What is a onebox?

discourse
1

One very cool feature Discourse has is “oneboxing”. If you include a link to your favourite site, it will try to create a usable snippet for you automatically.

For example: paste the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_on_Rails on a line by itself and you will see a nice onebox from Wikipedia

Some samples:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/congratulations-most-stars-in-2013-github-octoverse/12483

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_on_Rails

http://www.amazon.com/Apple-MacBook-MGX72LL-13-3-Inch-Display/dp/B0096VDM8G

http://www.amazon.com/Apple-MacBook-MGX72LL-13-3-Inch-Display/dp/B0096VDM8G

https://twitter.com/discourse/status/500399710377484288

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/duke-nukem-manhattan-project/id663811684?mt=8

https://soundcloud.com/neilcic/mouthsilence

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25427024/what-is-the-used-for-in-ruby

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25427024/what-is-the-used-for-in-ruby

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/2561

https://github.com/rack/rack/blob/master/lib/rack/etag.rb

Imgur

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eho/149282456/

Imgur

http://imgur.com/gallery/1PGTI

http://thenextweb.com/au/2012/11/18/kim-dotcoms-plan-to-give-new-zealanders-free-internet-could-just-work/?fromcat=au

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0

http://vimeo.com/channels/staffpicks/97765630

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/05c8ec50ed/between-two-ferns-with-zach-galifianakis-richard-branson

http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/05/jeff-atwood-launches-discourse/

2 Likes
2

Are there any financial / stock tracking sites that work with it?

2 Likes
3

Not yet.

4

Amazon works!

http://www.amazon.com/Story-about-Reading-Railroad-Books/dp/0448421658

PING! The magic duck!

Using deft allegory, the authors have provided an insightful and intuitive explanation of one of Unix’s most venerable networking utilities. Even more stunning is that they were clearly working with a very early beta of the program, as their book first appeared in 1933, years (decades!) before the operating system and network infrastructure were finalized.

The book describes networking in terms even a child could understand, choosing to anthropomorphize the underlying packet structure. The ping packet is described as a duck, who, with other packets (more ducks), spends a certain period of time on the host machine (the wise-eyed boat). At the same time each day (I suspect this is scheduled under cron), the little packets (ducks) exit the host (boat) by way of a bridge (a bridge). From the bridge, the packets travel onto the internet (here embodied by the Yangtze River).

The title character – er, packet, is called Ping. Ping meanders around the river before being received by another host (another boat). He spends a brief time on the other boat, but eventually returns to his original host machine (the wise-eyed boat) somewhat the worse for wear.

If you need a good, high-level overview of the ping utility, this is the book. I can’t recommend it for most managers, as the technical aspects may be too overwhelming and the basic concepts too daunting.

Problems With This Book

As good as it is, The Story About Ping is not without its faults. There is no index, and though the ping(8) man pages cover the command line options well enough, some review of them seems to be in order. Likewise, in a book solely about Ping, I would have expected a more detailed overview of the ICMP packet structure.

But even with these problems, The Story About Ping has earned a place on my bookshelf, right between Stevens’ Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment, and my dog-eared copy of Dante’s seminal work on MS Windows, Inferno. Who can read that passage on the Windows API (“Obscure, profound it was, and nebulous, So that by fixing on its depths my sight – Nothing whatever I discerned therein.”), without shaking their head with deep understanding. But I digress.

5

The onebox code is designed to be quite modular. It supports OpenGraph and oEmbed (plus a few custom crawlers we wrote), however for security reasons we’ve decided to whitelist it to the following sites:

23hq.com
500px.com
about.com
answers.com
ask.com
battle.net
bbc.co.uk
bbs.boingboing.net
bestbuy.ca
bestbuy.com
blip.tv
bloomberg.com
businessinsider.com
clikthrough.com
cnet.com
cnn.com
collegehumor.com
coursera.org
codepen.io
cracked.com
dailymail.co.uk
dailymotion.com
deadline.com
dell.com
deviantart.com
digg.com
dotsub.com
ebay.ca
ebay.co.uk
ebay.com
ehow.com
espn.go.com
etsy.com
findery.com
flickr.com
folksy.com
forbes.com
foxnews.com
funnyordie.com
groupon.com
howtogeek.com
huffingtonpost.com
huffingtonpost.ca
hulu.com
ign.com
ikea.com
imgur.com
indiatimes.com
instagr.am
instagram.com
itunes.apple.com
justin.tv
khanacademy.org
kickstarter.com
kinomap.com
liveleak.com
lessonplanet.com
mashable.com
meetup.com
mixcloud.com
mlb.com
myspace.com
nba.com
npr.org
photobucket.com
pinterest.com
reference.com
revision3.com
rottentomatoes.com
samsung.com
screenr.com
scribd.com
slideshare.net
soundcloud.com
sourceforge.net
speakerdeck.com
spotify.com
squidoo.com
techcrunch.com
ted.com
thefreedictionary.com
theglobeandmail.com
theonion.com
thestar.com
thesun.co.uk
thinkgeek.com
tmz.com
torontosun.com
tumblr.com
twitch.tv
twitpic.com
usatoday.com
viddler.com
videojug.com
vimeo.com
vine.co
walmart.com
washingtonpost.com
wikia.com
wikihow.com
wired.com
wistia.com
wi.st
wonderhowto.com
wsj.com
zappos.com
zillow.com

The whitelist can be modified via the onebox domains whitelist setting in the admin dashboard.

The oneboxer itself was moved to a dedicated project at

If you think we should whitelist more sites by default, ask on http://meta.discourse.org !

6

Where did the name ‘onebox’ come from?

2 Likes
7

Here’s a cool Tearable Cloth codepen:

8

The name “onebox” comes from Google:

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/07/google-onebox-results.html

On top of the organic results (and sometimes at the bottom), Google shows OneBox results for queries that can be answered instantly or when a direct link can be offered.

There are several kinds of OneBox results:

  1. Music search. Enter the name of an artist or band, and you’ll get information, albums and reviews.

That was 2006. Check out what the onebox for “moby” looks like in Google today:

Pasted image976×761 96.6 KB

4 Likes
9

This is probably my second favorite feature of Discourse. I thoroughly enjoy the fact that I can post a link and have a nice box with an excerpt automatically included in the post I’m making. It really adds to the readability of the whole thread in my opinion.

2 Likes
10

What’s your favorite?

1 Like
11

Copy and Pasting of images :smile:

I know, it is the little things that excite me about Discourse. Stuff many people likely wouldn’t pay attention to, but it was those little details that makes me enjoy using it.

1 Like