.no_visible_rows
            self.scroll_to(self.offset)
        
    def search(self, sender):
        self.search_view.bring_to_front()
        self.search_view.placeholder = 'search terms A B = any, A+B = all'
        
    def input_text(self, sender):
        self.search_text = sender.text.strip()
        sender.send_to_back()
        terms = self.search_text
        possibles = []
        if '+' in terms:
            term_list = terms.split('+')
            for topic in self.topic_list:
                if all([term.lower() in topic.lower() for term in term_list]):
                    possibles.append(topic)
        else:
            term_list = terms.split(' ')
            for topic in self.topic_list:
                if any([term.lower() in topic.lower() for term in term_list]):
                   possibles.append(topic)

        self.t.data_source = self.t.delegate = ui.ListDataSource(items=possibles)
        self.t.data_source.action = self.text_input
        self.t.reload()
        
    def reset_list(self, sender):
        self.t.data_source = self.t.delegate = ui.ListDataSource(items=self.topic_list)
        self.t.data_source.action = self.text_input
        self.t.reload()
               
    def did_scroll(self):
        offset = int(self.t.content_offset[1] // self.t.row_height)
        if offset != self.offset:
           self.offset = offset
           return offset
        else:
            return None
            
    def run(self):
       while True:
           sleep(0.1)
           self.did_scroll()
           if self.selection != '':
              topic_no, topic_query, *a = self.selection.split(',')
              item = self.topic_address[topic_no]
              self.wv.load_url(item)
              self.selection = ''


if __name__ == '__main__':
    WebSelection()

[gmh-surrey]

Hi Chris,
As a novice programmer brand new to python and Pythonista, I have found this very helpful, both as an example, and as a way to access past questions about ui implementation.

Thank you.

Gaius

[mmccthomas]

You’re very welcome.
Welcome to the Pythonista family!

[onemorequest]

your link here JSON Version is not what is expected but i do find the json file at repository/main/code

btw i have not been able to download the json file as yet the iphone/ pythonista hangs.

thinking about streaming but have not had time to attempt. will be back when i get that far.

[mmccthomas]

Hi one more request,
Trying to VIEW the json file in Pythonista will either take a VERY long time or will crash. You can view using quicklook in Files app. loading the json file is no problem ,however.
I used the json file to index the headers and recover url address for each item. I found it too much trouble to recover and reformat the archive text from the json file, so having the headers in a scrollable/searchable list, and a webview beside it has suited my use. The code is above. Hope that helps