Rails Hacks and Other Stuff

Downloading files

2010-04-15T00:11:00.000-07:00

Wow it's been a year since I've last posted!

I'm currently checking out dragonfly, the new kid on the block file processor. It's mean to replace stuff like paperclip and attachment_fu. To make things simple, especially if you don't have a lot of files, when migrating from either of those to dragonfly it may be simpler to just download the file and upload it again via dragonfly. This way you don't have to study the internals of each file management plugin.

So, here's how to download a file.

require 'net/http'

url = URI.parse "http://url.to/file.name"
Net::HTTP.start url.host do |http|
response = http.get url.path
MyModel.create! :file => response.body
# Here you tell your model to create the file.
# This is what the create action in the controller calls
# but instead of params[:file], you have response.body
end

Vim Setup

2009-04-17T09:02:00.000-07:00

I've posted many a setup in vim before, but I've decided to put it on github for easier management.

Stars and acts_as_rateable

2009-04-01T05:06:00.000-07:00

I recently wanted to implement a star system in Rails. I looked at this rateable plugin and followed this tutorial to create the stars.

It wasn't as cut and dried as I had hoped, so here is the code I used. It's pretty complete. Disclaimer: I used haml and sass and if you don't, you should still be able to understand the code. In case you don't use sass, here's the generated CSS that you get from the sass file.

before_create should return the right boolean!

2009-03-27T22:13:00.000-07:00

This is a small thing, but I wasted an hour or so figuring this thing out. I had an a before_create where I set a boolean variable to false and then my tests started to fail? Why? Because before_create will stop the creation of the record if it returns false!


class A << AR::Base
 before_create :set_enabled

 def set_enabled
   self.enabled = false
   true # so that it doesn't fail
 end
end

Passenger, Monit, Postfix

2009-03-20T22:46:00.000-07:00

Setting up Passenger was quite easy, coming from the world of Mongrel. For the most part I followed this. It's pretty comprehensive, but I'll just add some stuff that I had to do on my own.

This is far from a comprehensive list, and if you just follow this things won't work. This also assumes you have _some_ knowledge of how Postfix, Monit, Linux works.

Postfix
I accept and read mail somewhere else (not on the VPS that sends mail). For example, I may use Google to accept mail on the Internet, however, I don't connect my server to Google to send mail. Because of this, when postfix on my server tried to send mail to mydomain.com, it always something like "there is no user on this server". So I opened up /etc/postfix/main.cf and make sure that mydestination doesn't contain your domain name. mydestination tells postfix what resides on your local machine.


mydestination = localhost.localdomain, localhost

Also, to use it, my Rails app's setting were like this:


ActionMailer::Base.delivery_method = :smtp
ActionMailer::Base.smtp_settings = {
  :address => "localhost",
  :port => 25,
  :domain => "www.theinksquad.com"
}

SilverRack and Sources
Installing the clean 8.04 on SilverRack, /etc/apt/sources.list is virtually empty. You need to add:


deb http://ubuntu.media.mit.edu/ubuntu/ hardy main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://ubuntu.media.mit.edu/ubuntu/ hardy restricted main multiverse universe

deb http://ubuntu.media.mit.edu/ubuntu/ hardy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://ubuntu.media.mit.edu/ubuntu/ hardy-updates restricted main multiverse universe

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-security restricted main multiverse universe

Then "sudo apt-get update" after

Monit
The tutorial above didn't have any tutorial for Monit or God.rb. Install the dependencies first:


sudo apt-get install flex byacc bison -y

Then monit (Make sure this is the latest and greatest version):


wget http://mmonit.com/monit/dist/beta/monit-5.0_beta7.tar.gz
tar -xzvf monit-5.0_beta7.tar.gz && cd monit-5.0_beta7/ && sudo ./configure && sudo make && sudo make install && cd ../
sudo mkdir /etc/monit.d

Then make the monit file for Apache. This file basically tells monit what to watch out for, and how.

Sample /etc/monit.d/apache.monitrc


check process apache with pidfile /var/run/apache2.pid
  start program = "/etc/init.d/apache2 start"
  stop program = "/etc/init.d/apache2 stop"
  if cpu > 60% for 2 cycles then alert
  if cpu > 80% for 5 cycles then restart
  if totalmem > 200.0 MB for 5 cycles then restart
  if children > 250 then restart
  if loadavg(5min) greater than 20 for 8 cycles then alert
  group yourappnamehere

Since I use workling, I also made a seperate file for it:
server$ sudo vi /etc/monit.d/workling.monitrc
and paste (do a "which ruby" to find out where ruby is and replace the /usr/bin/ruby if needed)


check process workling with pidfile /var/www/yourappname/shared/log/workling.pid
  start program = "/bin/bash -c 'HOME=/var/www/yourappname/current RAILS_ENV=production /usr/bin/ruby /var/www/yourappname/current/script/workling_client start'"
  stop program = "/bin/bash -c '/usr/bin/ruby /var/www/yourappname/current/script/workling_client stop'"
  if totalmem is greater than 180.0 mb for 5 cycles then restart
  if cpu is greater than 90% for 5 cycles then restart
  if 20 restarts within 20 cycles then timeout
  group yourappname

Then reload monit via "sudo monit reload".

