Chicken Tracking with QB
Here's my latest cause for Quick Base celebration: A while back I made a Quick Base app for tracking my flock of chickens and supply inventory, but just incorporated RFID scanning to help move toward automatically tracking egg production instead of manually tapping URL formula buttons. Very much still a work in progress, but here's what it does so far and how it works: The app keeps records of what chickens are in the flock, egg production, store health records, supply purchasing/use, and a journal to write entries about any or all of the chickens. One night I was browsing my favorite overseas merchant website and came across these leg bands for fowl that contain an RFID chip. They were about $.27 a piece, so I bought a bunch, and a cheap USB RFID reader too. I created a table of all of the RFID tags, and a table for scanner entries, and linked each chicken to an RFID number, so that when one was scanned the entries table would "know" who the chicken was. Then I needed the scanner to be in a stationary place ready to scan anytime, so I wrote a little Python script that sits and waits for a scan, and when it detects one creates a record in the entries table using the Quick Base API. I decided to put the scanner in the nest box to find out who was laying eggs and when. It's also a confined space where I thought I'd have the most luck with the RFID system, which is the low-frequency passive type (chosen because they're cheap and don't require batteries or charging. The trade off, however, is that they only get scanned when they are close enough to receive power from the scanner). After hiding the scanner under some straw on the side of the nest near where the banded leg would be, the Raspberry Pi was put outside of the nest on a nearby shelf. With everything set up, connected to the network and seemingly working, it was time to put the bands on the chickens: Over the next few days of anxiously awaiting email notifications of scans, I finally got about 40 one morning over the course of about 45 minutes, all from the same chicken. I've had some luck so far, but have been looking into a more powerful scanner that would ensure scans without the RFID chip needing to be so close to the scanner. (Since putting in the scanner I've also found a couple of bushes the chickens have been laying eggs under since they have the run of the yard in summer, but with winter coming they should be laying more inside). I'd also like to add more scanners in various locations, but that may depend on what can be done to find a scanner that could read at a longer distance. I also need to find a better way to display some of this data, especially if its coming from multiple scanners. I'm thinking a summary type table that would group by location and calculate duration to show how long a chicken was in a given spot over the course of a day. A way to detect if an egg is actually laid, and automatically log that in the egg table for the correct chicken is also a future addition once the best way to do that is figured out. Ultimately, it'd be cool to have scanners that could also track various spots to get an idea of how they spend their days, and know when they're all inside for the evening and automatically close the coop door for the night. If anyone has any ideas about any of this, or experience working with RFID or Raspberry Pis and Quick Base, I'd love to hear about it! ------------------------------ steve. ------------------------------Example of SaveBeforeNavigating
Just came by to say it's verking! I am filled with so many happy's. "Builders can now use a new CSS class ( SaveBeforeNavigating ) inside of a formula-rich text field so that Quickbase saves the record before navigating when this setting is used. Note that only one of the above workflow classes is supported per formula-rich text." Example code of a button: var text btnName = If(Contains([Egnyte_Link_Text],""),"", If([Email Payroll Trigger],"Email Sent","Send Dispatch to Payroll")); //URL var text urlOne = If(Contains([Egnyte_Link_Text],""),"",If([Email Payroll Trigger], URLRoot() & "db/" & Dbid() & "?a=API_EditRecord&rid=" & URLEncode ([Record ID#]) & "&apptoken=&_fid_369=0&_fid_370=\"\"" & "&z=" & Rurl(), URLRoot() & "db/" & Dbid() & "?a=API_EditRecord&rid=" & URLEncode ([Record ID#]) & "&apptoken=&_fid_369=1&_fid_370=" & Today() & "&z=" & Rurl())); var text urlTwo = URLRoot() & "db/" & Dbid() & "?a=dr&rid=" & URLEncode([Record ID#]); var text url = $urlOne & "&rdr=" & URLEncode($urlTwo); //Style var text style = If(Contains([Egnyte_Link_Text],""),[styleGrey], If([Email Payroll Trigger], [styleGrey],[styleEdit])); //Target var bool popup = false; var text target = If($popup = true, "target = _Blank ", ""); var text title = "Click button to send Dispatch to Payroll"; //*****DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS LINE***** //HTML "<a class='SaveBeforeNavigating' title=\"" & $title & "\"style =\"" & $style & "\"" & $target & "href=" & $url & ">" & $btnName & "</a>" //Syntax end ------------------------------ Jim Harrison transparency = knowledge + understanding : The Scrum Dudes ------------------------------
Archiving an Application
Hey guys, I just wanted to share a desktop application I created that archives records. Original this tool was built for users who were looking to migrate off Quicbase and needed their data preserved. Quickbase offers to export data as a spreadsheet or xml file; but oftentimes this export the data is not human-friendly. You can see a sample PDF of what this thing outputs, on the link below: http://paultrimor.com/paulncks/quickbase-pdf-archiver/ If you are a Developer and would like to contribute This project is open source and I do not intend to make any profit off of this tool.My vision is for non-technical users of Quickbase to comfortable of using the tool. paultrimor/Quickbase-PDF-Archiverhttps://github.com/paultrimor/Quickbase-PDF-Archiver ------------------------------ Paul Trimor ------------------------------
How to get a application token?
I just took over the QuickBase Operation for our company. And I can find anything that allows me to create/review API token? Anyone can give me an idea where to look for it? ------------------------------ Andreas Nagel Senior Software Developer www.KEH.com ------------------------------
Service Worker
I am working on implementing changes with Service Workers. I am following the series of posts from Dan Diebolt, Service Worker Travel Logs, and it is making sense. The one part I am stuck on is in the last one;https://community.quickbase.com/quickbase/topics/service-worker-travel-log-day-13, specifically implementing the cheerio.js library. Do I need to bring over every file in the GitHub page, or is there a way to simply reference them all at once?
