malbulja
Well-Known Member
I'm just putting this out there and I don't know the response. If the moderators frown on this sort of thing then just delete this article.
Personal GrowFAQ Tools
03/01/2009
Background
Basically, we got sick and tired of searching the internet for information related to the questions we wanted answered. Servers go down, data is lost, and even link lists die off from time to time. We thought, shouldn’t there be a way that we could very quickly and easily create an offline personal growfaq based on the templates and content from the original OverGrow GrowFAQ? Something that could be run on a PC and not require a server but still provide that great web interface?
This toolset, allows for just that. A very simple way to scrape data from a web site and insert it into your personal growfaq. In addition, it provides a clean searching mechanism to query all the articles at once for the term you’re looking for.
Using the Tools
Launch the GrowFAQ tools by running the OGFaqEntry.exe program. It resides in the Tools directory at the root of the download.
This form provides navigation through the tools. We will walk through each option.
View GrowFAQ
Clicking on the View GrowFAQ button, the application will launch your personal growfaq, which at the first time it executes will consist of the default OG GrowFAQ and some updates.
The tools themselves exist for the sole purpose of providing a simple way to read, search, and add entries into this growfaq.
Search GrowFAQ
Clicking on the Search Articles button opens a simple search form.
All you need to do is enter a term to search for and the form will kick off a multi-threaded process which searches every single growfaq articles. Above you can see that I ran a search for the term CFLs and I received 4 hits. One is actually a double, but only because the last entry is actually data in my default template.
You can expand each result to see the exact file that matched the search and right click on that to open the article in your web browser or in notepad.
Create Articles
This is where most of the development effort went, since it’s really the reason the tools exist. Clicking on the Create Articles button opens up the article editor. You can either author your own articles, or you can do what I do and get them from the web.
Importing an Article From a Web Site/Forum
You can see below that I have located an article on a web forum that I would like in my personal GrowFAQ. I start by opening the site in Internet Explorer and highlighting the parts that I want. In this case I highlight from the top of the post to the bottom, taking care to leave out the garbage around the post like it’s title.
I then right click on the highlighted area and select “Copy”. Then I go to my Create Articles form and hit CTRL+V (control button and v together) to paste the copied data into the form.
I do a quick read through to make sure it looks right. I enter in a title for the article and the author (original author; not me). I choose a category and sub-category (if applicable) that the article will be placed in and when I’m set I click the Preview button to see a preview of the new growfaq article.
If anything doesn’t look right, then I’ll fix it and create a new preview. Once I’m ready to finish, I click the Save button.
At this point the article is saved, and a new entry has been added into your growfaq.
You can see above that the article, What is a trichome? Has been entered into the growfaq in the Flowering & blooming category.
Downloads
GrowFAQ & Tools Installer (requires .NET v2.0) - Windows
GrowFAQ Uncompressed HTML (no tools) - Linux/Mac
Source Code & Support
The source code is available to anyone who wants it. If programmers want to help out that’s great, we can get a subversion source code repo setup for collaboration.
There is no support for the tool and it’s in an Alpha state.
Personal GrowFAQ Tools
03/01/2009
Background
Basically, we got sick and tired of searching the internet for information related to the questions we wanted answered. Servers go down, data is lost, and even link lists die off from time to time. We thought, shouldn’t there be a way that we could very quickly and easily create an offline personal growfaq based on the templates and content from the original OverGrow GrowFAQ? Something that could be run on a PC and not require a server but still provide that great web interface?
This toolset, allows for just that. A very simple way to scrape data from a web site and insert it into your personal growfaq. In addition, it provides a clean searching mechanism to query all the articles at once for the term you’re looking for.
Using the Tools
Launch the GrowFAQ tools by running the OGFaqEntry.exe program. It resides in the Tools directory at the root of the download.
This form provides navigation through the tools. We will walk through each option.
View GrowFAQ
Clicking on the View GrowFAQ button, the application will launch your personal growfaq, which at the first time it executes will consist of the default OG GrowFAQ and some updates.
The tools themselves exist for the sole purpose of providing a simple way to read, search, and add entries into this growfaq.
Search GrowFAQ
Clicking on the Search Articles button opens a simple search form.
All you need to do is enter a term to search for and the form will kick off a multi-threaded process which searches every single growfaq articles. Above you can see that I ran a search for the term CFLs and I received 4 hits. One is actually a double, but only because the last entry is actually data in my default template.
You can expand each result to see the exact file that matched the search and right click on that to open the article in your web browser or in notepad.
Create Articles
This is where most of the development effort went, since it’s really the reason the tools exist. Clicking on the Create Articles button opens up the article editor. You can either author your own articles, or you can do what I do and get them from the web.
Importing an Article From a Web Site/Forum
You can see below that I have located an article on a web forum that I would like in my personal GrowFAQ. I start by opening the site in Internet Explorer and highlighting the parts that I want. In this case I highlight from the top of the post to the bottom, taking care to leave out the garbage around the post like it’s title.
I then right click on the highlighted area and select “Copy”. Then I go to my Create Articles form and hit CTRL+V (control button and v together) to paste the copied data into the form.
I do a quick read through to make sure it looks right. I enter in a title for the article and the author (original author; not me). I choose a category and sub-category (if applicable) that the article will be placed in and when I’m set I click the Preview button to see a preview of the new growfaq article.
If anything doesn’t look right, then I’ll fix it and create a new preview. Once I’m ready to finish, I click the Save button.
At this point the article is saved, and a new entry has been added into your growfaq.
You can see above that the article, What is a trichome? Has been entered into the growfaq in the Flowering & blooming category.
Downloads
GrowFAQ & Tools Installer (requires .NET v2.0) - Windows
GrowFAQ Uncompressed HTML (no tools) - Linux/Mac
Source Code & Support
The source code is available to anyone who wants it. If programmers want to help out that’s great, we can get a subversion source code repo setup for collaboration.
There is no support for the tool and it’s in an Alpha state.
