Gaurav Saini

Open-source Enthusiastic

[gauravsaini]

GSOC Reunion 2014

Its becoming my habit writing after a while from the event :P From now onwards I will try to be on time :D

First Foreign Trip and that to Silicon Valley for attending Google Summer of Code Reunion 2014. First of thanks to my Organization Mifos Initiative for selecting me a delegate for the Reunion.

Google Summer of Code is scheduled from 23-26 October. I landed to San Fransisco on 21st Morning. Me and my friend Ishan which is another delegate student from our organization has already booked an Airbnb Accommodation in Millbrae which is know by name Hacker House.

We started our trip by visiting Facebook Headquarters in Menlo Park, Thanks again to our organization administrator Edward who introduced us to Connie Yang Product Designer at Facebook.

Selfie time: Ishan, Norman, Me and Connie :D

Second Day of my day was busy in visiting Stores and trying different breakfast with so much SODA :P

Also, we visited a Spanish restaurant (Picaro restaurant) and had spanish dinner with Tapas.

Ishan, Me, Rahul and Norman :)

Best part of the trip is yet to start GSOC REUNION :D We check In at San Jose Marriot for the Reunion on 23rd and it was so amazing feeling when I entered my 5 Star Hotel Room :P hehe As this was my first time to any these type of Hotels.

GSOC Reunion started with registration and our welcome Packet (wrist-band, drink tickets, badge, t-shirt, hoodie, pens etc.). Carol Smith delivered the opening keynote. Later in evening we have our Welcome Reception and we meet people from many organizations.

Second Day was planned for a Trip to Great America (Amusement Park), which was all booked for GSOC attendees. We had a great time at the park and was enjoying with the students from many organizations. Although, my fellow friend Ishan did not have good time there :P

Later in the evening I think is the best part of GSOC Reunion. Google had a surprise for us at the Dinner Reception at San Jose Tech Museum. Google invited Linus Torvalds and Peter Norvig for the Reception and we shared some great moments there.

After that we have a after Party at Hotel Grand Ballroom. Many people were involved in their laptops also, but we were enjoying :P

Third Day, we had various sessions from morning till evening. There were some sessions by Googlers also. Best thing we got from these was Google Cardboard that too Free :D We tested Google Cardboard and listened to some of the talks. Later in afternoon we went to visit Golden Gate Bridge all through San Fransisco down town area. That day local team San Fransisco Giants finals going on, streets were filled with Orange colors. We hired Uber and went to the other side of Golden Gate and it was AWESOME :D

Day ended with a Funny Quiz and musical night back at the Hotel. Day Four, last day of GSOC Reunion. We still have something to visit and that ofcource mighty GooglePlex at Mountain View. In morning we visited Google Headquarters and Stephenie Taylor,  was with us during the visit to the campus. Unfortunately we unable to get into the offices, but yes the famous Android Sculptures were there and we all clicked so many photos.

After, coming back from GooglePlex we checked out of Hotel and returned back to our accomodation, as I have my flight next day. Its almost 1 week and was so fun loving. Meet new people around and make new friends. Just the thing I missed is good food, as a vegetarian it been a a bit hard time for me :P haha

[gauravsaini]

Finally GSOC graduate :D

Its a bit too late, but thought I should mention about successfully completing my Google Summer of Code Project 2014 project "Localisation and UI Improvements". It was a great summer altogether, learned new things and most important get in touch with many experienced developers in the community.

After the mid-term evaluations, my project was going in perfect direction. I get a chance to work Localization task. My interaction in the mailing list and IRC channel increased and get to know new things in AngularJS itself.

I want to thanks my mentor Kojo, Mifos admin Ed and big thanks to Nayan and Vishwas for helping me completing my project.

Most exciting is due to GSOC I am attending my organisation's summit in Uganda, Africa and also the GSOC Reunion in San Francisco :)

[gauravsaini]

Now Apache Committer - First Commit for Apache Roller

It comes to me as a surprise, Recently got a email from Apache Roller PMC member Glen, that they have voted me as Committer for Apache Roller Project.

