I'm starting to remember what it feels like to become so obsessed with completing some code, that you can't tear yourself away. The obsession, the desire and ultimately... the burnout. At the end of today, I feel burnt out so after today's update, it's time for me to take a break - hopefully for a few days if my brain lets me.

👇🏼 Source

Steem-JS

I ended yesterday by sending @steemchiller a message asking whether he had plans to create an API that could receive a request (e.g. vote on this awesome post or log this dude in) and then do it, in some cases returning whether the information sent was valid or not. His reply came this morning, suggesting that I look at steem-js so that's what I did.

I was instantly reminded of the dark day that I spent working with condenser and the GitHub repository instantly filled me with dread. I've been keeping up with @remlaps' work who has also used this approach but from a Java angle (which I learnt for about 2 weeks and remember none of it) whereas my approach would be the JavaScript side of things. @remlaps had found it straightforward to use so I took a deep breath and got started.

I soon discovered that the tutorials were confusing although there seemed to be quite a few from the utopian.io days so I kept searching in the hope that there was a developer who was of my level and I eventually started to get somewhere. It appeared that I needed to set up and install node.js - not something I particularly wanted to do (it reminded me of my previous react.js work) but I got on with it. Before I did though, I asked @steemchiller again if I really had to do it this way and cracked on whilst I waited for a reply.

I fairly quickly Installed node.js and not much later, was able to retrieve some data from Steemit's API.

But reading data isn't what I was here for, I could do that with @steemchiller's API so I started searching for how to post stuff. A simple upvote would suffice and I followed @remlaps' lead by using the @social posting key.

I was getting nowhere fast. 4 hours in and I could "get" all sorts but post nothing. Then @steemchiller got back to me - Hoorah! I didn't need to use node.js at all, I needed to link to a JavaScript library which contained all that I need (I just don't know how to use it yet) but it's party time - no need for node.js so I deleted all the crap I'd installed and made myself a sandwich. Oh, I also added the 1 line of code that I needed 🙄

Source

Back to it then and in no time, I'd used the @social account to upvote steemcurator01's comment. Good times. I then started to look at how to authenticate users so that they could log in and upvote, post, etc. This wasn't as straightforward because the "login" function was useless so again leaning on @steemchiller for help, he provided a solution. So I've not only been able to upvote a post, I've also been able to validate a user.

Good news for my proof of concept, now knowing that the reskin can be more than a glorified "read only" front-end 🥳 But not very sexy so we're reliant upon @tomoyan to add something special in the comments.

Slight Distraction - Delegation Abuse Finder

Having recently seen that @papi.mati has reignited the fight against plagiarism, spam and abuse on the Steemit platform via the @ac-cheetah profile - yesterday, I noticed that a portion of the downvoting power was being used on users who were abusing their 15 SP delegation. A frustrating practise that sees hundreds of new accounts get created and upvote crap - these accounts eventually having their delegation removed once they're discovered. So I thought I'd write a script which would easily find this activity which led me here - https://steemit.com/hall/@dtubebd/due-to-heavy-rains-jsc-candidates-had-to-come-to-the-hall

1,015 accounts which are now 15 SP poorer.

In addition, wanting to give @ac-cheetah a helping hand and get some additional prominence, it was great to be able to open up the Mosquito Squshers Community with a new lease of life and renewed purpose. Good luck @papi.mati and supporting team 👍🏼