It’s a pretty standard task and most applications nowadays access some form of web services to add functionality to their apps. Just so you know, there are tons of resources online but I had to do a bit more debugging thus my guide (which I usually do for myself just in case I forget:) )

Make sure to check out Scott Gu’s excellent Twitter App tutorial that uses LINQ to XML. If you’re having a bit of difficulty grasping the concept, head over to MSDN as they have a very good overview/explanation of LINQ to XML.

On to my code.

I needed to download the XML based on my query string (easy enough) and I’ll get an output like this

- <ISBNdb server_time="2012-01-07T07:03:57Z">
- <BookList total_results="47" page_size="10" page_number="1" shown_results="10">
- <BookData book_id="akrasia_thief_of_time" isbn="1891153048" isbn13="9781891153044">
  <Title>Akrasia, Thief of Time</Title> 
  <TitleLong>Akrasia, Thief of Time (Eden Odyssey D20)</TitleLong> 
  <AuthorsText>David Chart,</AuthorsText> 
  <PublisherText publisher_id="eden_studios">Eden Studios</PublisherText> 
  </BookData>
- <BookData book_id="a_thief_on_morgans_plantation" isbn="1881889629" isbn13="9781881889625">
  <Title>A Thief on Morgan's Plantation</Title> 
  <TitleLong>A Thief on Morgan's Plantation (Mysteries in Time)</TitleLong> 
  <AuthorsText>Lisa Banim, Tatyana Yuditskaya (Illustrator)</AuthorsText> 
  <PublisherText publisher_id="silver_moon_press">Silver Moon Press</PublisherText> 
  </BookData>
  </BookList>
  </ISBNdb>
     

So it’s your job to make sense out of that output.

When using LINQ to XML make sure you include references to System.Xml.linq.

Downloading and querying the Web Service is straight forward.

private void search_book(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
             Uri serviceUri = new Uri(("http://isbndb.com/api/books.xml?access_key=XXXXXXXX&index1=title&value1=" + Title_textbox.Text ));

            WebClient client = new WebClient();

            client.DownloadStringCompleted += new DownloadStringCompletedEventHandler(downloader_Completed);
            client.DownloadStringAsync(serviceUri);

        }

search_book is just an event handler for a button or “enter”.
The Uri is where you put the web service then I parse with my search item.
WebClient handles all the webby stuff.
There’s a bunch of ways you can do the next step but all it does is proceed to downloader_Completed once the download is complete. That’s where all the LINQ stuff comes in as you already have the XML. Now it’s time to make sense of it.
You need the DownloadStringAsync with the URI that we defined awhile ago.

void downloader_Completed(object sender, DownloadStringCompletedEventArgs e)
        {

            if (e.Error != null)
                return;

            XElement booksDL = XElement.Parse(e.Result);

            var list = (from c in booksDL.Descendants("BookData")
                        select
                            new book_class
                            {
                                Book_title = c.Element("Title").Value
                            }).ToList();

            ObservableCollection books = new ObservableCollection(list);
            listBox1.ItemsSource = books;

        }

Line 4 – First off, if there’s an error just exit out of the function.
Line 7 – MSDN has a good article on the different classes that you can use when using LINQ to XML. Depends on your needs, but XElement usually is good enough for basic stuff.
Line 9 – This is where all my pain arised. Not being used to how XML are traversed along with the multitude of methods in XElement, I seeked help from my awesome friends and Bok showed me how to debug it.
Line 11 – Of course you need a class to be able to receive the data so I created a book_class with the appropriate properties. (I simplified the example to only handle book_title)

namespace librarian
{
    public class book_class
    {
        public string Book_title { get; set; }
    }
}

Make sure that you are getting something back.
You would need a good idea of what the structure of the XML is so that you know what method to use. The ISBNdb XML return is about 3 nodes deep but the concept is pretty much the same for any XML return.

In this example I was trying to figure out if I’m getting anything back based on my query and it looks like I got the correct entries.

Lastly, line 16 & 17 just passes the list to listbox that I have defined in the XAML. Bok suggested to use ObservableCollection as it updates the variable in case your data has changed as it always “observes the collection”.
Once you pass it to the listbox, you can have more event handlers there like when they click an entry.

