Andrew On Rails

SVN Bus Error - Leopard

2008-06-11T21:35:00.002+10:00

Hit on a weird problem tonight. When I went to checkout or export a subversion directory from a web location using the command

svn export [repolocation] [directorytocheckoutto]

I got the following output

bus error

Weird aye? I'm on a Macbook Pro running leopard and I finally worked out that there was a problem with my subversion installation. After reinstallation (http://hivelogic.com/articles/2006/04/svn_on_os_x) it worked fine.

Anyway just thought ild put it out on the web seeing as I googled for a far while without finding the solution.

Cross browser testing

2008-05-31T21:45:00.002+10:00

Now this is something ilve been looking for for a while http://browsershots.org/, awesome you can get a screen shot of your webpage in every browser under the sun. Its free and really really simple to use... only downside is that you might have to wait a couple of minutes for your screenshots to be taken.

Until that majestic day where all IE browsers are obliterated OR IE start using the standards them this tool might make life slightly easier in the meantime.

If you use this tool commercially, please support the project to help keep it running.

19 Tips and Tricks for Rails Developers

2008-05-25T21:05:00.002+10:00

http://www.rubyinside.com/19-rails-tricks-most-rails-coders-dont-know-131.html

Nothing to groundbreaking here .. especially since it was posted last year. But does provide some useful reminders about some lesser known functions in rails.

One thing of real interest to me is Engines (http://api.rails-engines.org/), ilve been working on a basic authentication system (based on the restful_authentication) that is well tested and fully operational, cause pretty much every rails project is going to need a nice authenticaion system, And if engine can supply an easy way to implement the code into all projects then life will be sweet.

Testing in Browser Versions - IE6, IE7

2008-05-19T09:15:00.002+10:00

For us poor web developers who are trying to the right thing and support IE6 and IE7, here is a tool that might make your lives a little easier.

Its IE6 standalone, until I found this tool half the battle was getting both IE6 and IE7 installed on your computer and operating correctly. Now you can upgrade to IE7 if you havn't already and just install this product http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE (download link at the bottom of the page) to get IE6 aswell. If your looking for IE5 or even earlier, this product goes back to about IE3 i think... the mind boggles to think that there might be people still using IE2 but if you have requirements from a customer then you might need it.

Its still painful to test both IE6 and IE7 but sometimes things must be done and at least this way you don't have to play around with virtual machines and that sort of stuff.

Autotest and Snarl - Coding bliss is obtainable in Windows

2008-05-18T10:31:00.005+10:00

Ok when I was trying to setup my autotest with Snarl on windows box I had quite a few problems and couldn't really find a blog that told me how to do it exactely. Ok so for the few people stuck on windows boxes out there this should get you up and running.

Install Snarl (This setup makes you install some other program that Snarl has a dependacy on)
Install autotest if you havn't got it (gem install ZenTest)
Install the ruby-snarl gem (gem install ruby-snarl)
Download and install the GNU DiffUtils package – I installed this into my C:\Program Files\GnuWin32 directory.
Add the C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin to your PATH environment variable. (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310519 if you need some help with that)
Set your HOME environment variable to something like C:\Documents and Settings\{USERNAME}
Ok now for some pretty pictures to show when a test passes or fails. I use the ones from here. But you can make your own or get some from somewhere else if you like. Save these pictures to the $RUBY_HOME\lib\ruby\gems\1.8\gems\ZenTest-3.6.1\lib\icons as accept.png and exclamation.png (You may have to create the icons directory) Note that $RUBY_HOME is the directory where Ruby is installed, on my computer that means C:\Ruby
Now create a file called .autotest in your Rails Applications root directory and place the following line in it
```
require 'autotest/snarl'
```
Note: If you can't work out how to create the .autotest file in windows because renaming it in the GUI doesn't work. The easiest way I found to make the file was to open up a command window, navigate to the rails application root directory then type edit .autotest and then just save the file. (Im sure there are much easier ways to create this file but I didn't want to spend anymore time looking for them)
And thats it ... now you should just be able to type autotest in the command prompt while in your rails application root and autotest should begin. And if you tests pass you should see something like this

Welcome to a new world of productivity where you can implement a new feature and go straight onto the next while your tests run in the background. And now you wont need need to switch back to the command prompt to check that your tests passed!

If I'lve missed out something important then please leave a comment and Ill update the post.

