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• How to create a widget – Introducing the Piwik Platform

  4 septembre 2014, par Thomas Steur — Development

  This is the next post of our blog series where we introduce the capabilities of the Piwik platform (our previous post was How to create a scheduled task in Piwik). This time you’ll learn how to create a new widget. For this tutorial you will need to have basic knowledge of PHP.

  What is a widget in Piwik ?

  Widgets can be added to your dashboards or exported via a URL to embed it on any page. Most widgets in Piwik represent a report but a widget can display anything. For instance a RSS feed of your corporate news. If you prefer to have most of your business relevant data in one dashboard why not display the number of offline sales, the latest stock price, or other key metrics together with your analytics data ?

  Getting started

  In this series of posts, we assume that you have already set up your development environment. If not, visit the Piwik Developer Zone where you’ll find the tutorial Setting up Piwik.

  To summarize the things you have to do to get setup :

  • Install Piwik (for instance via git).
  • Activate the developer mode : ./console development:enable --full.
  • Generate a plugin : ./console generate:plugin --name="MyWidgetPlugin". There should now be a folder plugins/MyWidgetPlugin.
  • And activate the created plugin under Settings => Plugins.

  Let’s start creating a widget

  We start by using the Piwik Console to create a widget template :

  ./console generate:widget

  The command will ask you to enter the name of the plugin the widget should belong to. I will simply use the above chosen plugin name “MyWidgetPlugin”. It will ask you for a widget category as well. You can select any existing category, for instance “Visitors”, “Live !” or “Actions”, or you can define a new category, for instance your company name. There should now be a file plugins/MyWidgetPlugin/Widgets.php which contains already some examples to get you started easily :

  class Widgets extends \Piwik\Plugin\Widgets
  {
      /**
       * Here you can define the category the widget belongs to. You can reuse any existing widget category or define your own category.
       * @var string
       */
      protected $category = 'ExampleCompany';
   
      /**
       * Here you can add one or multiple widgets. You can add a widget by calling the method "addWidget()" and pass the name of the widget as well as a method name that should be called to render the widget. The method can be defined either directly here in this widget class or in the controller in case you want to reuse the same action for instance in the menu etc.
       */
      protected function init()
      {
          $this->addWidget('Example Widget Name', $method = 'myExampleWidget');
          $this->addWidget('Example Widget 2',    $method = 'myExampleWidget', $params = array('myparam' => 'myvalue'));
      }
   
      /**
       * This method renders a widget as defined in "init()". It's on you how to generate the content of the widget. As long as you return a string everything is fine. You can use for instance a "Piwik\View" to render a twig template. In such a case don't forget to create a twig template (eg. myViewTemplate.twig) in the "templates" directory of your plugin.
       *
       * @return string
       */
      public function myExampleWidget()
      {
          $view = new View('@MyWidgetPlugin/myViewTemplate');
          return $view->render();
      }
  }
  Télécharger

  As you might have noticed in the generated template we put emphasis on adding comments to explain you directly how to continue and where to get more information. Ideally this saves you some time and you don’t even have to search for more information on our developer pages. The category is defined in the property $category and can be changed at any time. Starting from Piwik 2.6.0 the generator will directly create a translation key if necessary to make it easy to translate the category into any language. Translations will be a topic in one of our future posts until then you can explore this feature on our Internationalization guide.

  A simple example

  We can define one or multiple widgets in the init method by calling addWidget($widgetName, $methodName). To do so we define the name of a widget which will be seen by your users as well as the name of the method that shall render the widget.

  protected $category = 'Example Company';
  
  
  
  public function init()
  
  {
  
      // Registers a widget named 'News' under the category 'Example Company'. 
  
      // The method 'myCorporateNews' will be used to render the widget.
  
      $this->addWidget('News', $method = 'myCorporateNews'); 
  
  }
  
  
  
  public function myCorporateNews()
  
  {
  
      return file_get_contents('http://example.com/news');
  
  }

  This example would display the content of the specified URL within the widget as defined in the method myCorporateNews. It’s on you how to generate the content of the widget. Any string returned by this method will be displayed within the widget. You can use for example a View to render a Twig template. For simplification we are fetching the content from another site. A more complex version would cache this content for faster performance. Caching and views will be covered in one of our future posts as well.

  

  Did you know ? To make your life as a developer as stress-free as possible the platform checks whether the registered method actually exists and whether the method is public. If not, Piwik will display a notification in the UI and advice you with the next step.

