API details you find here, but in short:

Request

http://worldtimeengine.com/api/<apikey>/<latitude>/<longitude>

and you get something like this:

Response

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<timezone xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://worldtimeengine.com/timezone.xsd">
 <version>1.1</version>
 <location>
 <region>Australia/New South Wales</region>
 <latitude>-33.8671</latitude>
 <longitude>151.207</longitude>
 </location>
 <time>
 <utc>2008-02-13 00:50:30</utc>
 <local>2008-02-13 11:50:30</local>
 <zone>
 <hasDST>true</hasDST>
 <current>
 <abbreviation>EDT</abbreviation>
 <description>Eastern Australia Daylight Savings Time</description>
 <utcoffset>+11:00</utcoffset>
 <isdst>true</isdst>
 <effectiveUntil>2008-03-29 19:00:00</effectiveUntil>
 </current>
 <next>
 <abbreviation>EST</abbreviation>
 <description>Eastern Australia Standard Time</description>
 <utcoffset>+10:00</utcoffset>
 <isdst>false</isdst>
 <effectiveUntil>2008-10-25 18:00:00</effectiveUntil>
 </next>
 </zone>
 </time>
</timezone>

How can we use Groovy to request for the data and access its detail ?

• Get yourself a API Key from world time engine
• We use the Groovy Console (groovyConsole from the shell)
• We need the httpbuilder library
• Copy http-builder-0.5.0.jar and all dependencies into the ./groovy/lib folder in your home folder
• Execute this code:
  

  request

  import groovyx.net.http.*
  import static groovyx.net.http.ContentType.*
  def worldTime = new RESTClient("http://worldtimeengine.com/api/{yourkey}/35.7647018432617/140.386001586914")
  def resp = worldTime.get( contentType : XML)
  println resp.data.time.zone.current.abbreviation.text()
  println resp.data

  

  Groovy Console

  

  XML Response

• You see it is fairly simple to access specific fields with the groovy notation resp.data.time.zone.current.abbreviation.text()

How do I use this ?

• I use Groovy classes in my java EE application. You can cut down on boilperplate code dramatically by using Groovy !
• The above service I use in an location aware application.

Infos and Download at www.infoq.com/minibooks/grails-getting-started

Trac Access with XML-RPC

def serverProxy = new XMLRPCServerProxy("https://user:password@sometracserver.com/login/xmlrpc")
// or
// def serverProxy = new XMLRPCServerProxy("http://sometracserver.com/login/xmlrpc")
serverProxy.setBasicAuth("user","password")
println serverProxy.wiki.getPage("TracBackup")

Remark:
At the time of this entry version 0.6 is not released yet. Check for availability at repository.codehaus.org/org/codehaus/groovy/groovy-xmlrpc/ for the new version or update your svn copy and build by yourself (see blog entry)

Update 2010-02-01: The new version was released as 0.5.1 (link)

XML Error

2010-01-07 09:03:03,095 Trac[main] DEBUG: Dispatching <Request "POST u'/login/xmlrpc'">
2010-01-07 09:03:03,117 Trac[main] ERROR: Internal Server Error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/Python-2.5.2/lib/python2.5/site-packages/trac/web/main.py", line 441, in _dispatch_request
dispatcher.dispatch(req)
File "/usr/local/Python-2.5.2/lib/python2.5/site-packages/trac/web/main.py", line 205, in dispatch
resp = chosen_handler.process_request(req)
File "/usr/local/Python-2.5.2/lib/python2.5/site-packages/TracXMLRPC-1.0.6-py2.5.egg/tracrpc/web_ui.py", line 163, in process_request
self.process_xml_request(req, content_type)
File "/usr/local/Python-2.5.2/lib/python2.5/site-packages/TracXMLRPC-1.0.6-py2.5.egg/tracrpc/web_ui.py", line 167, in process_xml_request
args, method = xmlrpclib.loads(req.read(int(req.get_header('Content-Length'))))
File "/usr/local/Python-2.5.2/lib/python2.5/xmlrpclib.py", line 1130, in loads
p.feed(data)
File "/usr/local/Python-2.5.2/lib/python2.5/xmlrpclib.py", line 547, in feed
self._parser.Parse(data, 0)
ExpatError: XML declaration not well-formed: line 1, column 30
2010-01-07 09:03:03,121 Trac[chrome] DEBUG: Prepare chrome data for request

Python Library/Call

XML-RPC

import xmlrpclib
server = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy("http://user:password@sometracserver.com/login/xmlrpc")
print server.wiki.getPage("WikiStart")

Result in Wireshark

Wireshark

Groovy Call

XML-RPC

def serverProxy = new XMLRPCServerProxy("http://sometracserver.com/project/login/xmlrpc")
serverProxy.setBasicAuth("user","password")
serverProxy.wiki.getPage("WikiStart")

Result in Wireshark

Wireshark

There is the problem: encoding=”+ENCODING+”
The Trac XML reader most likely will throw up the complete call because of this. Actually the comparison was not really required because the error is very obvious.

I will continue now with my main project, to create a Netbeans plugin for Trac.

In this tutorial we will build the library from the codebase. Using Netbeans we have all the tool we need to achieve this easily.

Tutorial:

1. Start Netbeans. Team | Subversion | Checkout..
   Enter http://svn.codehaus.org/groovy/trunk/groovy/modules/xmlrpc/ and a local directory
   

   SVN

   

   SVN

   Checking out..