That’s it for my simple tutorial of LINQ to XML. Of course, there are a lot more resources out there but I wanted to focus on the simplicity of my example to get to you to access web services easily.

If you have any questions, please feel free to comment and if you think there are better ways to do my example, please do suggest.

Resolutions is a form cultural procrastination and we love making them as we see the new year as an arbitrary day that will magically change us and our environment. Unfortunately, we love setting ourselves up for failure by making vague resolutions such as lose weight, etc.

Let this post be my anti-resolution. I’ll blog more! haha but this time I’ll avoid the common failures of saying I’ll blog more. The more specific we are, the better the chances of actually fulfilling the “resolution”. So instead of calling it a resolution, I’ll call mine a habit. I’ll set time to blog every Friday afternoon 5pm – 6pm either on my personal blog or our work blog.

How about you? What’s your actionable goal?

<os 10013> an attempt was made to access a socket in a way forbidden by its access permissions. : make_sock: could not bind to address 0.0.0.0:80 no listening sockets available, shutting down. Unable to open logs

Thanks for the guys at stackoverflow for this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1430141/port-80-is-being-used-by-system-pid-4-what-is-that

Of course, it’s one of those things that are easier said than done things. People have different motivations for wanting to learn another language. Usually, it’s fascination with another culture that drives us to study another language. Most of the living world wants to learn English because it’s perceived as the “common tongue” (Game of Thrones reference). Whatever your motivation is, learning a new language is hard. The older you are, the harder it gets.

I’m lucky to have grown up in the Philippines where English is the second language. I appreciated it more than ever when I moved to Singapore. I didn’t realize that my English skills were good enough to actually receive comments that my English is quite good. It’s especially useful when travelling to non-English speaking countries. But all of it changed when I went to Japan.

Philippine pub in Japan! How cool is that!?

I’ve always been fascinated with the Japanese otaku culture. I remember memorizing hiragana in high school and practicing my hiragana whenever the lessons are boring. Years later, and after being awakened by my recent trip to Japan, I told myself that it’s time to study it for real.

A quick search online led me to Bunka Language School. My satisficer versus maximizer decision making was quick even though there are tons of alternatives and varying comments online.

Six months after enrolling, I’m currently in my elementary two class. All I can say is learning a new language is really hard.

Here are some tips that I use on learning Japanese.

1. Find a good language school! – As much as you want to save money, nothing beats an actual teacher who will guide you throughout the whole process from your ABCs up to the most complex of sentences. Believe me, if you think just watching anime and listening to Japanese music will get you to learn the language, think again. After all those years of watching anime, a lot of phrases stuck with me, but most of it are off phrases that aren’t really useful in day-to-day conversations. Invest in a good language school. It might be costly but it’ll be worth it.
2. Practice every day! – As with anything that requires mastery, you need to do this everyday. If you’re practicing the Japanese alphabet, read signs. If you are studying grammar, practice with a grammar book. Language is one of those things that has to be ingrained in your mind. You can’t take shortcuts and there’s no other way around it other than practicing every day. During my first few weeks, I had to relearn hiragana. This meant practicing how to write and read every day. Luckily, there are tons of random Japanese signs around town I can practice reading from just to make sure I was right. At night, practice for 15-20 minutes of writing. Just practice everyday! No other way around it. Which leads me to my third point.

All these folks wants to talk to you!

