I assume that we wouldn't need to store anything in the database to support this? It
could work store its data just in the cache?

it could work with the cache although, ideally i'd ping the db every few seconds to
get the newest posts. 

if you could run a quick report to see how frequently people are adding new posts,
then I can set the timer to ping on that default interval.

but if we're only getting new stories submitted every few minutes, or less, then
maybe a "spy" won't be useful to the application I'm now starting to think.

it's useful to digg because they have soooo many stories submitted every second.

How about we just create a Spy cache - it can be added to every time an action is
performed on the site:

SpyCache.NewKick(hostID, userID, storyID);
SpyCache.NewUser(hostID, userID);
SpyCache.NewComment(hostID, userID, storyID, commentID);
SpyCache.NewStory(hostID, storyID);
SpyCache.NewSpamStory(hostID, storyID);

The SpyCache would maintain a list of the last n operations, and could easily be queried:

SpyCache.GetList()
SpyCache.GetList(hostID)

The nice thing about this is its simplicity. It is lightweight and should be easy to
implement.

Dzone list page views as well : http://www.dzone.com/spy

Maybe add these, too.

SpyCache.UnKick(hostID, userID, storyID);
SpyCache.ViewStory(hostID, userID, storyID); // maybe not implement it right now, but
code it in
SpyCache.TagStory(hostID, userID, storyID, tagID);

ooooh...I like the idea of multiple spies (kick, comment, etc).

I'll make one page where the user can change the spy via a dropdown.

So, a little more work but once I get one the rest will be easy.

(ps. i don't think NewUser or NewSpamStory are worthy of a spy though.)

I would like to see NewUser in there - it is a good indication of how the community
is growing. About 10 people joined DNK today (new users in green, spammers in red):

http://www.dotnetkicks.com/whoisonline

Are we agreed that this spy data does not need to be persisted in the db?

spy data doesn't not (and shouldn't) be persisted in the db.

agreed!

new user will be in there as well :)

How about just having 1 spy with checkboxes like DiggSpy?

You could select whether or not to show kicks, comments, story adds, etc.

sure, checkboxes works. I'll take a look at what I cook up and decide on the best UI.

I'm not going to rush this though, since it's really a "bonus" feature and more eye
candy then a true utility. and when you take into consideration the other priorities,
it's a little less important.

that being said, I hope to get to it sooner vs later.

thanks for all the feedback - now I need to talk to gavin about the new caching he's
discussing so I make use of that vs the old method.

If you like I will create the cache for this? It will utilise a number of custom
List<T> types.

I have made a start on the cache, you can see it in action here:

http://www.dotnetkicks.com/spy

I hope to have the caching finished tomorrow - the UI can then follow.

Nice. I built one of these a couple years ago. Was gonna blog a how-to on it, but its
a little more simple than this (didn't have C# generics back then, so I stored a
datatable as a application level var).

Also, noticed a small thing with spy.

* x submitted X: (31 seconds ago)
* x kicked X: (31 seconds ago)

so the story was kicked before it was submitted? Might need to make sure the the
submitted item goes in prior to the kick item.

Yeah, the order is out of whack. I'm not going to show the kick or tag message when a
user submits a story.

Would it be possible to link to the comment in the kick spy instead of linking to the
article? (When a spy item says X commented on Y, etc.)

It sure will, there are lots of improvements that can be made here.

great feedback. gavin I'll get the latest source early this week and work on getting
this rockin with the new caching you've implemented...also will include shouts, etc.

will also allow users to limit the spy via checkboxes as requested above.

should be cool little feature.

Even at this early stage of implementation, the kick spy is a useful little tool. It
seems to tie the whole site together, following shouts or comments is much easier now.

Perhaps we should persist this data in the db after all. User profiles and stories
could have their own spy view too. These wouldn't need to auto refresh like the main
spy view. We could then add a friends spy which would list all the action that your
friends have taken.

with gavin's suggestions above - we just need to add a SMS api and we'll have a more
robust version of twitter soon :)

i like the idea of a twitter esque profile page where you see a trail of what your
"friends" are doing, etc.

The old SpyCache has been replaced with a UserAction model and UserActionCache.

I have added a mini Spy to each user profile.

Nice. How bout a story spy? a mini Spy on story page. :)

It would make it easier to see when someone kicked it, etc. Might take up too much
room though. 

How many items per user are you saving?

I am currently storing everything, so from now on there will be a full history. We
can easily have a story spy - as you say, integrating it into the UI is the hard part.

I'm willing to help with updating the UI and making it functional as well as clean
and sexy. but, I've got a good amount of stuff on my plate right now so it's not
gonna happen over night. if anyone else wants to jump in...feel free.

This is what I'm thinking UI wise as far as the spy "trail", if you will.

http://chieftwit.jaiku.com/

I also want to move some of the stuff on the profile page around so it's more like
jaiku meets twitter.

but maybe we can have a little shoutbox discussion about this at some point.

I hope to finish the spy this week. The UI will a little more polished and will auto
refresh, but it wont have filtering.

Ping me anytime you want to have a chat about the profile page. If you wait a little
while, I'll have the DNK chats started and we could use that. 

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It's not auto refreshing for me today.

Thanks, auto-refresh fixed for 403.

I'm closing this issue now. We may still want to build a nice client for the spy data
in the future, but it should be a separate issue.