   ==[IDE]== Jan 2, 2010 8:55:32 PM Checking out...
   co -r HEAD http://svn.codehaus.org/groovy/trunk/groovy/modules/xmlrpc /media/NEXUSII/GroovyAndGrails/GroovyBuildNB/xmlrpc --config-dir /home/sven/.netbeans/6.8/config/svn/config --non-interactive
   A    /media/NEXUSII/GroovyAndGrails/GroovyBuildNB/xmlrpc/repository
   A    /media/NEXUSII/GroovyAndGrails/GroovyBuildNB/xmlrpc/repository/jivesoftware
   A    /media/NEXUSII/GroovyAndGrails/GroovyBuildNB/xmlrpc/repository/jivesoftware/smackx
   A    /media/NEXUSII/GroovyAndGrails/GroovyBuildNB/xmlrpc/repository/jivesoftware/smackx/3.0.1
   A    /media/NEXUSII/GroovyAndGrails/GroovyBuildNB/xmlrpc/repository/jivesoftware/smackx/3.0.1/smackx-3.0.1.jar.md5
   A    /media/NEXUSII/GroovyAndGrails/GroovyBuildNB/xmlrpc/repository/jivesoftware/smackx/3.0.1/smackx-3.0.1.jar
   A    /media/NEXUSII/GroovyAndGrails/GroovyBuildNB/xmlrpc/repository/jivesoftware/smack
   A    /media/NEXUSII/GroovyAndGrails/GroovyBuildNB/xmlrpc/repository/jivesoftware/smack/3.0.1
   A    /media/NEXUSII/GroovyAndGrails/GroovyBuildNB/xmlrpc/repository/jivesoftware/smack/3.0.1/smack-3.0.1.jar
   A    /media/NEXUSII/GroovyAndGrails/GroovyBuildNB/xmlrpc/repository/jivesoftware/smack/3.0.1/smack-3.0.1.jar.md5
   A    /media/NEXUSII/GroovyAndGrails/GroovyBuildNB/xmlrpc/.classpath
   A    /media/NEXUSII/GroovyAndGrails/GroovyBuildNB/xmlrpc/.project
   A    /media/NEXUSII/GroovyAndGrails/GroovyBuildNB/xmlrpc/src
   ...

2. Build the library (right click on the project and Build)
   

   Build

   NetBeans: Executing 'mvn -Dnetbeans.execution=true install'
   NetBeans:      JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.16
   Scanning for projects...
   Building Groovy XML-RPC
   task-segment: [install]...
   Installing /media/NEXUSII/GroovyAndGrails/GroovyBuildNB/xmlrpc/target/groovy-xmlrpc-0.5.0-SNAPSHOT.jar to /home/sven/.m2/repository/org/codehaus/groovy/groovy-xmlrpc/0.5.0-SNAPSHOT/groovy-xmlrpc-0.5.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
   BUILD SUCCESSFULTotal time: 9 seconds
   Finished at: Sat Jan 02 21:34:59 CET 2010Final Memory: 25M/137M

3. Download missing dependencies
   Eventually some libraries are missing, Netbeans will remind you. (Just press download)
   

   Dependency Problems

In part 2 we will use the library to access TRAC via XML-RPC.

The prerequisites are still the same, just we change the library:

• Download the Apache library from here. You should download a file from the binaries folder (apache-xmlrpc-3.1.2-bin.zip), inside you will find a lib subfolder with a couple of jars we need to add to the classpath.
  (commons-logging-1.1.jar, xmlrpc-client-3.1.2.jar, xmlrpc-server-3.1.2.jar, ws-commons-util-1.0.2.jar, xmlrpc-common-3.1.2.jar)

Snippet:

Remark: You can add more parameters for the server with

• config.setEncoding(“UTF-8″)
  config.setBasicUserName(“[username]“);
  config.setBasicPassword(“[password]“);

Requirements:

• Groovy Installed
• Snipplr Account (snipplr.com)
• Your Snipplr API Key from your settings page (snipplr.com/settings)
• The XML-RPC library (groovy-xmlrpc-0.4.jar or newer)

Tutorial:

• Start the Groovy Console (usually with groovyConsole from a shell)
  

  Groovy Console

• Add the XML-RPC library (Scripts| Add jar to classpath)
  

  Add library

• The Snippet
  

  
  

   

• Result

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  You have 7 snippets and favorites
  [id:25390, title:Create simple XML with MarkupBuilder, updated:[timezone:-05:00 EST, datetime:Thu Dec 24 10:13:50 CET 2009], favorite:false, private:false]
  [id:25410, title:Create simple XML with StreamingMarkupBuilder (pretty-printed), updated:[timezone:-05:00 EST, datetime:Fri Dec 25 04:30:52 CET 2009], favorite:false, private:false]
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  import groovy.xml.*
  def createXML() {
  def xml = new groovy.xml.StreamingMarkupBuilder().bind(){
  mkp.xmlDeclaration()
  content() {
  parameter(x:0)
  person(id:100){
  firstname("John")
  lastname("Long")
  }
  person(id:101){
  firstname("Ken")
  lastname("Smith")
  }
  }
  }
  XmlUtil.serialize(xml)
  }
  def static main(def args) {
  def x = createXML()
  println x
  }
  xml groovy prettyprint StreamingMarkupBuilder
  2009-12-25 03:37:20

  Take a look at the API documentation at snipplr.com

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