Most Interesting for me is that now I have apache email gsaini-at-apache-dot-org and name listed at Roller and ASF Site

Just 2 days back, I got my first commit for Roller Project and it feels good :D

Next Aim to be in PMC and become Committer to multiple projects. :)

[gauravsaini]

Half way through GSOC !

Just few days back I got my mid term evaluations cleared by my mentor.  It come as a great joy to me, as initial I was a bit tense as the project I proposed got changed by the organization.

As mentioned before I was to work on Android App (Extend Community app to run on Mobile devices with Off line Support), but later on after having discussion with the community they switched me to another project in which I am working on "Various UI improvement and Enhancements in the Community-App". 

Till the mid term evaluation, I have been working on variours parts and UI enhancement in the Community App which is based on AngularJS. You can see my work and commits at github and see my progress.

During this time I have learnt a lot from the experienced developers in the mifos community. My skills in specifically AngularJS have improved a lot. Many new things I came to know while working on various tasks and also interacting in AngularJS IRC channel.

I am looking forward to successfully complete my GSOC 2014 campaign :)

[gauravsaini]

Surprise Welcome Package from Google

Just in middle of my lunch got courier on my name. After seeing that its shipped from US and GSOC 2014 mentioned, I was like must be my Google T-shirt. I was too excited and after opening my excitement double to surprise welcome package from Google. A Notebook and Pen was inside the box.

Really thankful to Google for this awesome surprise :)

[gauravsaini]

Selected in Google Summer of Code

Waiting eagerly at midnight for my Google Summer of Code result. The anxiousness is at height, then came the result and I was SELECTED. I was really happy and shared this with all my family and friends. It feels good to be part of GSOC. Last year I can't think of it and what standard it has set to get selected, But working hard all through out year with GSOC 2014 in mind helped :)

I got selected in Google Summer of Code under Mifos. Mifos is a diverse community of microfinance institutions, technology professionals, business people, volunteers, and contributors. I am really excited to start working on my project "Extend Community app to run on Mobile devices with Offline Support" this summer. 

Selection in GSOC was in my list of goals and now I have changed it to Completing GSOC successfully. :)

[gauravsaini]

Contribution to Apache Roller

I am writing too late about this, but contributing to Apache Roller (Blogging Platform) was extremely an exciting and learning period for me. During this period I contributed and participated to Apache Roller Community with some patches and a responsive theme for Roller Blog.

Let me first give some insight about Apache Roller.

"Apache Roller is a full-featured, multi-user and group-blog server suitable for blog sites large and small. It runs as a Java web application that should be able to run on most any Java EE server and relational database. 

I came across Apache Roller while searching for some blogging platform to integrate for a website. Initially, I started just integrating this blog with our website back-end software (Apache OFBiz). During this phase of getting into the Roller code base I worked on the building up theme for blog which matches the website. I started participating in the user/developer mailing list and started asking question in mailing list. Apache Roller Community is not that vast but have great experienced committers. Glen Mazza  is one of the most active committer in Roller Community and he helped me a lot.

After completing Roller integration in the website, I started building a responsive theme using Bootstrap. As, the themes available in Roller did not have any modern theme using latest technologies. As soon as I completed my roller theme I contributed it to the community and is now mentioned in Roller Wiki. This was really a great achievement for me to contribute something new to the community. After that I started looking in the JIRA Issue tracker and starting commenting on the issues list and worked on 2-3 bugs and new improvement. During this period I learned and worked on some exciting technologies like velocity, Struts 2 and JPA.

At the end it was a great experience to contribute to Apache Roller Community and I wish I could contribute more but due to busy schedule, internal projects, Google Summer Of Code and Google Online Marketing Challenge preparations, I have to shift my focus.

In Future I will definitely contribute to Apache Organization’s Projects.

