thom-nic / dogelist

Craigslist in Dogecoin

Dogelist

Craigslist in dogecoin/ Bitcoin

Basically this runs a craigslist search and returns prices of for-sale items in dogecoin (actually bitcoin right now, I can't find a direct USD to DOGE conversion.)

Motivation

Attempt to make a web app that's highly tolerant to network failures through a combination of agressive caching and clever UI feedback. Also an exercise for me to play with Backbone and CSS3 animations.

Caching happens at the app server level in case a dependent service is unreachable (Coinbase or Yahoo QL.) Caching is also done at the client level via localstorage.

UI should be as responsive as possible, e.g. pull from localstorage first and then replace the results as the HTTP response comes in. Also the UI should clearly indicate the freshness of the data. E.g. slowly fade the dogecoin price from neutral to yellow/ red if the latest exchange rate is not available.

Requirements & Setup

• Node.js v0.10.x
• Redis v2.any
• Internets

Run npm install && npm run-script setup to install node modules and bower modules.

Much run

npm start

Much test

npm test

dogelist's Issues

Fix exchange rate staleness indicator

rate should fade from neutral to red or grey to visually indicate when it was last refreshed.

Also use bootstrap tooltips to display when the data was retrieved.

exchange rate sparkline

keep a history of exchange & generate a small sparkline to display next to the rate.

Backoff heuristic based on upstream response

For upstream services (btc and craigslist) when we get HTTP errors, start to prefer the locally-cached result more so clients don't continually have to wait for a request to timeout before falling back to the cache. Should also properly detect deliberate rate limiting by upstream services.

Remember last region, category, query

hello localStorage.

backbone-fetch-cache

Use backbone-fetch-cache to support offline or network failures from the end-user.

Display btc to USD

numbers > 1 are easier to grok

Autocomplete for region

Enhancement on #3, too many regions = too difficult to find, use typeahead

Dropdown for region & type

right now they're just text fields, which is dumb.