  Checking permissions

  Often you do not want to have the content of a widget visible to everyone. You can check for permissions by using one of our many convenient methods which all start with \Piwik\Piwik::checkUser*. Just to introduce some of them :

  // Make sure the current user has super user access
  
  \Piwik\Piwik::checkUserHasSuperUserAccess(); 
  
  
  
  // Make sure the current user is logged in and not anonymous
  
  \Piwik\Piwik::checkUserIsNotAnonymous(); 

  And here is an example how you can use it within your widget :

  public function myCorporateNews()
  
  {
  
      // Make sure there is an idSite URL parameter
  
      $idSite = Common::getRequestVar('idSite', null, 'int');
  
  
  
      // Make sure the user has at least view access for the specified site. This is useful if you want to display data that is related to the specified site.
  
      Piwik::checkUserHasViewAccess($idSite); 
  
  
  
      $siteUrl = \Piwik\Site::getMainUrlFor($idSite);
  
  
  
      return file_get_contents($siteUrl . '/news');
  
  }

  In case any condition is not met an exception will be thrown and an error message will be presented to the user explaining that he does not have enough permissions. You’ll find the documentation for those methods in the Piwik class reference.

  How to test a widget

  After you have created your widgets you are surely wondering how to test it. First, you should write a unit or integration test which we will cover in one of our future blog posts. Just one hint : You can use the command ./console generate:test to create a test. To manually test a widget you can add a widget to a dashboard or export it.

  Publishing your Plugin on the Marketplace

  In case you want to share your widgets with other Piwik users you can do this by pushing your plugin to a public GitHub repository and creating a tag. Easy as that. Read more about how to distribute a plugin.

  Advanced features

  Isn’t it easy to create a widget ? We never even created a file ! Of course, based on our API design principle “The complexity of our API should never exceed the complexity of your use case.” you can accomplish more if you want : You can clarify parameters that will be passed to your widget, you can create a method in the Controller instead of the Widget class to make the same method also reusable for adding it to the menu, you can assign different categories to different widgets, you can remove any widgets that were added by the Piwik core or other plugins and more.

  Would you like to know more about widgets ? Go to our Widgets class reference in the Piwik Developer Zone.

  If you have any feedback regarding our APIs or our guides in the Developer Zone feel free to send it to us.

• How to create a widget – Introducing the Piwik Platform

  4 septembre 2014, par Thomas Steur — Development

  This is the next post of our blog series where we introduce the capabilities of the Piwik platform (our previous post was How to create a scheduled task in Piwik). This time you’ll learn how to create a new widget. For this tutorial you will need to have basic knowledge of PHP.

  What is a widget in Piwik ?

  Widgets can be added to your dashboards or exported via a URL to embed it on any page. Most widgets in Piwik represent a report but a widget can display anything. For instance a RSS feed of your corporate news. If you prefer to have most of your business relevant data in one dashboard why not display the number of offline sales, the latest stock price, or other key metrics together with your analytics data ?

  Getting started

  In this series of posts, we assume that you have already set up your development environment. If not, visit the Piwik Developer Zone where you’ll find the tutorial Setting up Piwik.

  To summarize the things you have to do to get setup :

  • Install Piwik (for instance via git).
  • Activate the developer mode : ./console development:enable --full.
  • Generate a plugin : ./console generate:plugin --name="MyWidgetPlugin". There should now be a folder plugins/MyWidgetPlugin.
  • And activate the created plugin under Settings => Plugins.

  Let’s start creating a widget

  We start by using the Piwik Console to create a widget template :

  ./console generate:widget

  The command will ask you to enter the name of the plugin the widget should belong to. I will simply use the above chosen plugin name “MyWidgetPlugin”. It will ask you for a widget category as well. You can select any existing category, for instance “Visitors”, “Live !” or “Actions”, or you can define a new category, for instance your company name. There should now be a file plugins/MyWidgetPlugin/Widgets.php which contains already some examples to get you started easily :

  class Widgets extends \Piwik\Plugin\Widgets
  {
      /**
       * Here you can define the category the widget belongs to. You can reuse any existing widget category or define your own category.
       * @var string
       */
      protected $category = 'ExampleCompany';
   
      /**
       * Here you can add one or multiple widgets. You can add a widget by calling the method "addWidget()" and pass the name of the widget as well as a method name that should be called to render the widget. The method can be defined either directly here in this widget class or in the controller in case you want to reuse the same action for instance in the menu etc.
       */
      protected function init()
      {
          $this->addWidget('Example Widget Name', $method = 'myExampleWidget');
          $this->addWidget('Example Widget 2',    $method = 'myExampleWidget', $params = array('myparam' => 'myvalue'));
      }
   
      /**
       * This method renders a widget as defined in "init()". It's on you how to generate the content of the widget. As long as you return a string everything is fine. You can use for instance a "Piwik\View" to render a twig template. In such a case don't forget to create a twig template (eg. myViewTemplate.twig) in the "templates" directory of your plugin.
       *
       * @return string
       */
      public function myExampleWidget()
      {
          $view = new View('@MyWidgetPlugin/myViewTemplate');
          return $view->render();
      }
  }
  Télécharger

  As you might have noticed in the generated template we put emphasis on adding comments to explain you directly how to continue and where to get more information. Ideally this saves you some time and you don’t even have to search for more information on our developer pages. The category is defined in the property $category and can be changed at any time. Starting from Piwik 2.6.0 the generator will directly create a translation key if necessary to make it easy to translate the category into any language. Translations will be a topic in one of our future posts until then you can explore this feature on our Internationalization guide.