Now monit needs to be told to start automatically when we startup and when/if it crashes, we'll use upstart (this is for Ubuntu only?)


 server$ sudo vi /etc/event.d/service_monit

and paste (do a "which monit" to find out where monit is and replace the /usr/local/bin/monit if needed)


# This is an event.d (upstart) script to keep monit running
# To install disable the old way of doing things:
#
# /etc/init.d/monit stop && update-rc.d -f monit remove
#
# then put this script here: /etc/event.d/monit
#
# You can manually start and stop monit like this:
# 
# start monit
# stop monit
#
# Michael Hale (http://halethegeek.com)

start on startup
start on runlevel 2
start on runlevel 3
start on runlevel 4
start on runlevel 5

stop on runlevel 0
stop on runlevel 6

exec /usr/local/bin/monit -Ic /etc/monit/monitrc
respawn

Moving To Passenger, Workling

2009-03-18T00:49:00.000-07:00

I've used backgroundrb for a while now. Coupled with mongrels, monit, it wasn't a pleasant experience. Oh, I forgot to mention that I was learning Linux at the time (still am actually), so it was very difficult for me.

Lately, I've been comtemplating moving my production environment to Passenger, Apache, Workling and God. The next few posts will talk about my experience and what I did. :)

For now, let me just say that this help page played a big part in speeding up my staging.

Cleaning Up Your ActiveRecord Sessions

2009-03-03T23:35:00.000-08:00

I was looking for a way to do this and found a good resource to find out how (without coding it yourself!)

http://www.quarkruby.com/2007/10/21/sessions-and-cookies-in-ruby-on-rails#sexpire refers to a plugin called limited session but the link is no longer valid. Check out http://iprog.com/project/limited_sessions

Update: this breaks in Rails 2.3, I think it's because of the lazy loading. I've never learned much about sessions, so for now I'll move back to file stored.

View helpers in flash

2009-02-17T17:57:00.000-08:00

The other day I wanted a nice checkout link in my flash when users added a product to their cart (apart from the checkout in cart area). I soon realized (or remembered) that you don't have access to view helpers in the controller, where you usually assign flash messages.

I spent about 2 hours researching on how to do this but got no answer. People resorted to fancy stuff just to put links in their flash messages. I thought the answer was in the render method. I first tried to use it but it didn't work because you can't call render/redirect_to twice in the same action:


flash[:notice] = render :partial => "some/partial"

So I looked at the source and tried to figure out what it was in render that read the file and spat out the text. 10 minutes later, I got this to work:


flash[:notice] = @template.render(:partial => "some/partial")

So now I can use link_to and other nice view helpers in that partial and it will all render nicely in the flash message. :)

Smart Activation With Single Sign On

2009-02-12T21:59:00.000-08:00

This post is related to another post of mine about getting the rpx single sign on to work.

Scenario:

You are using single sign on but require the user to have emails (Facebook does not return email) or require other fields (eg. accept terms of use).
You allow users to specify another email besides the one that is returned by the single sign on service (SSOS)
If the user changes that email, you want them to validate it (you send an email to them with a link to activate their account), but if they don't change it (meaning they use the same email that is returned by the SSOS), then the account will be automatically activated

For some reason, I did this the hard way at the beginning. I won't expound on how but what I tried to do in 2 days (but failed) actually took 30 minutes doing it the right way (and worked).

Requisites

Make sure you got single sign on working (you're able to read responses and stuff)

If you look at my code and read it a few times you'll understand what I do. From the RPX Controller, you render the login form so they have a chance to change stuff. If they miss out on anything the errors will render. If they submit it, then the form will be submitted to users/create and will render itself if they are still missing stuff. The hidden_field of email_was just stays there, dormant, waiting to be compared later on.

When the user finally has all their stuff filled up and submits the form, if they're on single sign on, then the user will be activated based on the comparison between the email_was and the current email they're trying to save. If they're different, then they're not activated and the user observer sends out the activation mail. If they are the same email, then the account is activated and they have to do one less step. :)

If you have any comments or suggestions please let me know.

Blocks in View

2009-02-08T00:52:00.000-08:00

I had a bunch of "if logged_in? && current_user.admin?" in my views, which made it very ugly. I saw an old video (it is also covered again) from Railscasts and knew this would be my answer.

However, I wanted more customization though. What if I didn't want to wrap my admin_area in a div? What if I wanted to add conditions on the fly and not make a zillion [enter_some_name]_area methods?

