Resource Forks in the cloud - Macintosh Garden

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2013, December 5 - 4:08am

nil0bject

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Joined: 2012 Nov 14

Resource Forks in the cloud

Hey everyone,
I've started a project to store resource fork data in a database with a web/api frontend.
I will be using this for personal projects, but I'm wondering if there are others who might find this useful.
The frontend is currently hosted at http://resourceforks.herokuapp.com/ and an alpha build has been deployed there.

At the moment usage is limited to GET and POST requests for these resources:
index: http://resourceforks.herokuapp.com/resource_forks.json
show: http://resourceforks.herokuapp.com/resource_forks/:id.json
index: http://resourceforks.herokuapp.com/resource_types.json
show: http://resourceforks.herokuapp.com/resource_types/:id.json
index: http://resourceforks.herokuapp.com/resources.json
show: http://resourceforks.herokuapp.com/resources/:id.json

I still haven't tweaked the JSON responses, so there's a lot of data in them that will be removed.
I have also started building human readable views for the data, as everything is currently base64 encoded to maintain the encodings.

Anyway, let me know if any of this interests someone.
Thanks

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2013, December 5 - 12:14pm

nil0bject

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Joined: 2012 Nov 14

I've added the human "readable" views.
eg.
List all uploaded resource forks:
http://resourceforks.herokuapp.com/resource_forks
Show all resource types for resource fork 1('Override Data 1'):
http://resourceforks.herokuapp.com/resource_forks/1
Show all resources in resource type 8('desc'):
http://resourceforks.herokuapp.com/resource_types/8
Show the data for resource 686(128: 'Earth')
http://resourceforks.herokuapp.com/resources/686

2013, December 6 - 2:51am

rlawson

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Joined: 2009 Sep 3

This is cool but I have no idea of what you are planning to do with it?

2013, December 6 - 6:39am

nil0bject

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Joined: 2012 Nov 14

My goals
1. Preservation of resource forks!
With the accompanying carbon application, anyone can upload a resource fork or download and recreate the resource fork.

2. Browser based ResEdit.
I've been thinking about ways to do resource templates.
- PICT resources drawn on a html5 canvas
- Hex resources parsed and made editable with html form inputs

3. Native and browser based apps that interact and use the uploaded data.
I've been planning for a while to recreate many classic mac games wih html5 and javascript. If the data is already available through an API, then that's a third of the work done!

4. Nostalgia

2013, December 24 - 2:07am

(Reply to #4) #5

nil0bject

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Joined: 2012 Nov 14

Merry Christmas everyone!
I've built and uploaded a developer preview of the app which can upload and download resource forks from the online database.
Mac OS 8 and 9 (classic): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5622341/ResourceForks/1.0.0dev/Resou...
OS X (PPC): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5622341/ResourceForks/1.0.0dev/Resou...

The interface is a bit rough, but I'm hoping that you will find this app useful/interesting and test it for me and provide feedback so I can further develop and improve it.

To upload a file:
- 'Load ResourceFork...' and select a file with a resource fork.
- 'POST Data' uploads the file to the database

To check which files are uploaded:
'Refresh Online' will list the files under the 'Online' folder

To download a file:
'Download...' will retrieve the resource fork in memory, but won't save to disk
'Recreate ResourceFork...' will save to disk

Enjoy and have a good holiday!

2013, December 23 - 5:04pm

nil0bject

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Joined: 2012 Nov 14

As an early christmas present for you all, I've just built and uploaded a developer preview of the software that can upload and download files from the database. If someone could test it and report back to me, that'd be great.

Mac OS 8 and 9 (classic): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5622341/ResourceForks/1.0.0dev/Resou...
Mac OS X (PPC): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5622341/ResourceForks/1.0.0dev/Resou...

The interface is still pretty rough. Basically:
- 'Load ResourceFork...' will load a file into memory
- 'Recreate ResourceFork...' will save the resource fork stored in memory back onto disk
- 'Post Data' will upload the resource fork to the online database
- 'Refresh Online...' will refresh the list of files which are stored online
- 'Download...' will download the selected online file (nb. it asks for a place to save the file, but that is only for getting a filename. To save the file, use 'Recreate ResourceFork...')

Again, the interface is rough, so pressing a button without selecting the desired 'Local' or 'Offline' file may crash the app.

I hope you enjoy this experiment and hopefully, if there's enough interest, I will continue to improve and develop it!

Merry Christmas!