SRA Lab Open Source Code

Feedback on GNOME 3.0

After 5 months with GNOME 3.0, I'm really happy with the experience. At the end of work day,
my mind is no more exhausted of windows placement fighting and application finding.

GNOME 3.0 is really stable, except with the Open Source driver on my Radeon 5870 (4 crashes in 2 months).

I really like the behavior of dual-head where the secondary screen has only one virtual screen.
For me, there are just 3 annoying points:

• Ctrl + Del to remove a file in Nautilus, may be it's a Fedora settings but this change is just @!# I've already a Trash to undo my mistakes (http://www.khattam.info/howto-enable-delete-key-in-nautilus-3-fedora-15-2011-06-01.html)
• Alt key to shutdown, no I don't want to waste energy for days and my PC boots quickly.
• only vertical virtual screens, I found a bit painful to move down two screens when the screen is reachable with one move with a 2x2 layout but I understand this layout doesn't fit well with the GNOME 3 design.

To have a good experience with GNOME 3, I use:

• Windows key + type to launch everything
• Ctrl + Shift + Alt + arrows to move the application between the virtual screen
• Ctrl + click in the launcher when I really want a new instance (the default behavior is perfect)
• snap à la Windows 7 is great
• Alt + Tab then the arrow keys to select an app

Don't forget to read https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet or the Help (System key + 'Help').

It's not specific to GNOME 3 but you can change the volume when your mouse is over the applet (don't click, think hover) and a mouse scroll.
With GTK+, do you know you can reach the end of scrolled area with a left click on the arrow and a specific position by middle click?

I'm impressed by the new features of GNOME 3.2 and I'm waiting for Fedora 17 to enjoy it!

libsoup and Django

If you need to interface C code with a Django app, you should consider to use libsoup. It's a nice HTTP client/server library based on GObject and integrated with the glib main loop.

This is the code I used to authenticate with libsoup against my Django application (and the code is similar for any forms):

#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <glib.h>

#include <libsoup/soup.h>
#include <libsoup/soup-auth.h>

static char* django_get_csrftoken_from_body(SoupMessage *msg)
{
    char *csrftoken = NULL;
    char *p_found;

    p_found = g_strrstr_len(msg->response_body->data,
                msg->response_body->length,
                "csrfmiddlewaretoken");
    if (p_found != NULL) {
    csrftoken = g_strndup(p_found + strlen("csrfmiddlewaretoken' value='"),
                  strlen("c711343cd20077a3aa869fcc9b931ff3"));
    }
    return csrftoken;
}

static int django_authenticate(SoupSession *session, const char *base_uri)
{
    char *uri;
    SoupMessage *msg;
    char *csrftoken;

    uri = g_strconcat(base_uri, "login/", NULL);
    msg = soup_message_new(SOUP_METHOD_GET, uri);
    soup_session_send_message(session, msg);
    printf("Login Status Code: %d\n", msg->status_code);
    if (msg->status_code != 200) {
    g_object_unref(msg);
    g_free(uri);
    return -1;
    }

    csrftoken = django_get_csrftoken_from_body(msg);
    g_object_unref(msg);

    printf("CSRF token %s\n", csrftoken);

    msg = soup_form_request_new("POST", uri,
                "username", "MYUSERNAME",
                "password", "MYPASSWORD",
                "csrfmiddlewaretoken", csrftoken,
                NULL);
    soup_session_send_message(session, msg);
    printf("POST Login Status Code: %d\n", msg->status_code);
    printf("Message %s\n", msg->response_body->data);

    g_free(csrftoken);
    g_object_unref(msg);
    g_free(uri);

    return 0;
}

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    SoupSession *session;
    SoupCookieJar *jar;

    g_type_init();

    session = soup_session_sync_new();

    /* Accept all cookies */
    soup_session_add_feature_by_type(session, SOUP_TYPE_COOKIE_JAR);
    jar = SOUP_COOKIE_JAR(soup_session_get_feature(session,
                           SOUP_TYPE_COOKIE_JAR));
    soup_cookie_jar_set_accept_policy(jar, SOUP_COOKIE_JAR_ACCEPT_ALWAYS);

    django_authenticate(session, "http://localhost:8000/");

    soup_session_abort(session);
    g_object_unref(session);

    return 0;
}