This would be particularly useful if, for example, I only want the "delete" option of an object to appear to admins and if the object if destroyable.

In haml:


- admin_area(:conditions => @object.destroyable?) do
 = link_to "Destroy", ...

Take a look at my helper method to see what I did. I'd appreciate any comments!

Form Builder

2009-02-07T21:38:00.000-08:00

I don't know why I never know about Form Builder! I was making my own form helpers but in the completely stupid way - in the helper files, which made it clunky. Check out these two posts that helped me out a lot. Although it can seem complicated because of all the (what I think is) meta programming, I suggest you just dive in and explore.

RPX Now: Single Sign-on

2009-02-06T04:07:00.000-08:00

As I write this, I'm trying to install the single sign-on capability that RPX Now gives you on my Rails app. I've tried OpenID before (using open_id_authentication plugin and ruby-openid gem) and it was mightly complicated, plus you couldn't only use other 3rd party accounts.

RPX Now claims to be super easy and so far, with grosser's rpx_now gem, it almost seems too easy -- except there are no tutorials that I can find on Google. There are examples in gem's github site but they don't explain much.

This is my attempt at writing one.

First, install the gem (instructions in the github site). If you want to put it in your environment.rb file, it should look like this (remove or replace the version number with an updated one):

config.gem "grosser-rpx_now", :lib => "rpx_now", :version => "0.3", :source => "http://gems.github.com"

Then create an RpxController and add code similar to this to your user model. Of course, you don't have to process the data yourself, but I wanted to (thus my rpx_controller is a bit longer, and I had to read the response in the User model) so that if the rpx profile is missing anything, it will render a something like my normal login page that basically has a form_for(@user ...) where they can fill up the missing data.

Check out actual responses (I just removed any personal data).

Hosting Services

2009-02-06T04:04:00.000-08:00

I don't run websites with thousands of users at a time, however, I thought I'd still announce what I use for my hosting services.

VPS: SilverRack
Good price, quick service. They don't spend time fussing over you though, but that's expected in a VPS.

Shared: HostingRails (disclaimer: affiliate link)
I've tried BlueHost, Dreamhost, but I've found HostingRails to be the easiest to deal with. Their support replies lightning fast, and don't diss you even if your problems are your fault!

Using --trace; cucumber & machinist order of loading files

2009-02-03T23:32:00.000-08:00

I followed this tutorial to easily use Cucumber with a fixture replacement plugin called Machinist. It worked great on my desktop, but when I moved to my laptop, running rake features didn't work - an "uninitialized constant Sham" error popped up and I spent a day figuring it out.

Although the context of this problem is Cucumber and Machinist (which includes Sham), this is a post that talks about using --trace when you run into problems similar to this.

IF YOU'RE FAMILIAR WITH CUCUMBER & MACHINIST...
The problem occured partially because I put my blueprints.rb file where env.rb is. I believe cucumber loads everything there in alphabetical order (doesn't explain why my desktop loaded things differently). The problem is that blueprints.rb tries to call "Sham" which is something that is loaded by Machinist, which in turn is loaded during or after env.rb, not before.

IF YOU'RE NOT FAMILIAR NEITHER CUCUMBER NOR MACHINIST...
The problem occured because of the order files were loaded. I do not know why files were loaded differently in my desktop vs the laptop, but what the heck -- I found the error by using --trace and actually read the big bad ugly code that rake conveniently hides from us.

http://pastie.org/379188

So the lesson is: actually read what --trace spits out! :)

Speeding up emailing in tests

2009-01-23T06:23:00.001-08:00

I lived with the fact that my test ground to a halt when my tests ran code that had to send emails. It finally got so bad I started asking around about it.

I knew about a method to test ActionMailer and not send out emails... and I thought: why not apply these to ActionMailer when it's in the test environment? I ran my tests with rspec. Check out the pastie to see the code.

RSpec, attachment_fu

2008-10-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

I've been looking for a solution to force RSpec tests to override the attachment_fu storage setting. Since I use s3, it was very inefficient when I'd run my tests because the assets would be saved in s3. Not only does it cost money, but it was very slow.

After spamming #rubyonrails I finally got an answer from _martinS_. He told me to do something like this: http://pastie.org/296895 - and it worked! I hope this helps you guys.

Compiling Sphinx in Ubuntu

2008-09-28T09:56:00.000-07:00

I had just watched Ryan Bates' screencast on Sphinx and I wanted to install it on Ubuntu. Took me a while to find out how, so here are my instructions. I'm on Ubuntu 8.04

1. Download the latest realease. It's 0.9.8 as of writing.
2. Install it with their instructions. I ran into a problem though - I have MySQL already but not the files Sphinx needs to install. If you ran into this problem, continue:
3. In console, type:


mysql_config --cflags

That will tell you the package you need to install.
4. Mine was libmysqlclient15-dev:


sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient15-dev

5. Try installing Sphinx again, it should work this time.

attachment_fu, Rails 2.1 and before_thumbnail_saved

2008-09-09T08:40:00.000-07:00

I was working on before_thumbnail_saved callback in Rails 2.1 and it seems it has changed! It didn't work with me anymore. At least my old code didn't.