[gauravsaini]

Sofware Development Automation with Agile Methodology using Open Source Software (Gitlab + Redmine)

Automation is a integral part of any Software development process for being successfully manage resources and tasks for the client projects. I have been working on a website which has e-commerce features in it. During the process of development, I actually first time feel the need of automating the process of development. As, my main problem was when client send me issues and bugs list in emails. Everyday I woke up and saw 5-10 emails of bugs with screenshots attached and tasks list. Initially it was not a problem as project is small and I am single person working on it, but as soon as the project grown and no of developer increased It was a big problem for me to manage all the resources and client needs. In worst cases our team even miss some bugs or issue mentioned in email by client, or the email got disappears in so many emails he sent to me. 

Another problem I was having is that client was unable to track the development process, as sometime there are issues regarding the payments, as there are not any way of tracking changes and LOC (lines of code). I was using GIT for long time but missing some User Interface like Github provides, then recently got to know about GitLab. 

Now, that I have Gitlab setup and really it have solved so many problem with its awesome UI and its feature. It has an inbuild issue tracker but seems its not so powerful, so best available open source issue tracker which uses agile development process is Redmine. There is already an option in gitlab lab for integration with redmine, just have to mention the projectid and it will take to redmine tracker.

The mix of both are must for any Software company as you will come to know the real taste of automation with agile methodology. With GitLab + Redmine, I am now enjoying the development process and it ease my headache as manager to projects also. 

I'm Lovin' It :)

Note: For installation of GitLab and Redmine, I suggest to use their manual installation guides. I installed it on Ubuntu 12.04+ and it worked perfectly with some glitches :P 

[gauravsaini]

Creating Tenant in Apache OFBiz

Its really long time, when I last wrote a blog. In Past few months during working on Apache OFBiz, I have working on multiple e-commerce website. During this, I come to know about concept of Multi-tenant. By Multi-tenant we can have multiple website on same Application with different databases facility available for different websites. 

I really have to search a lot for creating tenant in OFBiz, there are documentation and tutorials there, but I did not find all commands at same place so we can have tenant running in Apache OFBiz. Main problem I got was in Creating different back-office user login. I searched in build.xml of the OFBiz and after going to every command I finally was successful in making list of commands. Sharing this commands as I might not be alone who is having problem in it.

Commands:-

1. Import this Data in web-tools of main Database for creating tenant of separate website.

<Tenant tenantId="10001" tenantName="Name"/> <TenantDataSource tenantId="10001" entityGroupName="org.ofbiz" jdbcUri="jdbc:postgresql://127.0.0.1/tenant_name" jdbcUsername="username" jdbcPassword="password"/> <TenantDataSource tenantId="10001" entityGroupName="org.ofbiz.olap" jdbcUri="jdbc:postgresql://127.0.0.1/tenant_nameolap" jdbcUsername="username" jdbcPassword=password"/>

2. To load the seed data for the new tenant database.

java -Xmx512m -XX:MaxPermSize=128m -jar ofbiz.jar -install -readers=seed -delegator=default#10001

3. To load Admin Login for backend authentication.

./ant load-tenant-admin-user-login -DdelegatorId=default#10001 -DuserLoginId=admin

Note: Don't forget to create new database for the tenant. :)

[gauravsaini]

[gauravsaini]

SaaS based E-commerce Platform with Cloud Support.

Cloud Computing is evolving and is hot topic out in the market. Everyone in market is trying to use it for their products in one or other way. One such Idea is implemented by vPlanet Commerce. They have launched their SaaS based E-commerce Platform with Cloud Support. 

In a way its an interesting aspect with combining Cloud Computing with E-commerce and be a future aspect. With cloud stores we will have no Hardware cost, 24x7 monitoring and scale up website anytime you think traffic is increasing. With no long terms contract, just the "Pay as you Go". Its good especially for small retailers who want to open their online store can easily setup in just 5-10 mins without having involved in any technical aspects, they can simply add products and start selling it. They just have to pay on monthly basis and in future if demand increases they can easily increase their server size and bandwidth with cloud service available, no need to transfer anything. 