Other references that may be helpful and that were used in the making of this blog include, many thanks to the authors of these blogs

Autotest Windows

2008-05-17T11:28:00.002+10:00

If you having problems like `expand_path’: couldn’t find HOME environment when trying to run autotest on windows. Check out this blog it helped me fix my problems http://dirk.net/2008/01/30/autotest-rails-on-windows/

Google Code Blog: Introducing Google Doctype

2008-05-15T20:29:00.002+10:00

Something pretty neat ... worth checking out

Google Doctype contains dozens of articles written by top Googlers on topics important to all web developers: security, performance, caching, DOM manipulation, CSS styling, and more. It contains over 8,000 lines of JavaScript code: Google's own battle-tested JavaScript library, released today under a liberal open source license. And it contains the beginnings of a test-driven reference of the open web: a reference of every element, every attribute, every DOM method, every CSS property, all backed up by test cases.

If your going to learn about the DOM and CSS and stuff this probably isn't such a bad place to go.

Google Code Blog: Introducing Google Doctype

Why I love Rails

2008-05-14T20:23:00.003+10:00

After working on a .Net project again at http://www.sentia.com.au today I just thought ild list a few points about why I love rails so much and am starting to really dislike some things about .Net. Im sure there are many more things to add to this list as I learn more and more.

- Coding by convention. I love it that there is a set way of doing things that you only have to learn once regardless of which company you are working for.
- Relaxed syntax rules. I love the way in ruby you can leave out braces if your not in a braces mode and not one compiler is going to care or bug me about it.
- A vibrant community of people are there for support. Sure .Net may have more comprehensive documentation in the MSDN and multiple but damn its got some boring people behind it. Also when searching on google the results are usually flooded with the last 10 years of newbies posts. Although im sure that will happen with rails as well but its not the case ATM.

Thats it for the moment, but I'm sure more will come to mind in the future.

Suggestions for setting up a new RoR project

2008-05-10T22:44:00.001+10:00

New Project Setup

1) Create Basecamp project
2) Create Code Repository
3) Checkout Code to local machine
4) Create Rails App (rails [appname])
5) Add Rcov plugin to app (ruby script/plugin install http://svn.codahale.com/rails_rcov)
6) Add Rcov CC integration task (http://deadprogrammersociety.blogspot.com/2007/06/cruisecontrolrb-and-rcov-are-so-good.html) and install plugin to ensure build fails if below 100% code coverage (http://www.viget.com/extend/tools-of-the-trade-vl-cruise-control/) (See http://andrewonrails.blogspot.com/2008/04/cruisecontrolrb-and-rcov-ensure-100.html)
7) Checkin Brand New App
8) Add to CruiseControlRB (Cruise add [ProjectName] -u svn://repositorylocation [username] [password])

Done :-)

The simple life

2008-04-29T20:37:00.002+10:00

Came across this article http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/wi-arch27.html by Mikko Kontio about keeping it simple. This is a great article to read if you are thinking of starting up your own buisness and/or are a enthusiastic developer looking for something more than writing copious amounts of code.

For the business people

"If you can't explain a strategy in five minutes, it's too complicated and probably won't work."

How many times have we seen that one in action in the workplace? Manager stands up for a half hour 'indroduction' and why the company is doing so and so and how we are ment to implement that particular strategy... the meeting turns into a q/a session at the end and drags into the next hours ... shouldn't that be ringing alarm bells ??

And for the Developers

Some customers are ready to pay for quality software that has only a fraction of the features that other applications have, so long as the software works exceptionally well and the features are relevant to their needs.

There is no need to add features that arn't core to the product and that only a small percentage of user will actually use. The larger the product the more bugs created and the harder it is to test.

Now why didn't they teach us this stuff at uni??

RESTing

2008-04-28T15:01:00.002+10:00

Ok so I used scaffold and done a few tutorials before launching into my own project. I knew REST and CRUD and all that stuff were important but never really understood them. Im not saying I completely understand the concepts yet, but I am starting to realise their importance, especially after my project was getting messier and messier and when I started to think along these lines ... "This is rails, why the hell do I need to hack this controller to get it to do something simple" I turned to google to see what I was missing.

First blog I came across was this one http://www.rubyrailways.com/great-ruby-on-rails-rest-resources/ which lead me to a series of blogs from softiesonrails which made things alot clearer.

