Yesterday on Leon's Blog, secretGeek, I noticed they had released v3.4 of TimeSnapper. One of the features that caught my eye was the ability to develop/add plugins to it.

I love plugins, I've written plugins for Windows Live Writer, Outlook, dasBlog, and more.  Everything should have an SDK or plugin'able architecture. I championed it at work and we were one of the first Archiving Vendors with a 'real' SDK (I've built demo Vista Gadgets, integration scripts, federated search providers and PowerShell commandlets for it).

Anyway, the TimeSnapper plugin model looked really clean and easy to use. Read the one page description and your ready to go (didn't even download the sample code - it was so clear how things worked there was no need).

I wanted a little play around with it, so I though upload a snapshot to TwitPic would be a good idea. Opening a new project in Visual Studio, adding a reference to the ITimeSnapperPlugin.dll, create a new inherited class from ITimeSnapperPlugin and implement the interface :

    #region ITimeSnapperPlugin Members

    bool ITimeSnapperPlugin.Configurable
    {
        get { return true; }
    }

    void ITimeSnapperPlugin.Configure()
    {
        System.Windows.Forms.Form frm = new TwitPicPluginConfig();
        frm.ShowDialog();
    }

    string ITimeSnapperPlugin.Description
    {
        get { return "Uploads snapshots to TwitPic"; }
    }

    string ITimeSnapperPlugin.FriendlyName
    {
        get { return "TwitPic Plugin"; }
    }

    object ITimeSnapperPlugin.HandleEvent(TimeSnapperEvent TimeSnapperEvent, EventArgs args)
    {
        switch (TimeSnapperEvent)
        {
            case TimeSnapperEvent.SnapshotSaved :
                // upload it it to TwitPic
                if (IsTimeToUpload())
                {
                    string fileName = ((TimeSnapperPluginAPI.SnapshotSavedEventArgs)(args)).Activity.Filename;
                    Debug.WriteLine("Uploading " + fileName + " to TwitPic");
                    XmlDocument xmlDoc = UploadToTwitPic(fileName);
                }
                break;

            default :
                Debug.Assert(false, "Should never occur");
                break;
        }
        return null;
    }

    TimeSnapperMenuItem[] ITimeSnapperPlugin.MenuItems()
    {
        return null;
    }

    Guid ITimeSnapperPlugin.PluginID
    {
        get { return new Guid("50744334-C5A0-44f1-BE64-5BBF32FDA79D"); }
    }

    TimeSnapperEvent[] ITimeSnapperPlugin.SubscribesTo()
    {
        return new TimeSnapperEvent[] { TimeSnapperEvent.SnapshotSaved };
    }

All that was required was to give it a new Guid and name/description and then subscribe to the 'SnapShotSaved' event and handle the event when it was triggered.
To get the image uploaded to TwitPic I used some code from the excellent Yedda Twitter C# Library (just the stuff for posting image data to a url).
That all worked a breeze, but it was sending images (and posting to my twitter account) every 10 seconds (and of course it was hard coded to my username/password) - what was needed was a bit of configuration...

Luckily the plugin model provides an excellent and easy way to do this (set the Configurable property to true, and handle the Configure event). A bit more jiggery pokery, one modal dialog and an XML config file later, it was all working (configurable username, password, twitter message and frequency of updates) - although I really should do something better than store the username/password in clear text in an XML file...

If you want the plugin, just drop this dll into your %install%\plugins folder and restart TimeSnapper.

Apparently I am rapidly becoming 'Geo Guy'. I seem to be adding Geo / Gps support and plug-ins to everything I use...

I just finished adding 'Insert GPS Link' support to PockeTwit (a great little Windows Mobile twitter client - really, go and get a copy now...)
Previously I added GeoRSS support to dasBlog for individual blog posts as well as the RSS feed, and I also added geo microformat support to Windows Live Writer with my 'InsertGeoMicroformat' plugin.

So, what's next - have you got an app that needs Geo / GPS support added ?

Twitter is one of those applications / services that I've had trouble getting to grips with. For me it seems it's like shouting about what you are doing right now to a huge audience that is not listening. Who really cares that @kjhughes is heading to the shops to get some Mint sauce ?? Maybe I'm just not that kind of social animal, maybe I don't have enough friends using it, maybe I should 'but in' to other peoples conversations more, maybe I'm just plain boring...

I do see a use for it though (for me). It's a pretty neat way to do some remote control stuff - like set up a Media Center recording, reboot my PC, and also it's a neat way of getting updates, like new blog comment received, TV recording completed and the like....

So, right now I need to get my Outlook addin project completed, but right afterwards I'm planning an app that interfaces to twitter and accepts direct tweets as remote control instructions, and also can update me on specific events. I am also thinking about adding twitter alerts to dasBlog (on comments, posts, errors, daily reports etc)

I can see myself getting immersed in this twitter thing...

I have been playing with Twitter recently and thought it might be neat to see if I could post a 'tweet' from PowerShell. There is a great Google Group that discusses their API. The APIs are all REST based and really easy to use - the only complexity is that you need HTTP Basic Authentication to do anything 'real'.

One of the more simple API calls is to get the public timeline. No authentication is required for this so you can simply the url into your browser and get back the data (xml format, but json and other formats are available also). Try this :

http://twitter.com/statuses/public_timeline.xml

Now, for doing an update we need the following API:

update Updates the authenticating user's status.  Requires the status parameter specified below.  Request must be a POST. URL: http://twitter.com/statuses/update.format Formats: xml, json.  Returns the posted status in requested format when successful. Parameters: status.  Required.  The text of your status update.  Be sure to URL encode as necessary.  Must not be more than 160 characters and should not be more than 140 characters to ensure optimal display.

The fact it must be a POST means we have to use a HttpWebRequest (as opposed to the easier WebClient). Anyway, here is the PowerShell function :

function Send-Tweet([string]$text, [string]$username, [string]$password) {      $updateurl = "http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml"      $result = $null      $text = [System.Web.HttpUtility]::UrlEncode($text)        [System.Net.HttpWebRequest] $request = [System.Net.HttpWebRequest] [System.Net.WebRequest]::Create($updateurl)      $request.Credentials = new-object System.Net.NetworkCredential($username, $password)      $request.Method = "POST"      $request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"      $param = "status=" + $text      $sourceParam = "&source=PowerShell"      $request.ContentLength = $param.Length + $sourceParam.Length        [System.IO.StreamWriter] $stOut = new-object System.IO.StreamWriter($request.GetRequestStream(), [System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII)      $stOut.Write($param)      $stOut.Write($sourceParam)      $stOut.Close()        [System.Net.HttpWebResponse] $response = [System.Net.HttpWebResponse] $request.GetResponse()      if ($response.StatusCode -ne 200)      {            $result = "Error : " + $response.StatusCode + " : " + $response.StatusDescription      }      else      {            $sr = New-Object System.IO.StreamReader($response.GetResponseStream())            [xml]$xml = [xml]$sr.ReadToEnd()            $id = $xml.status.id            $tweet = $xml.status.text            if ($tweet.length -gt 50) { $tweet = $tweet.Substring(0,50) + "...(truncacted)" }            $result = "Tweet " + $id + " added : " + $tweet      }           return $result }

And to use it :

send-tweet "I'm sending updates from PowerShell, cool or what ??" "<your_username>" "<your_password>"