Develop Reference

How to create a Windows Phone app that parses html data from a website

I'm planning to create a Windows Phone App for my own site (still not up and running).
I don't know how to go about it.
What I know is that I don't want to use the webview control as it would make the app primitive and ugly.
I am thinking of downloading the html content and parsing it into XAML elements to build the app controls.
But, I am a beginner developer and have no experience in this. If anyone could guide me on how to proceed further it would be very helpful.

"I am thinking of downloading the html content and parsing it into XAML elements to build the app controls."
Hell, no!
In my opinion this is the way you should go: your current web app should have calls to services which provide you the data you need to display on the UI. Your web app is a client. Another client could be the Windows Mobile app.
Windows Store apps can be developed using HTML5+JS or C#+XAML. Pick one way, you know best.
Just saying, if you have some REST service behind everything, it will help you out build clients with ease.

I used AngleSharp to parse html and construct XAML elements based on that.
https://github.com/AngleSharp/AngleSharp

"I don't want to use the webview control as it would make the app primitive"
This is that you believe. It's possible it's because you have not knowledge enough.
You can make beautiful apps with html. More this if your are trying only make a web as app.
Try making php get_contents and calling that from ajax. Into the app you can style the data you parsed

If you have web application, you have two easy ways to convert it to mobile:
Cordova
Hosted Web App
But Cordova uses webview, so probably you want to use second option:
You can create app by wrapping existing web site:
Click “File -> New Project” and choose “JavaScript -> Windows ->
Windows Universal -> Blank App (Windows Universal)”
I think it's much easier than designing XAML application.

Force live users to expire assets for JS Web Apps

Our web application is built on AngularJS and Ruby on Rails. Sometimes we find a bug in the JS and need to patch it immediately. We push up an update to Heroku and the new JS files are then live. However, users on the site (who are currently on the site) and do not refresh their page, are still using the old JS file.
Is there a way to force refresh of the assets on deployment with Heroku? Or, is there a better way to handle this type of problem?
I am thinking of using web sockets to possibly handle the scenario.

Box api for JS / Cordova app

i'v spend some time investigating if i can integrate JS app (Cordova app) with Box v2 API. I would like to receive a list of file or folders. I'm not able to find a working example for JS. Is is possible at all? Are you aware of any example?

You can take a peek at their native suggestion, https://developers.box.com/authentication-in-your-ios-app/. But if you're going to use it just inside Cordova, you will probably have to use their Oauth set-up to get credentials, https://developers.box.com/oauth/, then you can issue requests to the API for info on any part of the user's account.

Javascript API to screen scrape page flow, including button click

We are looking for Javascript API to screen scrape page flow, including button click. If it were on server side, WebDriver of Selenium would have been a great choice, but we want the screen scraping to run on the client browser. The screens to be scrapped is a transaction in itself (login to third party website, transaction step 1, step 2 and then final confirmation). Any javascript API available?
AFAIK, both nodeJS and phantom JS don't have capability to click a button from the scrapped page.
thanks in advance,
abbas

Webdriver is an HTTP based protocol, something that every browser speaks, so it is possible to control one browser from another. I've written a tutorial some weeks ago on that topic here

I recently ran into DalekJS (http://dalekjs.com/docs/actions.html) which allows for taking screenshots of pages and clicking on the elements as well. I think it even supports multiple browsers -- although they have to be installed (http://dalekjs.com/pages/documentation.html#browsers).
here is the sample code directly from the link:
test.open('http://doctorwhotv.co.uk/')
.assert.text('#nav').is('Navigation')
.assert.visible('#nav')
.assert.attr('#nav', 'data-nav', 'true')
.click('#nav')
.done();

How to develop a Bigcommerce app that would add a javascript tag to all pages in the store?

I would like to develop an app for Bigcommerce that other users of the platform could use. The app should add a simple javascript embed code to all pages of the store. The embed code is similar in nature to google analytics embed or chat services embed codes.
I have opened up a trial account with Bigcommerce and found out that it is very easy to manually edit the page templates to add such an embed code, but I would like to be able to develop an app that store owners could install and not have to mess with editing and copy-pasting embed codes into their page templates.

Unfortunately there is no mechanism currently for BigCommerce that allows for the editing of template code via the app.
I can give you pointers as to where you can put your code to make it globally available.
If you need something in the <head> globally: /Panels/HTMLHead.html
If you need something at the beginning, right after the <body>: /Panel/DrawerMenu.html
If you need something at the end, right before the </body>: /Panels/Footer.html
These are the 3 common places most javascript things (like tracking pixels and analytics) usually go.
Other "extensions" for BigCommerce, such as OLark and Zendesk and Analytics, all just give either a web page with instructions, or a PDF with installation instructions. You could provide your functionality via the same means in lieu of an app doing it.

I haven't really worked with Bigcommerce, but I went thorough their docs and it looks like there is no option for custom module that you can upload and use on their server. And that makes perfect sense.
So I would say the only "forth to try" option is to build browser extension, that does the job for you. As I understood, you can control html output of your store by choosing "Themes" tab > "Edit HTML/CSS", so extension should be able to walk through the three of pages in the left panel.
Chrome Extension
Firefox extension