  A simple example

  We can define one or multiple widgets in the init method by calling addWidget($widgetName, $methodName). To do so we define the name of a widget which will be seen by your users as well as the name of the method that shall render the widget.

  protected $category = 'Example Company';
  
  
  
  public function init()
  
  {
  
      // Registers a widget named 'News' under the category 'Example Company'. 
  
      // The method 'myCorporateNews' will be used to render the widget.
  
      $this->addWidget('News', $method = 'myCorporateNews'); 
  
  }
  
  
  
  public function myCorporateNews()
  
  {
  
      return file_get_contents('http://example.com/news');
  
  }

  This example would display the content of the specified URL within the widget as defined in the method myCorporateNews. It’s on you how to generate the content of the widget. Any string returned by this method will be displayed within the widget. You can use for example a View to render a Twig template. For simplification we are fetching the content from another site. A more complex version would cache this content for faster performance. Caching and views will be covered in one of our future posts as well.

  

  Did you know ? To make your life as a developer as stress-free as possible the platform checks whether the registered method actually exists and whether the method is public. If not, Piwik will display a notification in the UI and advice you with the next step.

  Checking permissions

  Often you do not want to have the content of a widget visible to everyone. You can check for permissions by using one of our many convenient methods which all start with \Piwik\Piwik::checkUser*. Just to introduce some of them :

  // Make sure the current user has super user access
  
  \Piwik\Piwik::checkUserHasSuperUserAccess(); 
  
  
  
  // Make sure the current user is logged in and not anonymous
  
  \Piwik\Piwik::checkUserIsNotAnonymous(); 

  And here is an example how you can use it within your widget :

  public function myCorporateNews()
  
  {
  
      // Make sure there is an idSite URL parameter
  
      $idSite = Common::getRequestVar('idSite', null, 'int');
  
  
  
      // Make sure the user has at least view access for the specified site. This is useful if you want to display data that is related to the specified site.
  
      Piwik::checkUserHasViewAccess($idSite); 
  
  
  
      $siteUrl = \Piwik\Site::getMainUrlFor($idSite);
  
  
  
      return file_get_contents($siteUrl . '/news');
  
  }

  In case any condition is not met an exception will be thrown and an error message will be presented to the user explaining that he does not have enough permissions. You’ll find the documentation for those methods in the Piwik class reference.

  How to test a widget

  After you have created your widgets you are surely wondering how to test it. First, you should write a unit or integration test which we will cover in one of our future blog posts. Just one hint : You can use the command ./console generate:test to create a test. To manually test a widget you can add a widget to a dashboard or export it.

  Publishing your Plugin on the Marketplace

  In case you want to share your widgets with other Piwik users you can do this by pushing your plugin to a public GitHub repository and creating a tag. Easy as that. Read more about how to distribute a plugin.

  Advanced features

  Isn’t it easy to create a widget ? We never even created a file ! Of course, based on our API design principle “The complexity of our API should never exceed the complexity of your use case.” you can accomplish more if you want : You can clarify parameters that will be passed to your widget, you can create a method in the Controller instead of the Widget class to make the same method also reusable for adding it to the menu, you can assign different categories to different widgets, you can remove any widgets that were added by the Piwik core or other plugins and more.

  Would you like to know more about widgets ? Go to our Widgets class reference in the Piwik Developer Zone.

  If you have any feedback regarding our APIs or our guides in the Developer Zone feel free to send it to us.

• Fun With Tablets And Amazon’s App Store

  24 décembre 2011, par Multimedia Mike — General, amazon, android, app store, cyanogenmod, ios, smurfs, tablet

  I bought an Android tablet a few months ago. It is less expensive than the best tablets but no where near the bottom end of the market. I think it’s pretty good. However, one downside is that it’s not “certified” to use Google’s official marketplace. That would seem to be somewhat limiting, however…

  Enter Amazon’s Android App Store
  Amazon got into the business of selling Android Apps some time ago. I started experimenting with this on a Nexus One phone that Google gave me. When I installed the App Store on the Android tablet and logged in, I was pleasantly surprised to see all of my Amazon apps ready for downloading onto the tablet.

