Libcloud Python driver for Brightbox Cloud API 30 Nov 10

Hot on the heel of last weeks announcement of support for our new cloud API in the Fog Ruby cloud library – some news for Pythonistas! We now also have a Brightbox driver for Libcloud – the Python (and now Java) client library for interacting with multiple cloud computing APIs.

The driver is available right now via our fork of libcloud on Github and will hopefully be merged into the official codebase soon.

Here’s a quick example using the Python shell…

libcloud-brightbox:trunk$ python
Python 2.6.5 (r265:79359, Mar 24 2010, 01:32:55)
[GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5493)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from libcloud.drivers.brightbox import BrightboxNodeDriver
>>> from libcloud.types import NodeState
>>> driver = BrightboxNodeDriver('my_client_id', 'my_client_secret')
>>> len(driver.list_nodes())
3
>>> size = driver.list_sizes()[0]
>>> image = driver.list_images()[0]
>>> node = driver.create_node(name='Libcloud test server', size=size, image=image)
>>> node.id
'srv-0dj5y'
>>> len(driver.list_nodes())
4

If you’ve not already done so, request a free cloud beta account and have a go yourself :)

Full Text Indexing in Ruby with Xapian Fu 1 Feb 10

I’ve just properly announced my Ruby full text indexing library, Xapian Fu, on my personal blog.  It’s a Ruby interface to Xapian, an open source search engine Library.  Xapian Fu basically gives you a Hash interface to Xapian – so you get a persistent Hash with full text indexing built in.

For example:

  require 'xapian-fu'
  include XapianFu
  db = XapianDb.new(:dir => 'example.db', :create => true,
                    :store => [:title, :year])
  db << { :title => 'Brokeback Mountain', :year => 2005 }
  db << { :title => 'Cold Mountain', :year => 2004 }
  db << { :title => 'Yes Man', :year => 2008 }
  db.flush
  db.search("mountain").each do |match|
    puts match.values[:title]
  end

The full announcement is here, github project here and rdoc here.  Hope you find it useful!