Shared Smart Bookmarks Server

"Cony" is a tool to write smart bookmarks in the python and to share them across all your browsers and with other developers on GitHub. This project is inspired by Facebook's bunny1.

What the difference between Cony and Bunny1?

Cony has no dependencies other than Bottle, which itself is a micro web framework without dependencies.
Cony could be easily extended. You have no need to inherit any classes like you do with Bunny1. With Cony, you place your commands in a separate file and fire ./cony-server.

Introduction

Smart bookmarks are a fast way to retrive information from the web. For example, you could type w smart bookmarks in the browser's location bar and it will open the Wikipedia article about smart bookmarks.

If you use more than one browser or device, then you are in trouble, because you have to sync the smart bookmarks of the various browsers.

Cony not only solves this problem, creating one place were you store your smart bookmarks, but also, it makes your bookmarks much much smarter.

For example, you could create this bookmark which will choose the text translation mode depending on language:

def cmd_tr(term):
    """Translates the text using Google Translate."""
    if len(term.decode('utf-8')) < len(term):
        direction = 'ru|en'
    else:
        direction = 'en|ru'
    redirect('http://translate.google.com/#%s|%s' % (direction, term))

This bookmark converts from English to Russian if it contains only ASCII characters. Otherwise it translates in other direction.

There are many other applications of this small webserver.

Installation

Ways to install Cony:

Just clone the repository and to run ./cony-server.
easy_install cony; cony-server
pip install cony; cony-server

Now you have server up and running. It binds to the localhost:8080 by default. Open the http://localhost:8080 in your browser to see the help.

You can configure Cony by overwriting SERVER_* variables in your local_settings.py file. Your could define:

SERVER_MODE = 'STANDALONE' # or 'WSGI', or 'CGI'
SERVER_PORT = 8080
SERVER_HOST = 'localhost'  # or '' to allow on all interfaces

You can also configure CGI or WSGI modes if you want to integrate this into an existing web server such as Apache.

Apache CGI

Create "local_settings.py" which contains:

SERVER_MODE = 'CGI'

In your Apache configuration, add:

ScriptAlias /cony/ /path/to/cony-server

Re-start Apache and you should now be able to use "http://servername/cony/?s=%s" as the Cony URL in your browser configuration.

Apache WSGI

Create "local_settings.py" which contains:

SERVER_MODE = 'WSGI'

Install mod_wsgi ("apt-get install libapache2-mod-wsgi" or "yum install mod_wsgi").

In your Apache configuration, add:

WSGIPythonPath /path/to/cony/directory
WSGIScriptAlias /cony/ /path/to/cony/directory/cony-server

Re-start Apache and you should now be able to use "http://servername/cony/?s=%s" as the Cony URL in your browser configuration.

Browser Configuration

Firefox

Type about:config into your location bar in Firefox.
Set the value of keyword.URL to be http://localhost/?s=
Now, type pypi cony into your location bar and press ENTER.

Google Chromium

Click the "Wrench" to the right of the URL bar.
Click "Preferences".
Click "Search:", click on "Manage Search Engines".
Click "Add".
- Name: Cony
- Keyword: c
- URL: http://localhost:8080/?s=%s
- OK.
Select the "Cony" line.
Click "Make Default" in the upper right.
Close the window.
Type "pypi cony" in the URL bar and press ENTER.

Google Chrome

Choose Options from the wrench menu to the right of the location bar in Chrome.
Under the section Default Search.
Click the Manage button.
Click the Add button and then fill in the fields:
- Name: Cony
- Keyword: c
- URL: http://localhost:8080/?s=%s
- OK.
Select the "Cony" line.
Click "Make Default" in the upper right.
Close the window.
Type "pypi cony" in the URL bar and press ENTER.

Safari

For Safari you could try to install Keywurl plugin. And add a Cony as default search.

Creating Custom Commands

Cony defines some default commands ("g", "p", and "pypi", as well as a general "help" command). However, you can also create your own commands by placing them in a local_settings.py.

If you define a cmd_fallback function (which is probably just set to another function, like cmd_fallback = cmd_g), then this will be used if no other command is matched. If you do not define a "cmd_fallback", then the default "cmd_g" is used, doing a Google search. Similarly, if no cmd_help is defined, a default one will be used which shows the docstrings of the commands.

Cony's default commands can be overridden or turned off. To turn a command off, just assign it none in your local_settings.py: cmd_g = None.

Also, commands can be aliased: cmd_tl = cmd_too_long.

For example, here is a simple local_settings.py config that uses the default "g", and "p", but not "pypi" commands, uses the default fallback and help commands (as described above), and creates a "weather" command with an alias "w":

from bottle import redirect
from cony import rich_help

#  local templates
TEMPLATES = dict(
   weather = """
      <p />Display the weather in the specified location.  For example,
      you could enter the following locations:
      <dl class="help">
      %for example in examples:
      <dt><a href="/?s=weather {{ example }}">{{ example }}</a></dt>
      %end
      </dl>
      %rebase layout title = 'Weather Help'
      """,
   )

@rich_help()
def cmd_weather(term):
   '''Look up weather forecast in the specified location.'''
   examples = [ 'Moscow, Russia', 'Fort Collins, Colorado' ]
   if term and term != '--help':
      redirect('http://weather.yahoo.com/search/weather?location=%s' % term)
   else:
      #  render the "weather" template defined above, pass "examples"
      return dict(examples = examples)

cmd_w = cmd_weather
cmd_pypi = None

The rich_help() decorator causes the default cmd_help command to generate a clickable link to this command. If a string argument is given, such as rich_help('--help'), then the link adds that argument to the command link. This is meant so that you can have the main help page link to help pages for the individual commands.

Contributing

There are many commands in cony.repo submodule. To plug them all, do from cony.repo import * or import only those you need for.

If you wrote a command, useful to other users, fork this project on a GitHub and add you command somewhere in the cony.repo submodule. Then send me a pull request.

Contributors

Alexander Artemenko (author)
Sean Reifschneider

nrb/cony