iGMonkey

When will iGMonkey be available?

Today! To use iGMonkey, add the following line to your HTML source:

<script type="text/javascript"
        src="http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~dans/igmonkey/igmonkey.js"></script>

Where is the source?

Source: igmonkey.js Beta (version 0.91)

Is documentation available?

Check out the example based tutorial.
Detailed API documentation coming soon!

How does iGMonkey work?

At its core, iGMonkey provides a flexible retrieval and rendering pipeline that manipulates a document by passing it through chains of pluggable ‘filter’ functions. iGmonkey's pipeline draws inspiration from the unix shell's pipe and redirection operators, as well as functional programming languages, such as Lisp. Familiar with the unix shell or functional programming? You'll be using iGMonkey in no time. Even if you think a unix shell is something you find on the beach, iGMonkey is easy to learn so it won't take you long to get up to speed.

iGMonkey is extensible. iGMonkey includes a number of useful filter functions you may use. Better yet, you can write your own filters to process the documents that are important to you. Best of all, iGMonkey filters facilitate reuse and remixing.

Why else use iGMonkey?

iGMonkey features helpful utility functions that simplify your code, and make your applications more robust.

Regular Expression utilities take the error-prone work out of hand-coding regexes to match HTML tags.
- Example: openTagAllAttrsEx automagically generates a regex that robustly matches an HTML open tag of a given type with exactly the specified attributes
Document Object Model utilities make common tasks easy.
- Example: hasAllAttrsEx is a predicate that tests if a given element features exactly the specified attributes
Higher-Order functions add to the expressive power of the javascript language.
- map, a true generalized map that takes an n argument function and n lists, similar to the map found in Scheme and Lisp
- foreach, beta, semantics may change

Where can I use iGMonkey?

At present, iGMonkey serves as a support library for Google Homepage API modules, but most of iGMonkey's code is not specific to the Homepage API. The retrieval phase of iGMonkey's pipeline is the one component of iGMonkey that makes direct use of the Homepage API since it uses Google's Content Proxy to fetch pages.

iGMonkey was originally developed and tested with Firefox on Mac OS X. Limited testing has been performed with Safari. It is currently untested with Opera, and Internet Explorer. Solid cross-browser support is a key goal of iGMonkey so stay tuned. If you have a success or horror story using iGMonkey on any browser, please let me know.

How is iGMonkey licensed?

iGMonkey is Free Software. This software is licensed under the CC-GNU LGPL. When used as a component in Google Homepage API modules, this program is also subject to the Google Homepage API Terms and Conditions

N.B., Google has made no endorsement of iGMonkey, expressed, implied, or otherwise. I am not affiliated with or employed by Google.

Who wrote iGMonkey?

Daniel C. Silverstein. Please contact me if you would like to contribute.
Incidentally, I am looking for full-time employment in or around the San Francisco Bay Area. If you want to hire a smart, savvy hack who gets things done, let me know.

What does the future hold?

Near future

Add true, pure javascript #include function. I am aware of existing solutions that write <script> tags into HTML document source, but consider them to be an unacceptable kludge.
Add comparator interface to simplify and automate document comparison.
Test and enhance cross-browser support.
Grow a developer community devoted to writing iGMonkey filters so we can support most popular web sites and data formats.
Integrate Greasemonkey and iGMonkey. Ideally, Greasemonkey scripts will work seamlessly with iGMonkey filters and vice versa without any modifications required on the part of developers.

Long term

Grow iGMonkey into a meta-platform that makes it easy to target many different platforms.
- As a first step, it should be a relatively straightforward matter to remove iGMonkey's dependence on the Google Content Proxy, and replace it with functionality provided via the XMLHttpRequest object available in modern browsers.
- Greasemonkey is the first planned additional platform. If there are other platforms you want iGMonkey to support, let me know.
Native support for remote procedure call methods including SOAP, XML-RPC, and REST.

What's in a name?

All this started with a Google Homepage API module intended as a mashup to compare results from Google.com and Google.cn (i.e., Google China). I soon realized that I could generalize the module's plumbing to create an easy to use web mashup platform that encourages developers to remix and reuse one anothers' work. This functionality is similar to Greasemonkey, a Firefox plugin that allows users to write and install scripts that remix web pages as they browse. I began to think of my utility as Greasemonkey for the Google Homepage API. Unfortunately, that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Google only knows why, the personalized home page lives at http://www.google.com/ig. Take the ig, mix it with the monkey, and you get iGMonkey!