Apparently, you only pass the thumbnail into the loop.

Read this blog post for details.

Rake: Update or create images generated by attachment_fu

2008-09-05T07:23:00.000-07:00

Did you upload a bunch of images and find out that the new layout needs a new size of the photos, and you didn't specify this in the has_attachment line of your model?

This happened to me, and I wanted an easy to way update all images in the database. I didn't test this with millions of records or anything, but if you want to fix this up please leave a comment.

Notes:

To use, simply edit has_attachment line with the new thumbnail sizes you want.
IdeaImage is the model that I want to update
parentless is a named_scope that gets only the IdeaImages whose parent_id's are null.


  namespace :images do
    desc "Updates all the thumbnails of idea_images based on the thumbnails hash in the model"
    task(:update_idea_images => :environment) do
      IdeaImage.parentless.each do |i|
        #destroy the thumbnails first
        i.thumbnails.each { |thumbnail| thumbnail.destroy } if i.thumbnailable?
        #then recreate the thumbnails
        i.attachment_options[:thumbnails].each { |suffix, size| i.create_or_update_thumbnail(i.create_temp_file, suffix, *size) }
      end
    end
  end

Installing the latest gVim and Vim in Ubuntu Hardy Heron

2008-08-01T00:46:00.000-07:00

I recently got a new computer and reinstalled Ubuntu and found out that my old post on how to install the latest gVim in Hardy Heron didn't work anymore. This is what I did to install the latest one. Thanks godlygeek!


sudo apt-get build-dep vim
sudo apt-get install build-essential devscripts fakeroot dpkg-dev
apt-get source vim
cd vim-7.1
(cd upstream/patches; python get_patches.py)
dch -v 1:7.1-138+1ubuntu4~$(whoami)1 "Updated with patches through $(ls upstream/patches | grep -v '\.py$' | tail -n 1)"
sed -i -e '/gvimtutor/d' -e "1idebian/tmp/usr/bin/gvimtutor\t\t\t\tusr/bin/" debian/vim-runtime.install.in
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b

Having trouble viewing that? See the pastie.

Now, you're supposed to have .deb files in the parent directory. I ran into a problem though in the last line. Here are the last few lines of output after running dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b: http://pastie.org/246789

To fix this, godlygeek asked me to edit vim-7.1/debian/vim-runtime.install.in and remove the line with gvimtutor in it. See my vim-runtime.install.in file.

So I edited it (gedit vim-7.1/debian/vim-runtime.install.in), then ran the last line (

dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b

in vim-7.1 directory again.

I got the compiled *.deb files in the parent directory!

To install them (note that your files will look different):


sudo dpkg -i vim-full_7.1-138+1ubuntu4~ramon1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i vim-gui-common_7.1-138+1ubuntu4~ramon1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i vim-runtime_7.1-138+1ubuntu4~ramon1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i vim-gnome_7.1-138+1ubuntu4~ramon1_i386.deb

gVim and placing scripts

2008-07-27T20:35:00.000-07:00

It seems that everytime I install gVim in Ubuntu the place to put scripts is different. If anyone can shed some light on this please let me know. The last time I installed it, I put the scripts in /usr/share/vim/vimcurrent

config/initializers/new_rails_defaults.rb and problems with Rails 2.0.2

2008-06-11T07:08:00.000-07:00

I was trying to debug a Rails 2.0.2 app that didn't work on HostingRails. I froze the gems in the vendor folder and stuff, so that couldn't be the problem. When I looked at the cPanel error log, I saw this:


[Wed Jun 11 08:34:18 2008] [notice] mod_fcgid: process /home/royalpa/public_html/dispatch.fcgi(20133) exit(communication error), terminated by calling exit(), return code: 1
from /home/royalpa/site_files/royalpalm/config/initializers/new_rails_defaults.rb:5

I never saw new_rails_defaults.rb before so I looked at it and looked at my older Rails apps. It wasn't there. I suppose it's there because when you do "rails appname" in hostingrails, it makes a Rails 2.1 skeleton. It thinks you're going to make a 2.1 app! Delete it and it should work.

Ruby, Rails, Mongrel, Monit, Nginx on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy

2008-05-23T05:09:00.001-07:00

Ubuntu 7.10 on SilverRack

I used to have a tutorial here, and I had gotten the files from an existing server. I made it for myself. Since ezra posted making sure I wasn't violating any copyrights, I've decided to take it down, since I can't prove where those files were taken from.