Part 1 - http://www.softiesonrails.com/2007/3/28/rest-101-part-1-understanding-resources

Part 2 - http://www.softiesonrails.com/2007/4/3/rest-101-part-2-a-million-apis

Part 3 - http://www.softiesonrails.com/2007/4/10/rest-101-part-3-just-call-me-the-repo-man

Part 4 - http://www.softiesonrails.com/2007/4/18/rest-101-part-4-routing

Part 5 - http://softiesonrails.com/2007/5/1/rest-101-part-5-respond

One of the main things I got out of these blogs was this paragraph from Part 4

You may already be wondering how in the world you're going to develop a Rails application if those are the only actions you're allowed to have in your controllers. Well, first of all, don't worry. If you really, really think you have a situation that requires a few extra actions, then go right ahead and add them to your controller. Just remember that having any extra actions can be a warning sign that you haven't identified all of your resources yet.

After trying to hack on extra actions to my controllers i finally realised that I was treating rails with contempt. It was trying to push me to use the REST and CRUD principals while I was trying make it work without really understanding what i was doing. I still wasn't thinking of my app in terms of resources.

The series mentioned above is invaluable for rails newbies like me that have a bit of an understanding but are still trying to use almost OO concepts to build websites.

CruiseControlRB and Rcov - Ensure 100% Coverage

2008-04-25T12:51:00.002+10:00

Found this awesome blog explaining how to integrate RCOV and CruiseControlRB

http://deadprogrammersociety.blogspot.com/2007/06/cruisecontrolrb-and-rcov-are-so-good.html

And this blog explains how to use their plugin to ensure build will fail if code coverage is less than specified.

http://www.viget.com/extend/tools-of-the-trade-vl-cruise-control/

Awesome, im gonna start at 100% and this will ensure I never let the Code Coverage slip. Sure its doesn't ensure that my program doesn't have any bugs but its alot better than nothing.

Going Overseas

2008-01-24T13:09:00.000+11:00

Will be overseas for the next few months. Hoping to get back into it after my break. :-) meanwhile keep up with RoR

Hosting Ruby on Rails

2008-01-06T22:23:00.000+11:00

I'm currently testing out https://www.crucialp.com/ as my ROR hosting provider. Its a cpanel setup which is a bit hard to get used to but the support is brilliant and any ticket submitted is always looked at within half and hour. For 6.95 US a month its very good value (3GB of space and 60GB Bandwidth) and no catches.

Netbeans the go for Ruby on Rails

2008-01-06T22:15:00.000+11:00

Netbeans 6.0 is by far the best (free) windows Ruby on Rails IDE ilve come across, I did try RoRed and a few other ones but Netbeans is the best. It is still a bit clunky but after doing almost all my dev work previously in Visual Studio it is like working with lightning. I recommend it to anyone looking to get started in ROR but maybe not in a full scale production environment.

Netbeans and Ruby

2007-12-29T13:32:00.001+11:00

Decided to go with netbeans as my IDE, after trying a few different ones it seems like the only decent one for windows platforms anyway. After installing Netbeans 6.0 I found out that I didn't fully support Rails 2.0 (Released mid Dec 07). A quick google found that 6.1 (Currently in dev) has support Rails 2.0 especially in terms of the new scaffolding parameters. After giving it a quick test it looks good but 6.1 is pretty unstable in other areas though.

http://download.netbeans.org/netbeans/6.0/final/

The ruby adventure begins

2007-12-29T09:18:00.000+11:00

Today is the day that learning Ruby begins. Coming from a .NET C# web dev experience I am looking to learn how to use ruby and more specifically ruby on rails. This blog will describe and document my experiences and learning curves as I go.

Today I have been learning the ruby syntax to start with, using http://www.math.umd.edu/~dcarrera/ruby/0.3/index.html it is a very very simplistic way to start but when learning a new language it is nice to start off nice and easy.

I know hash tables and stuff are in C# but ilve never actually used them really, so using them in ruby will be new and exciting.


friend = {
    "first name" => "Jeffrey",
    "last name"  => "Biggs",
    "address"    => "34 Airport Rd",  
    "city"       => "Toronto",
    "province"   => "Ontario"
}


friend.each do |key, value| 
    puts key + " => " + value 
end

Produces


city => Toronto
last name => Biggs
country => Canada
province => Ontario
address => 34 Airport Rd  
first name => Jeffrey