GraphFi is dead, long live GraphFi! August 7, 2018 1:50 PM   Subscribe

If you're a fan of GraphFi, maybe you recently noticed it stopped working. I found a fix for it!

The problem is that the old bookmarklet (which I assume most people are using) points to 'https://yerk.org/graphfi/bm.js' for the script source. Something in the HTTPS setup of yerk.org seems to be broken. Perhaps their SSL certificate expired (i am not an expert on such things).

Luckily, the GraphFi source code is on github, and the raw bm.js file can be accessed via github using "https://cdn.rawgit.com/yourcelf/marksism/master/src/graphfi/bm.js".

So, edit your GraphFi bookmarklet string. Replace "https://yerk.org/graphfi/bm.js" with "https://cdn.rawgit.com/yourcelf/marksism/master/src/graphfi/bm.js".

GraphFi lives again!
posted by sarah_pdx to MetaFilter-Related at 1:50 PM (20 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite

Thank you!

I noticed this a few days ago and was about to send a comment to the mods to ask if something changed. Then I thought to poke about in the code and checked the URL, where I found this error. Since then, I've been allowing yerk.org's security cert, which didn't make me feel too comfortable.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:53 PM on August 7, 2018


Here's the updated bookmarklet link:



Drag this bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar, or right-click and "bookmark this".

GraphFi

posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 3:00 PM on August 7, 2018


Nice idea NSAID! Sadly that bookmarklet link doesn't seem to work. Looks like metafilter's content filtering munged it to remove the 'javascript:' prefix? Perhaps not surprising that metafilter doesn't allow javascript embedded in hyperlinks!
posted by sarah_pdx at 3:50 PM on August 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


I gave an out loud "noooooooo" when I saw the title of this MeTa.

Assuming that I'm a complete ignoramus at this bookmarklet lark (which I am), how would I edit the bookmarklet string? I right-clicked the extension button and went to manage extension in Chrome, but can't see where I would edit the string?
posted by arcticseal at 3:56 AM on August 8, 2018


Hooray! I was so sad when it stopped working. It's basically the only thing that lets me read the political megathreads. I just go in there once a week, apply graphfi, and then read through the most favourited comments and the comments that link to them.
posted by lollusc at 5:43 AM on August 8, 2018 [3 favorites]


@arcticseal: In Chrome, rightclick on the bookmarklet. In the pop-up menu, click "Edit...". You'll see a dialog open. Make the replacement in the "URL" field. Then "OK/Save" out of the dialog and it should be fixed.
posted by sarah_pdx at 8:47 AM on August 8, 2018


Looks GraphFi broke in a similar way the past. Yourcelf was already aware of the 'rawgit' solution. There was an issue with the caching that made rawgit.com less desireable than yerk.org.

Of course, GraphFi probably doesn't get a lot of changes, so getting an out-of-date version seems pretty unlikely. Anyway... if/when yerk.org gets its security certificate sorted, it may be desireable to go back to yerk.org to avoid rawgit caching issues?
posted by sarah_pdx at 8:48 AM on August 8, 2018 [1 favorite]


THANK YOU!
posted by nicwolff at 1:11 PM on August 8, 2018


Have you messaged Charlie?
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 1:16 PM on August 8, 2018


I me-mailed yourcelf yesterday around noon (PST). Haven't received a response. The most recent activity was 2013, so maybe not really active on mefi anymore?

There's also a new github issue about this. I assume that will also probably trigger an email.
posted by sarah_pdx at 2:00 PM on August 8, 2018


I emailed via his MIT email address a few days ago and I haven't heard anything yet.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:14 PM on August 8, 2018


The GraphFi extension still works.
posted by klarck at 9:36 PM on August 8, 2018 [2 favorites]


I can back that up, the extension works on my work computer.
posted by arcticseal at 12:24 AM on August 9, 2018


This is wonderful. What a lovely tool to help filter things. Thanks not just for the fix but for my knowing about it at all.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 9:12 AM on August 9, 2018


We could host a copy of GraphFi at mefiscripts.github.io, the same way we currently host islinked.js. That would solve the indefinite-caching problem with rawgit and get a few more people in the mix to work on anything that breaks in the future.

GraphFi is MIT licensed, so technically it should be fine/encouraged just to do that, but maybe best to wait a few days and see if yourcelf has other preferences?
posted by john hadron collider at 5:49 PM on August 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


Yeah, if yourcelf is cool with it that seems like a great idea.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:52 PM on August 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


I think the cdn.rawgit.com URL is fine, and the "it caches permanently on the first access" is based on a misunderstanding of how rawgit works. (And if it *didn't* work, then offering /main/ or other branch links would be entirely pointless)

Per cdn.rawgit.com, links through a tag or commit hash are cached permanently and are meant for production. Links through a branch are not cached, and explicitly "New changes you push to GitHub will be reflected within minutes". But branch links are meant for dev use only and will be throttled if they have "excessive traffic". Retrieving a branch file includes an etag header, so any cache revalidation will notice immediately that there's an update, and a "max-age=86400" cache-control header, so clients will revalidate no less frequently than every day.

I guess the only issue is if there's enough users for them to consider the use "excessive", but I bet the reality is it'll round to 0% in their stats.
posted by russm at 4:42 AM on August 10, 2018


actually, scrap all that I just wrote - I missed the difference between "cdn.rawgit.com" and "rawgit.com" prod and dev URLs.
posted by russm at 4:49 AM on August 10, 2018


Looking at the 'is_linked' bookmarklet, the (minimized) script is in the bookmarklet itself. This avoids having to load any second file from an external website (which seems to be the main issue with GraphFi).

I made a couple naive attempts at making a similarly 'self-contained' GraphFi bookmarklet. Didn't seem to work for me. I've done a fair amount of javascript programming, but I'm by no means a 'web developer'.

Maybe /john hadron collider/ will smash some bosons and figure this all out for us?
posted by sarah_pdx at 8:16 AM on August 10, 2018


Apologies for the delay y'all, I was off grid for 2 weeks.

One of the domains mapped to yerk.org expired, and so the automated certificate renewal failed. It's fixed now. I appreciate folks finding better/alternative hosts for it.
posted by yourcelf at 7:57 AM on August 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


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