Rails.vim breaks in Hardy Heron

2008-05-11T01:16:00.000-07:00

Well, Vim breaks when using rails.vim in Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. Took me a few days to decide to actually try and fix it and not downgrade back down to Gutsy.

This post explains what you can do to fix this error. We'll upgrade to the latest Vim. Because the error is caused by an old version of Vim and rails.vim, you need to update it. You can read about it in this thread. That was my starting point to find the fix.

1) Download and install the latest version of Vim


svn co https://vim.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/vim/vim7
cd vim7
./configure --with-features=huge
sudo make
sudo make install

2) Install all the plugins and scripts again
3) If you use haml, when I downloaded the latest version today of the haml syntax script, I had some illegal carriage return errors. I had to open haml.vim then save it via


:w ++ff=unix

GawingAttachable

2008-03-22T23:56:00.001-07:00

Do you want to be able to attach files to something? I needed to do that today and I made a plugin called Gawing Attachable (translated: make_attachable). It allows you to add attachments to something you make attachable.

Yes, there are many things you can still do to this, but like they say: make something quick and fix it up later on.

Check out the README before installing.

script/plugin install http://lucidph.dreamhosters.com/gawing_attachable/trunk

Generating a resource in the routes.rb file

2008-03-22T09:35:00.001-07:00

When making a generator, you may want to add something to the routes.rb file. To understand this you need to know how to make generators. Take a look at Ryan Bates' Railscast on how to do this.

To add a normal resource, do it this way:


class GawingFileableGenerator < Rails::Generator::Base
  def manifest
    record do |m|
      ...
      m.route_resources :files
    end
  end
end

If you want to add other stuff like :member or :collection, do it this way


class GawingFileableGenerator < Rails::Generator::Base
  def manifest
    record do |m|
      ...
      route_string = ":files, :member => { :download => :get }"
      def route_string.to_sym; to_s; end
      def route_string.inspect; to_s; end
      m.route_resources route_string
    end
  end
end

acts_as_state_machine: make initial state exists!

2008-03-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

Ugh.. I tried out acts_as_state_machine and I kept getting this nil error and I had no idea why. I mean, I followed the code in agilewebdevelopment.com properly. Here's the code in that website:


acts_as_state_machine :initial => :created, :column => 'status'

   # These are all of the states for the existing system.
   state :submitted
   state :processing
   state :nonprofit_reviewing
   state :accepted

Oh... apparently, you need to add


state :created

to it as well :)

Expected User, got User; forcing to reload plugins

2008-03-03T23:17:00.000-08:00

I made my own plugin and started getting this error. This plugin is a variation of the acts_as_voteable plugin by Juixe. I did some searching around, I found this blog post that explains the fix.

Apparently, in development mode, there are issues when it comes to reloading plugins. Because the model "Vote" in my case, or "Comment" in the blog post's case, is defined inside the plugin, Rails doesn't see that it should load it again. Anyway, better to read that post for an explanation.

What I did to fix it was add this code at the end of the environment.rb file:

 # Array of plugins with Application model dependencies.
reloadable_plugins = ["acts_as_commentable"]

# Force these plugins to reload, avoiding stale object references.
reloadable_plugins.each do |plugin_name|
  reloadable_path = RAILS_ROOT + "/vendor/plugins/#{plugin_name}/lib"
  Dependencies.load_once_paths.delete(reloadable_path)
end

See the code.

Creating your own plugin

2008-02-27T09:07:00.001-08:00

I finally forced myself to make my own plugin instead of having controllers and models all over the place. Of course, I waited for the right time to make a plugin that wasn't too different, and needed to be different at the same time.

I chose to make another version of acts_as_voteable by Juixe. Here are the steps I took

I watched Ryan Bates' screencast on making plugins
I coped acts_as_voteable and starting editing things one by one to see what broke.
When I needed a clearer and more advanced explanation (like adding helpers and such), I referred to Geoffrey G's howto on creating plugins.

It took me about 4 hours to figure the whole thing out (I'm a slow learner.. and I already knew about polymorphic associations!).

The change I had to make to acts_as_voteable was that I had to have 3 kinds of votes: positive, neutral and negative. Very small change, right? :)

You can get my plugin like this:

script/plugin install http://lucidph.dreamhosters.com/gawing_voteable/trunk

Syntax highlighting

2008-02-25T00:33:00.001-08:00

I did a fresh install of Ubuntu on my laptop, and I installed gVim (rails.vim) as well. To my surprise, there was no syntax highlighting! Good thing a quick ":syntax on" fixed that.

Expected "model.rb" to define Model

2008-02-08T04:10:00.000-08:00

I was getting this error:

ActionView::TemplateError (Expected /home/lucidph/public_html/rails/pbed/app/models/article_photo.rb to define ArticlePhoto) on line #5 of articles/gen_xml.xml.builder

A lot of people get this with ferret and some bug with it, but I didn't have ferret. The problem: I forgot to upload attachment_fu to the server!

