The Ruby and Rails community linklog
Made a library? Written a blog post? Found a useful tutorial? Share it with the Ruby community here or just enjoy what everyone else has found!
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Rails Test Prescriptions Beta 4 is out
The fourth beta of Rails Test Prescriptions from Pragmatic is available at their site. Check out the the associated blog for updates and related content including a recent discussion of pair programming.
The right tool for your job
Simple metrics you can use to gauge healthy open source projects.
Relational or NoSQL?
What you need to evaluate NoSQL vs relational databases, and a short pitch at the end for my MongoDB training session at the Lone Star Ruby Conference.
Hierarchical Visualizations in R and the Javascript InfoVis Toolkit
If you have not checked out the Javascript InfoVis Toolkit you really should. To get an idea of some of the possibilities available, see Hierarchical Visualizations in R and the Javascript InfoVis Toolkit where Oracle HR Demo Schema data is represented in trees - first in R, then using a Sinatra app and the toolkit. Sinatra app is available on Github.
Screencast: Setup your own URL shortener with Heroku and Firefly
Firefly is a light-weight URL Shortener app. It’s written in Ruby/Sinatra and can be easily deployed to Heroku. This screencast illustrates how easy it really is to setup Firefly and give it a spin. Did I mention that both Firefly and Heroku can be used for free?
Generic tests with Rspec
A simple technique to avoid duplication in Rspec tests using shared examples and described_class.
RMU and Game Mechanics
I wrote a post describing some of the ideas from game mechanics embedded in the way that Ruby Mendicant University has been shaping up. Might be useful to any folks currently involved in educational initiatives online or otherwise.
Towards an Agile Maturity Assessment
I have been thinking about an agile maturity assessment model for years, as this blog article illustrates. Its time to take it to the next level with this blog series. I’m inviting mature discussion, realizing that there will be a small controversy about this. I’m hoping it acts as a forge for the ideas.
ActiveLog : Log changes to all attributes on activerecord model
I just came across ActiveLog. It is a pretty good plugin for logging updates on models. It also stores current_user information.
Stored Javascript in Mongodb - Ruby Edition
Ever need anything like stored procedures in mongodb? A patch I submitted to the mongo-ruby-driver allows you to store javascript functions in the database to be used in where, map/reduce, and eval calls.
Stop hacking, start fixing
An article highlighting some mistakes you’ve probably seen before, solving them and suggesting you do the same.
Firetower: a pluggable command-line Campfire client
I just released a very rough but usable version of Firetower. You can use it to interact with Campfire chats from the command line, as well as to build arbitrary event-driven Campfire apps (bots, notifiers, etc.).
Testing rails view helpers
Rails view helpers are easy to overlook in your test suite, but they want your testing love just like your models. I generally use view helpers for one of two reasons: 1.) when I’m trying to output something that’s a bit too hairy to leave in a view or 2.) when I want to DRY up some view code. Both of these reasons warrant testing this code. [more inside]
remarkable_mongoid
I took some time this morning to gemify my gist from earlier this week. Includes validation and association matchers.
Ticketmaster: Take Command of your Ticket Tracking and Project Management System(s)
Ticketmaster provides a universal API to ticket tracking and project management systems. Currently supported backends are Pivotal Tracker, Lighthouse, and Unfuddle, with more to come. It also provides a command-line interface and console, to make it easy to integrate with your development workflow, or to migrate between systems. Using a flexible provider plugin architecture, you can easily create support for your own backends. Check it out at http://ticketrb.com
AdhearsonConf Registration Open
AdhearsionConf 2010 registration now open! The first AdhearsionConf will be held in San Francisco on the weekend of August 14-15, 2010.
True Effect of Latency on HTTP Load Time
Hey Aussies, think twice before hosting your website offshore. I plotted the time it took to retrieve 200 files (from 1-200KB in size) from two locations. The results are pretty scary.
[Rails plugin] has_many_booleans
has_many_booleans is an ActiveRecord plugin which creates virtual boolean attributes for a model. When the object gets saved, the plugin transforms all attributes into a single integer, using a bitset. So you can easily add new attributes without changing the database structure. - more information -
Rails 3, Resque, and Devise
Secure mounted Rack apps with Devise in Rails 3. In the blog post we use the Resque web interface as an example, but these instructions should work for any Rack app.
ArrrrCamp 2010.10 - Speakers + Tickets
ArrrrCamp Belgium announced a new edition with some big speakers. Yehuda Katz, Sean Cribbs, Carl Lerche, Joseph Wilk and many more. More information of the event on the ArrrrCamp site. Beware, the venue limits the number of attendees, so tickets might be gone quite quickly.
Protecting Paperclip uploads with authentication
I’ve added a tutorial on Everyday Rails to show how to move Paperclip uploads out of the public directory and limit who may download them. It’s based on how I’ve done this in a few applications at work for groups who need to keep files private–hope you find it useful.
HTML WebSockets example
Spent some time messing around with HTML 5 WebSockets, em-websockets, and EventMachine. Here is a gist of some example code. [more inside]
Mongoid association matchers for RSpec
Interview with Geoffrey Grosenbach
I interviewed Geoffrey Grosenbach from peepcode.com and the Ruby on Rails podcast about programming and entrepreneurship. Go check it out!