Command Line Interface for Quickbase
Quickbase is a no-code platform that problem-solvers use to build powerful business applications regardless of their technical ability, but that doesn't mean software developers can't have fun, too! For example, Quickbase has robust and powerful APIs that enable coders to extend and automate Quickbase. In fact, API requests make up a higher percentage of traffic to Quickbase than one might think. In that spirit, I want to introduce you to the Command Line Interface for Quickbase, which makes it even easier to interact with and automate Quickbase through its APIs. https://github.com/QuickBase/quickbase-cli Graphical interfaces like web browsers make it possible for a wide range of people to use software and simplify tasks. With that said, how many times has your index finger felt like it was going to fall off while fighting sleep as you repeatedly perform some monotonous task in Quickbase through the browser? It's situations like this where the command line can save you hours, not to mention your sanity. You can find examples of how to use the tool in the repository's README. Hopefully, it inspires ideas on how you might use it to save time automating your Quickbase tasks. The CLI tool is one of many capabilities in the Quickbase platform that help you automate repetitive tasks. Here are some guidelines to help point you towards the best tool for your task: Use Pipelines and consume the API directly if you are automating a task in response to an action that happens in Quickbase or another system. Consume the API directly with the language of your choice when building a non-Quickbase application that connects to your Quickbase app. Use the Quickbase CLI to perform app setup/admin tasks and ad-hoc calls to the API. Finally, the Quickbase CLI is released as an open source project, which means you can submit enhancements, bug fixes, and documentation through GitHub pull requests if you can write code. Installation instructions, examples, and tips are provided in the README. The tool is subject to the permissive MIT license, so you can freely use it as you see fit inclusive of use in proprietary applications, provided that you maintain the copyright and license with the code. The license also states that the code is provided as-is without warranty, so unlike the Quickbase platform, the tool is not subject to assistance through Quickbase support entitlements. However, contact with the authors is only a GitHub issue away, so please post and feedback, bugs, and questions through the repository's normal GitHub channels as per the guidelines. Happy building! ------------------------------ Chris Pliakas ------------------------------2022 QuickBase REST API Starter Development Kit for PHP.
Hi all, We use QuickBase for many things and love the tools it offers. We use WordPress to manage our ECommerce store and needed a way to communicate and update our QuickBase app automatically. To help solve this problem I wrote a QuickBase REST API Starter Development Kit for PHP that we currently use in a plugin for talking to QuickBase! I wanted to share this with anyone else who might need/want it for their needs. Here is the link to the GitHub Repo: GitHub - josephharburg/QuickBase-REST-API-PHP-SDK GitHub remove preview GitHub - josephharburg/QuickBase-REST-API-PHP-SDK: This is a simple class to help get started using the QuickBase REST API in PHP. This is a simple class to be used to access the REST API that QuickBase offers for PHP. This starter development kit does not do all the work for you, however, it does give you a good leg up when trying to access the QuickBase REST API in PHP. View this on GitHub > Happy Coding! ------------------------------ Joseph Harburg ------------------------------Connecting Quickbase to AWS for Sentiment Analysis
Quickbase is uniquely positioned to solve numerous business problems because of both the product's incredible flexibility and the different approach to how people build applications on the platform. The problem solvers who use the tool can resolve critical business challenges themselves in days and even hours on a system that IT trusts and can govern at enterprise-scale. Although powerful in business users' hands, the technically inclined can elevate Quickbase to new heights by integrating it with other systems through extension points such as Pipelines, Quickbase's native integration platform. Public cloud providers like Amazon Web Services provide many building block services that go together with Quickbase like peanut butter and jelly, and I want to introduce a sentiment analysis capability for Quickbase using Pipelines and AWS as a working example of this power. The Amazon piece is available at https://github.com/cpliakas/quickbase-sentiment-analysis, and developers can replicate the pattern for other AWS services as well. As context, Quickbase applications often capture data at the edge of the business. The more data that is captured, the more important it is to automate data analysis to extract insights from it. For example, let's say you want to crowd-source inspection of inventory, products, etc. The goal is for employees to snap pictures and submit comments when they happen to notice something in the field, such as an example of a great product display or a misplaced item. Within minutes, you can create a Quickbase application that is mobile-ready and able to be used in the field. A welcomed problem is when the application becomes widely used across the organization, and manual analysis of the data becomes impractical. One way to start categorizing the data is through sentiment analysis of the comments to sort the feedback into positive, negative, and neutral submissions to determine which ones to act on first. This situation is where our example comes into play. Amazon has a service called Comprehend that provides sentiment analysis. At first glance, the integration appears to be dead-simple. However, many hidden complexities around authentication and infrastructure configuration take time to figure out. The project at https://github.com/cpliakas/quickbase-sentiment-analysis provides a one-click install of the Amazon piece of the puzzle through theServerless Application Repository that has Quickbase assumptions which make it really easy to securely integrate with Quickbase through Pipelines. The video below walks through an end-to-end setup so that you can start experimenting with the capability now. The https://github.com/cpliakas/quickbase-sentiment-analysis project is released under the permissive open-source MIT license. You are free to use and copy the tool and apply the patterns in whatever manner you wish, including commercial applications where people pay for your service. I hope you find it useful, and I look forward to learning about where the tool and techniques are providing value to your Quickbase applications. ------------------------------ Chris Pliakas ------------------------------