Deploying in Bluehost

2008-02-01T06:17:00.000-08:00

I started writing this entry not knowing what is wrong with my app in Bluehost - except that it isn't running. I know this because I get a :

Application error

Rails application failed to start properly

1) First I made sure it had all the gems it needed. Since we wanted to freeze our gems, we had put them in the gem folder.

I added this to our environment.rb

ENV['GEM_PATH'] = '/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.gems:/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8'

2) Looking at the production.log, now I see an error. What's the error? Among other stuff, the one that's most readable is "Missing helper file helpers/formatting_helper.rb".

I upload it.

3) It works.

Sorting an array

2008-01-22T19:31:00.000-08:00

I was following this tutorial that shows you how to sort an array. My action looked like this:

def index
@articles = NodeType.find(1).nodes + NodeType.find(2).nodes
@articles.sort_by { |article| article.updated_at }
end

But that didn't work! It wasn't sorting at all.. at least as far as I could tell. Strange, because this worked:

def index
@articles = NodeType.find(1).nodes + NodeType.find(2).nodes
@articles = @articles.sort_by { |article| article.updated_at }
end

It seems you have to assign it to an object first, before returning it.

redirect_back_or_default in Rails 2.0

2008-01-16T20:30:00.000-08:00

Since they removed redirect_back_or_default in Rails 2.0, and I still had a need to do something like that, I made method you can put under the private portion of your ApplicationController:

def redirect_back_or(path)
redirect_to :back
rescue ActionController::RedirectBackError
redirect_to path
end

and you use it just like the redirect_back_or_default method.

TemplateError, Markaby, HostingRails

2008-01-03T08:32:00.000-08:00

Markaby in HostingRails causes some TemplateError. To fix it, in vendor\plugins\markaby\lib\markaby\rails.rb, replace

compile_and_render_template(template_extension, template, file_path, local_assigns)

with

compile_and_render_template(@@template_handlers[template_extension.to_sym], template, file_path, local_assigns)

source: comments section of a posting in the RoR blog.

rSpec and Relationships

2007-12-13T00:01:00.001-08:00

I spend a good 3 hours figuring out why my spec tests were failing. Let me explain my scenario to you.

My scenario was pretty much like this: Student belongs to Class.

My test: a student should know what class it belongs to.

My student_spec:

it "should know what class it belongs to"
@student = Student.new
@class = Class.new(:name => "Math")
@class.students << @student
@student.class.name.should == "Math"
end

Failed! Apparently, you cannot insert into the array "<<". You need to do it like this:

@student.class = @class

Well, I'm not that stupid that it'd take me 3 hours to figure that out! My test was longer of course! I just made it simple for example's sake. :P

Rails on Dreamhost

2007-12-03T03:14:00.000-08:00

Setting up Rails in Dreamhost is a bit tricky. Dreamhost has a wiki on how to do it but as of today, it doesn't work quite right.

I just installed on and it worked fine so here's how I did it:

1) If you haven't yet, create the user account through their control panel with FCGI enabled.
2) Log on to the user account that you created via shell.
3) type "rails yourappname"
4) type "rm useraccount.dreamhosters.com" since we'll replace it with a symbolic link.
5) type "ln -s yourappname/public/ useraccount.dreamhosters.com"
6) type "cd yourappname"
7) edit public/.htaccess (make sure what you edited isn't the commented line):

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.cgi [QSA,L] to RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]

8) After require 'fcgi_handler', change the rest of dispatch.fcgi to read:

class RailsFCGIHandler
private
  def frao_handler(signal)
    dispatcher_log :info, "asked to terminate immediately"
    dispatcher_log :info, "frao handler working its magic!"
    restart_handler(signal)
  end
  alias_method :exit_now_handler, :frao_handler
end

RailsFCGIHandler.process!

9) edit your config/environment.rb and uncomment the line:
ENV['RAILS_ENV'] ||= 'production'

10) Your Rails app should be working fine now. You'll need to edit the database.yml and stuff to make sure that you can connect to the database of course.

Goodluck!

Onto Rails and rSpec

2007-11-16T00:30:00.000-08:00

Like I mentioned yesterday, I started trying out rSpec. When in Rails, it's a little different. You need to include more stuff. I couldn't get my spec to run properly. Apparently, you have to import a bunch of stuff:

require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../../config/boot'
require "#{RAILS_ROOT}/config/environment"
require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../../app/models/project_management'

The first two lines I got from the codehappy blog post. The third just imports the model I'm testing out.

I may be doing it completely wrong so I'd appreciate any feed back.

