LJDegrees
LJDegrees is an open source tool which provides essentially the same
functionality as sachmet's popular lj_connect server tool. It's written in PHP, and consists of a class file which contains the functionality I'll be extending, and a very simple and boring page which calls the class and contains the lookup form, in its current form. Most of what I've been using it for has been calling the class file from the command line. Because it uses the http method for a copy() call, it currently only works with PHP 4.3.0 - but that should be really easy to fix, I'm just too lazy to do it.
It exists only because I'm interested in doing some moderately complicated
statistical modelling of LiveJournal for purposes of analysis, and I was
irritated that the source for lj_connect wasn't available.
Because ljdegrees uses the openly documented graph.bml interfaces for
retrieving friends lists (I'm assuming lj_connect uses something else, since
sachmet says the reason he hasn't released the source is because he's been
asked not to reveal the retrieval mechanisms he uses), it runs significantly
slower than lj_connect. What that means is that you're unlikely to want to
use it if you're just looking to enter names individually and see where they
end up. (Use lj_connect - it's way faster.) Where it may be useful is for
other people looking to draw chains and do more complex statistical
analysis - the class provided is a start for allowing that, and I'm looking to
extend it.
For the same reason, there isn't an online demo of LJDegrees - if you want
to play with it, you'll have to download it and run it on your own machine.
(If anyone has a machine that they're willing to kill its bandwidth and
CPU, let me know and I'll link it from here.)
It's released under the GNU Public License, version 2. If you make changes,
I'd appreciate it if you let me know, although you don't have to. You can
download it from the sourceforge file tracker.
Feedback of all kinds is welcome, although I'm not looking to put a whole
lot of time into features on this toy - it, as most open source projects,
exists to scratch an itch of mine. You can reach me at ljdegrees at clysdale
dot ca
