Create a plone 3 portlet to show amazon associates boxes

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Create a plone 3 portlet that takes some basic configuration options such
as affiliate ID and shows an advert to earn the website owner money.

Widget details available at:
http://widgets.amazon.com/ 

Note, you will need an associates account to find example code, if you
can't get hold of one let us know which widget you're going to implement
and we'll provide you with example code.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by mw4...@googlemail.com on 2 Dec 2007 at 6:30

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Original comment by mw4...@googlemail.com on 2 Dec 2007 at 7:29

• Added labels: 3-day

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I claim this Task.

Original comment by speedbre...@gmail.com on 22 Jan 2008 at 5:27

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It's yours!  That was only a few hours before the deadline for claiming, 
cutting it fine!

Original comment by mw4...@googlemail.com on 23 Jan 2008 at 11:41

• Changed state: Claimed
• Added labels: speedbre...aton.com

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Original comment by mw4...@googlemail.com on 23 Jan 2008 at 11:45

• Added labels: ClaimedBy-speedbre...aton.com
• Removed labels: speedbre...aton.com

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I have a quick question.  It's not exactly related to this portlet, but it is 
related
to Plone.  I had a lot of trouble getting buildout & paster working on Ubuntu.

I decided to write two blog posts, one on installing paster, one on making a 
buildout
work.  They're currently sitting in my drafts folder on my blog,
<www.speedbreeze.com>.  Do you mind if I post them?  Would you rather have me 
post
them on plone.org?

Original comment by speedbre...@gmail.com on 23 Jan 2008 at 11:45

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Absolutely not!  As limi likes to say, Plone is a do-ocracy, if you want to do
something you have everyone's backing.  If you want to post them to plone.org 
they
will most likely be published but feel free to blog too.

If you're interested, planet.plone.org is the plone blog aggregator 

Original comment by mw4...@googlemail.com on 24 Jan 2008 at 1:35

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I initially selected the Amazon Product links widget because it most closely 
matched
the description for this task.  I just finished writing the code for and 
testing the
portlet; images displayed by Amazon in the portlet do not work in Firefox 2 & 3 
beta
2.  The images do, however, display in Safari 3 beta and Internet Explorer 7.

What are your thoughts on this? Should I try another Amazon Widget? Should I 
look
around for a fix to this?  Please advise.

Original comment by speedbre...@gmail.com on 26 Jan 2008 at 8:00

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Sorry!  That was a false alarm. I forgot to turn off AdBlock Plus.

Original comment by speedbre...@gmail.com on 26 Jan 2008 at 6:10

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Here's my portlet!  Learning from last time, I made sure to name it
collective.portlet.amazon and Amazon portlet.  

I also added the ability to change font colors and background color inside of 
the
"Modify Portlet" form because I've noticed that some site owners like to be 
able to
make their ads stand out.  I've set the default colors to match the colors in 
the
Default Plone theme.

Currency codes for the portlet are managed (I think) at the Amazon Affiliates
website.  There was no way to do this through Amazon's URL system.

If you want me to tweak or change anything, just let me know!

Original comment by speedbre...@gmail.com on 26 Jan 2008 at 6:33

Attachments:

• collective.portlet.amazon.tar.gz

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi! I just wanted to check in with you.  The end date for GHOP (February 3rd) is
coming up.  Is there anything that you want me to do to improve the portlet?  
I'm
happy to make changes!

Original comment by speedbre...@gmail.com on 29 Jan 2008 at 12:14

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This is looking good, could you make the ASIN field optional and add an option 
to
choose which amazon site to use, eg .com, .de, .co.uk

A text box with the url to amazon defaulting to .com should be sufficient for 
this

Original comment by mw4...@googlemail.com on 31 Jan 2008 at 5:22

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Thanks for your advice!  I'll upload updated version tomorrow.

Original comment by speedbre...@gmail.com on 1 Feb 2008 at 2:10

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I tried changing the URL from amazon.com to amazon.co.uk.  It returns a 404. 
However, if I change the "o" query item, it changes from .com to .co.uk.  
However, it
returns a different Amazon.co.uk ad--it isn't the product links widget.