Cost is here the main factor which will decrease with cloud computing coming into the scope. Other characteristics are Agility, Virtualization, Multitenancy, Reliability, Performance, Maintenance.

Security in Clound is not at all compromised, as there are thousands of other stores also in same Cloud. Also your stores in cloud does not mean that your data is publicly accessible. Your Data is your Data. 

So think about it !!!

[gauravsaini]

JavaScript floating point number problem

Today while working on a Project, I try multiplying two numbers in JavaScript  the result which came every-time I change the value while multiplying with a decimal number is really strange. In my case I am multiplying 0.15 with different integers and for multiple of 3 it gave result in large floating numbers. Example 0.15 x 3 = 0.44999999999999996 and same when I plus 0.15 three times, rather than it should be simply 0.45 Really it is very strange result.

Then I searched on this and find some questions related to it on Stack Overflow. Many answer are rounded the number will solve this issue, but I can't figure out why it happened. One of answer which seems to be best is this.  

A New thing came to know, this tells me that sometimes simple things surprise a lot :)

[gauravsaini]

Yet Semi- Finalist :)

Today, came my result of Google Online Marketing Challenge 2012. I was so curious about the result as I had worked hard for trip to google headquaters. But HARD LUCK I am unable to to came in top of the list in the world. There were almost 11k students from 86 countries, making this most competitive. 

After That I checked the list of students in Full results and found my name in top 60 in the world and making to the semi-finalist ( top 15 in Asia- Pacific region), which I think is a great success for me. At the end I was very much happy and satisfied with my performance at this worldwide Challenge. 

912-911-1016  India  Semi-Finalist

Really happy to see this result  :)

[gauravsaini]

Fun to work in Google Marketing Challenge

Around Six months back I heard about Google Online marketing Challenge. After going through the competition guidelines I decided to participate in it and advertise for our own company. With professor registration necessary in the challenge, there comes the problem :P. I really not want any professor intervention in this. But then I have to ask my professor for the registration, he said that he only have university ID card and didn't have any university domain email. I know that my professor will not help me in this, then I email the competition official and ask then to create the professor registration. After some days of emails and discussion I got the professor registration and Now its time for me to register and start working. With Some days to left in start of challenge I watched many videos and Hang Out of Adwords. for starting my campaign I had to first upload my Pre-campaign report then only I can get adwords coupon for advertising. preparing Pre-campaign report was also very hectic with around. I prepared the report in 3 days but the reviewing it taken me 2 weeks. According to guidelines of challenge we have to submit our report to professor for reviewing but my professor is not at all interested in it. So i have to check it all alone. As pre-campaign report should have logical flow. Finally then I got $ 250 adwords coupon :)

There come my biggest challenge as I am new to adwords, although watching too many videos real time ads are altogether different. As many thought come to mind of how to start. So till now around 2 weeks are gone and 1 week is left for the campaigning. Till Now I have learned a lot about adwords. Adwords tools are great for beginner to start, keyword tool, traffic estimator, adword editor. Analytics provides you with data and statistics of your websites, So you can make necessary changes needed for the campaign. In starting of campaign I got nice clicks but CTR was not good as I am not using keyword matching. Through keyword matching my CTR almost doubled. Also for small campaign having less ad groups Accelerated ads is advisable. The most important thing for advertisement is the conversion which is the main motive of advertisement. Goal conversion is so crucial that without it our ROI will be very low and our motive will not be fulfilled. 

For last 2 weeks I have been so busy in this challenge and unfortunately my examz are also going on :(  These days I am so involved in it that in my dreams also I am working on it Like HELL. I have to monitor the ads in every 2-3 hours so I can make the changes to keywords which are not performing well. With just 1 week left for the campaign many more improvement have to be made to the campaigns. Good news is that with such improvement in conversion the company has decided to continue the ads with me after the campaign gets over :)

I wish that I could win this challenge an get a trip to Google headquarters :)