1. Use tools! – With humanity’s superior knowledge accessible via the internet, there’s no reason not to use the Internet to aid you in practicing everyday. There are so many online tools that you can use. One of the tools that I use is Rosetta Stone software. This software has been lauded as one of the best tools to learn a new language. I’ve been using this along with my studying and it’s a different concept of learning. They say that their method is the same way we learned how to speak while we were kids, showing pictures of scenarios and saying the corresponding words. This method is pretty simple and it’s an effective way to learn the language because you have to repeat the whole process several times during the program. You don’t finish the whole course within 24 hours; rather you practice for 15-20 minutes a day until you finish the whole thing. Another online service that I’m using is Shared Talk. I freaking love this tool because it allows me to practice with real humans! YES! Real freaking humans! Do you know how hard it is to pull someone who knows Japanese and ask them to practice with you, while they patiently correct your grammar? Anyway, Shared Talk is a product of Rosetta Stone without you having to shell out 300 dollars. Shared Talk basically connects people who want to learn a new language online with the goal of helping them practice together. Think about it: some guy in Japan wants to practice his English and you want to practice your Japanese. That’s it! You get to talk to random people with the goal of learning their language. So far my experience has been generally good. I’m lucky because most of the people I talk to actually know a bit of English so it’s not really hard to communicate with them. Most of them just want somebody to practice their conversational English with. It’s great whenever I’m stuck reviewing because I can just login and ask someone questions while enjoy a nice conversation. Most of the people there are quite friendly and helpful. Of course with any online communication tool, you have to exercise a level of caution. Don’t share your email or any personal information please.
2. The most important tip, know your motivation! - My goal for learning Japanese is to be able to converse properly and pass a couple of JLPT exams. Studying everyday takes dedication and patience. When you were in school, you know what you had to do. Pass the exam and move on the next grade. With studying on your own, the exit is pretty easy. Just stop enrolling. Nobody is forcing you except yourself. This is where the problem comes. If there is no outside motivation, there’s no will. Once you get tired of it, byebye . If your motivation is not clear and your goals are undefined, you will falter. So before you invest, know your motivation, write down your goals and read it every time you don’t feel like studying.

Hey, I enjoyed writing this and hopefully you enjoyed reading it as well. To be honest, it’s been six months of studying Japanese and I can surely say that I’ve improved. I know more words, I know how to construct more than simple sentences and I can strike a semi-decent conversation in Japanese. Share with me other ways you study a language. Would love to try it for myself.

For the longest time now I’ve been discovering music through the normal ways. Radio, TV, movies, concerts, recommendations from friends and colleagues. Until the internet and it’s awesome services came along you would still be discovering it through the “normal” channels. Early part of the net came along and you can start downloading tracks from your favorite sources. But still, this requires you to search and know what you are looking for. This doesn’t mean anything at all except easy access to music you already know and love.

Come Web 2.0, with collaboration and crowdsourcing, we now have more things helping us find music that we like thus my title. I’ve been lucky to have tried all the services above even if half of it is not available in outside of US (sadly and video services are even harder).

Let’s sit down and figure out how I’m loving or loathing these cool names.

Grooveshark, Zune and iTunes for me are similar sources just like before. They allow you easy access to music by allowing you to purchase or listen to the music easily. They have their own recommendation engine but none of it is really impressive. I’ve been a user of GrooveShark, Zune and iTunes for more than two years now and I see them as a place to download/buy/listen to songs that I already know are good and that I just need a copy of. Nothing new here. Just think of your record store but online.

AND IT ALL CHANGED Come Pandora. Pandora is just AWESOME. The guys behind it did a really amazing job of figuring out why you like a particular song. They realized that songs have definite patterns, tunes, compositions that they can accurately recommend a song that you’ll like. This is just awesome. I can’t stress it enough. I was easily hooked listening to new songs and artists that I know I would like because of some magic algorithm the folks at Pandora made.

Surprisingly, after a while, knowing what you want gets tiring after a while. I missed the diversity of listening to something totally new and discovering something totally far off from the music I traditionally liked. The novelty wore off and I eventually went back to the traditional ways, online radio being a major part of it.

Then comes Turntable.fm. The current poster child of the startup world, turntable allows you and your random friends to play music together. No magic algorithm or pattern matching, just you and your friends and a huge list of streaming music. So far I’m enjoying the experience as it allows other to play music that you might or might not like. Rooms are created so that there can be some sort of organization depending on the genre of music you are listening to. I’m still enjoying this experience as just like Pandora, it recommends new music but with real brains behind it so repeats or super similar songs are eliminated. Having a human brain behind the selection of the songs actually makes a huge difference.

I don’t know when I’ll get tired of turntable.fm but there’s a reason why radios haven’t died til now. Until then, keep on rocking, where ever you found those tunes