It would take a lot of time to try to figure out what the different query items
should be set to for different localizations since the URL system is 
undocumented. 
I'm thinking that the simplest way to change the currency would be to write a
Javascript that reads the prices and converts the to the proper currency.

However, I think that you want to be able to redirect the user on click to a 
specific
Amazon website.  This would be hard to do through Javascript.

Do you have any thoughts on how to do this?  Please advise.

Original comment by speedbre...@gmail.com on 2 Feb 2008 at 2:33

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In that case, I'd say this is a feature that will some research including 
access to
international associates accounts.  A javascript to change the currencies isn't
really appropriate in this situation.

What I'm going to say is that research is equivalent to you managing to do it, 
and
we'll take that into account when evaluating this for google.  Personally, I'll 
be
using this on a website based in the UK in the next few months so I'll have a 
look at
the international code then.

You've done a really excellent job with your tasks, I hope you'll choose to stay
around the community even after GHOP finishes!

Matt

Original comment by mw4...@googlemail.com on 2 Feb 2008 at 3:06

• Changed state: Closed

[GoogleCodeExporter]

But before you upload it to PYPI, please let me make the ASIN field optional, 
just so
I satisfy your first request.

Original comment by speedbre...@gmail.com on 2 Feb 2008 at 4:06

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Cool, you could upload it if you prefer ;)

Original comment by mw4...@googlemail.com on 2 Feb 2008 at 4:12

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Here's the portlet with the ASIN field optional.  I set it up such that if no 
ASIN is
entered, the ad isn't displayed; this is to prevent an invalid URL being sent 
to Amazon.

If you want, I can upload it to PYPI.  I'm happy either way.

Original comment by speedbre...@gmail.com on 2 Feb 2008 at 4:21

Attachments:

• collective.portlet.amazon.tar.gz

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Well, if you're interested in maintaining this for the time being, feel free to
upload it, if you're not sure I'll do it for you.  

Original comment by mw4...@googlemail.com on 2 Feb 2008 at 4:24

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I'm not quite sure on how to use PYPI yet.  Could you do it for me?  Thanks in 
advance!

Original comment by speedbre...@gmail.com on 2 Feb 2008 at 4:28

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Ok, I've done that.  I've also put it on the collective, our semi-public SVN
repository, you can get access to that if you like.

The commands I executed (with their output removed because it's quite verbose) 
were:

Last login: Sat Feb  2 02:30:33 on ttys001
Nimbus:~ matthewwilkes$ cd work/plone/collective/

Preparing the collective:

Nimbus:collective matthewwilkes$ svn mkdir collective.portlet.amazon
Nimbus:collective matthewwilkes$ cd collective.portlet.amazon/

Extracting the files:

Nimbus:collective.portlet.amazon matthewwilkes$ tar -xvzf
~/Downloads/collective.portlet.amazon.tar.gz
Nimbus:collective.portlet.amazon matthewwilkes$ mv collective.portlet.amazon 
trunk
Nimbus:collective.portlet.amazon matthewwilkes$ cd trunk/

Removing files that are regenerated whenever the package is used:

Nimbus:trunk matthewwilkes$ rm -rf collective.portlet.amazon.egg-info
Nimbus:trunk matthewwilkes$ find . | grep pyc$ | xargs rm

Adding the files to SVN:

Nimbus:trunk matthewwilkes$ cd ..
Nimbus:collective.portlet.amazon matthewwilkes$ svn add trunk/
Nimbus:collective.portlet.amazon matthewwilkes$ cd ..
Nimbus:collective matthewwilkes$ svn ci -m "Import of collective.portlet.amazon 
from
spedbre...@aton.com - thanks" ./collective.portlet.amazon/
Nimbus:collective matthewwilkes$ cd ./collective.portlet.amazon/trunk/

Registering on PyPI:

Nimbus:trunk matthewwilkes$ python2.4 setup.py register
Nimbus:trunk matthewwilkes$ python2.4 setup.py sdist upload

Original comment by mw4...@googlemail.com on 2 Feb 2008 at 4:44

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Thanks!

Original comment by speedbre...@gmail.com on 2 Feb 2008 at 4:47