Command line Subversion, Rails

2007-11-15T02:08:00.000-08:00

Like I mentioned on my earlier post, I'm a slow learner when I read manuals. I like watching much more. Check out episode 36 on Railscasts. It gives a nice quick overview on how it's done on the Mac. It's the same on Linux.

Learning Behaviour Driven Development

2007-11-15T01:44:00.000-08:00

I've been doing a bunch of Google searches on Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) but all I've found were long articles and wordy introductions. I suppose some people learn that way but I'm way to lazy.

Thank goodness for screencasts. To dive into it, check out the website smartic.us' screencasts on rSpec.

Obviously, I don't know much. All I know is that rSpec is a gem used for testing. He dives straight into making a class and testing it. Or rather, testing it, then making the class. You'll see. :)

Ubuntu and gVim

2007-11-10T00:47:00.000-08:00

I've always been a Windows or DOS user ever since childhood. In the past several years I have tried to migrate to Linux.
Here comes in Ruby on Rails... on gVim... on... Ubuntu. It's nice and fast. you feel like you put your computer on steroids. Enough talk. Let me share with you the simple steps I took to install it.

Install Ruby on Rails so that gVim may be able to access whatever files are in the RoR install.
Go to http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~djm/ubuntu/gutsy/#gvim and follow the installation instructions for gVim.
Go back to my earlier post on Vim and you may follow that and paste the custom files in the gVim ~/.vim/ (which is equivalent to the Window's ~/vimfiles/ folder).

Happy geek out!

Running Multiple servers

2007-10-25T23:43:00.000-07:00

Now this really isn't a hack for rails or a fix. Its a nice little thing built into rails that I just started using. Its running multiple rails programs on a localhost for testing.
Basically, the jist is you can run several RoR servers on the same computer as long as the ports are different.

To achieve this when you run a RoR server with the command :
ruby script/server
you can add a port option by adding -p and specifying the port number:
ruby script/server -p 3001

the default port is 3000, and you can't run multiple servers on a localhost without specifiying a port.

you can also use :Rserver -p 3001 if you are running it on Vim

Tackling VIM

2007-10-24T23:03:00.001-07:00

Two posts ago I was talking about the RoR talk that Guy gave. Since then, I've learned how to use VIM. There is a bit of a learning curve but you'll see you'll start to work a lot faster about 2 days of continuous use (sleep is ok).

I've found T Pope's article to be very useful. Read that and all the links in the article and the preceding articles.

Stumbling into REST

2007-10-24T22:59:00.001-07:00

I stumbled into REST accidentally about 1 month ago. Since then, I've learned to try (at least) to make the URLs more beautiful and this simplifying the sites that I create. Here are some resources I've found to be quite useful:

1) DHH's 2006 keynote
2) Episodes 35 and 67 of Railscasts

If anyone can add to this list, please drop a comment!

PhRUG Ruby on Rails Talk

2007-10-11T02:59:00.000-07:00

I went to a RoR talk last night in Ortigas. It was sponsored by Exist. The speaker was Guy Naor, the CTO of Morph Labs. Because he mentioned a bunch of stuff that I need to remember, here's a list of things people and I should do or at least look into if they are into Ruby on Rails:

Continuous Integration
Capistrano and SVN
The Ruby Way by Hal Fulton
Test Driven Development
Behaviour Driven Development
Vim & Rails
Know your regular expressions!

I've looked into these before but I didn't take that much importance to them. Now I know I should look into it some more!

You can't upload files via ajax alone!

2007-10-03T21:27:00.000-07:00

Spent the morning figuring out something you can't do! I was trying to make an ajax file uploader but kept running into problems. I asked around #rubyonrails in freenode but got no answer so I did some searching... and found a thread of this person that tried to do the exact same thing.

helper: Toggler

2007-10-02T01:36:00.000-07:00

I made a new helper to help out with toggling a div. To make sure the div is invisible upon load, make sure you add the style="display: none;" in the div.

To call the helper, use it like this:

<%= toggler("click me to open that div", "div-id") %>

helper: s_to_hh_mm_ss

2007-09-26T01:23:00.000-07:00

Convert seconds to hh:mm:ss


  def s_to_hh_mm_ss(number)
    seconds = "%02d" % (number % 6)
    minutes = "%02d" % ( (number / 60 ) % 60)
    hours = "%02d" % ( (number / 3600) % 24) 
   
    return (hours + minutes + seconds).scan(/../).join(':')
  end

helper: check_box_collection

2007-09-25T07:29:00.000-07:00

Following the Lynda.com RoR video tutorials, you're taught how to make code for checkboxes. It's a bit of a hassle because there's a lot of cutting and pasting per checkbox collection you want to have. With the following code, you just paste several times to get things working.