  So I have an App Store for use with this Android tablet.

  Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because I managed to screw up this tablet in an unusual and humorous manner. You might be wondering if an app downloaded from the Amazon App Store requires the App Store to be present in order to run. The answer is : Oh yeah ! It works like this :

  
  
  

  This means that if — perhaps out of curiosity, for example — you login to the Amazon App Store, download an app, install it, and then subsequently log out of the App Store or uninstall it altogether, the downloaded app will decline to run until you log back into the store.

  Here’s the thing– I wanted to provide a minimal level of security for my Android tablet. At the very least, I wished to lock the Amazon App Store itself since Amazon is famously (and, let’s face it, understandably) reluctant to deliberately add any friction to their shopping processes. I.e., without any external protection app, the App Store app would allow anyone to purchase any app using my tablet.

  So I purchased App Protector Pro from the Amazon App Store and it worked quite well. By default, it also password protects against modifying any system settings as well as installing new apps.

  So, here’s where I screwed up : App Protector Pro was doing its faithful duty and I uninstalled the Amazon App Store as an experiment. Suddenly, no apps obtained from the App Store would work unless I reinstalled the App Store. Okay, fair enough, except for one thing– App Protector Pro wouldn’t run without the App Store. Well, it did, it started to, tried to, but then exited. So I couldn’t re-install the App Store :

  
  
  Oops
  

  I eventually learned how to perform a factory reset of the unit which solved the problem. And, as indicated earlier, all of my apps were available for me to re-download.

  Modding, Cyanogen-style
  Open source aficionados will likely point out that there are alternate firmware options which allow me to take control of my Android tablet in a free and open manner. Among these options is CyanogenMod. After I got stuck in the situation described above, I thought I would have to resort to such an option.

  On the plus side, researching alternative firmware options is what taught me to boot the device into a recovery mode and ultimately restore to a factory default setting. But if you’ll allow me to indulge in a mini-rant regarding accessibility of open source software : I was more than a little frustrated in trying to understand what CyanogenMod could possibly offer me. Their homepage says it’s “an aftermarket firmware”. I’m not entirely sure what that means or how it can benefit me. Fortunately, they have a full feature list linked from the front page. They are, in order : Lockscreen gestures, phone goggles, OpenVPN, incognito mode, themes support, and DSP equalizer. I can’t say that any of those really add any value for me. I’d love to know if CyanogenMod supports Google Android Market and various other Google apps (such as maps and GMail). That’s a question that I can’t seem to find the answer to.

  The themes feature opens another old wound for me. Back around 1999 when I was first getting into Linux in a serious way, I remember that themes were a big theme at the Linux User Groups I would attend. I also remember lots are online articles at the time that emphasized how highly customizable the Linux desktop was in comparison to Windows 9x. I was bothered for 2 reasons : First, I thought there were more pressing problems that needed to be addressed in Linux ; and second, none of these customization options seemed particularly straightforward ; many apparently required hours of compiling and tinkering.

  Small digression. Anyway, back to CyanogenMod, I was glad to see that they prominently display a button in order to “View Video Tour”. Ah, internet video has us so spoiled these days. I was eager to see this aftermarket firmware in action to see what it could do for me. However, the link leads to… a forum post ? The thread seems to discuss how it would be a cool idea if the community could put together a video tour. At this point, the investigation just seems bizarre. It feels like a bunch of kids doing their best to do things the grown-up way.

  Okay, sorry, rant over. I try to stay positive these days. I’m sure the CyanogenMod folks are doing great, fun, and interesting work on their project. The problems they choose to solve might lack mainstream appeal, however.

  Free iPad
  Ultimately, I recently unloaded the little Android tablet because, well… when a free iPad comes your way, lower spec tablets feel a little silly to keep around. Yeah, it’s great to play around with. Though here’s one unsettling thing I noticed about Apple’s App Store. While browsing for worthwhile games to indulge in, I noticed that they had a section for “Top Grossing Games”. This was a separate list from the “Top Apps” charts. I found the list weird for 2 reasons : 1) Why do I care which games are raking in the most cash ? How does this communicate value to me, personally ? Seriously, why would I base a purchasing decision around which vendor has earned the most money ?

  Anyway, let’s move on to reason #2 this was scary : Most of the games in this list had a price of FREE. One of them was that Capcom Smurfs game that stirred up controversy some months ago because of kids making unsupervised in-app purchases of virtual smurfberries. I tend to think that a top-grossing, free to play game is probably one that heavily encourages in-app purchases. Strange how this emerging trend actually encourages me to seek out games from the “top paid” list vs. “top free”.