I couldn't find a way to display this properly in blogger, so I posted that code in pastie.
Helper: http://pastie.caboo.se/104016

Code you will put in the model that will "contain the check list". For example, if a user has_and_belongs_to_many :roles, this code will be pasted on the User model.
http://pastie.caboo.se/100607

Then, when you want to generate the checklist, simply paste this in your view:
http://pastie.caboo.se/100609

When updating or saving, make sure you tell the user (or the model that has the checklist) to update! I used mine the following way in the controller:
http://pastie.caboo.se/100608

helper: collection_for_select

2007-09-25T07:28:00.001-07:00

I didn't find the form helper that made collection select tags powerful enough, so I made my own. I don't know how to make a nice plugin yet, so it's still a helper.

Code is in pastie.

Put the "helper" section code in your helper file:

For usage, put the code in the "usage" section in your rhtml.

Notes:

* selected_value will only work with integers! It's possible this'll be changed in the future.

[EDIT]
2007-01-03: I changed the pastie code so an error won't be generated even if selected_value is nil

[EDIT]
2007-01-07: If the collection passed is empty, 2 things happen:

The first option with value 0 is "Empty list"
The list is disabled.

If you want to change the message when the list is empty, in the options hash, pass :empty_message

tip: When editing JS, check all that depend on it

2007-09-25T07:27:00.001-07:00

The Form.serialize broke when I replaced scriptaculous.js with another version.

tip: tailing logs

2007-09-25T07:26:00.000-07:00

You can call this command in Linux to watch a log file as it updates:


tail -f [path/to/filename]

This actually works with all text files.

If you're in Windows, there's no built in DOS command that does it. If you're using Aptana/RadRails, you can right click on the file you want to watch and it'll come out in the console window.

This will remove the hassle of opening and closing the logs whenever we want to see something.

tip: Not using Reserved Words!

2007-09-25T07:25:00.000-07:00

Spent 3 hours debugging something - and found out I was using a buggy word / reserved word -- 'display'! Make sure you read the ReservedWords wiki page.

helper: Getting the full URL

2007-09-25T07:23:00.000-07:00

There’s nothing built in Rails that gives you the full URL. I made a helper, that gives this to you. It doesn’t display properly here.


  def get_full_url(base_url)
    return base_url + request.path + get_params_as_url_friendly
  end
  
  def get_params_as_url_friendly
    count = 0
    param_size = request.query_parameters.size
    parameters = ""
    
    for param in request.query_parameters
      parameter = "#{param[0]}=#{param[1]}"
      
      if count == 0
        parameter = "?#{parameter}"
      else
        parameter = "&#{parameter}"
      end
      
      count += 1
      parameters += parameter
    end
    
    return parameters
  end

tip: Going Live with Attachment_fu

2007-09-25T07:22:00.000-07:00

This problem popped up in HostingRails.com, and I was using attachment_fu. If you're going live somewhere and you're using attachment_fu, read this thread if you run across errors accessing models that use attachment_fu!

Tutorial: Foreign Keys with Different Names

2007-09-25T07:21:00.000-07:00

I had to make private messages that had a sender_id and a recipient_id that both referred to the user table. Here's how the model should look:


class PrivateMessage < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :sender, :class_name => "User", :foreign_key => "sender_id"
  belongs_to :recipient, :class_name => "User", :foreign_key => "recipient_id"
end

Tutorial: Migration Table w/o IDs

2007-09-25T07:20:00.000-07:00

When creating HABTM(Has And Belongs To Many) tables, you can create the migration table without an ID column this way:


    create_table :events_users, :id => false do |t|
      t.column :event_id, :integer
      t.column :user_id, :integer
    end

Tutorial: attachment_fu: fixing the Windows error on size

2007-09-25T07:19:00.000-07:00

It took me a while to find this, but I finally found my answer in a forum thread.

Tutorial: Fixing file_column's permissions

2007-09-25T07:09:00.001-07:00

I came across a problem with file_column because it didn't update the permissions of the files and folders where you'd upload.

They'd stay at 600. I'd come across a routing error when trying to download files.

In the file_column.rb I edited the move_from method to look like this:


    def move_from(local_dir, just_uploaded)
      # create a directory named after the primary key, first
      unless File.exists?(@dir)
        FileUtils.mkdir(@dir)
        #sets the permissions just in case it hasn't been set.
        FileUtils.chmod_R 0755, @dir 
      end
      
      # move the temporary files over
      FileUtils.cp Dir.glob(File.join(local_dir, "*")), @dir
      
      @just_uploaded = just_uploaded

      # remove all old files in the directory
      FileUtils.rm(Dir.glob(File.join(@dir, "*")).reject! {
                     |e| File.exists?(File.join(local_dir, File.basename(e)))
                   })
      
    end

Since posting this, we've moved to attachment_fu. It's a lot nicer, but has a steeper learning curve. If you're learning on how to attach files, file_column is fine.

helper: number_to_php

2007-09-25T06:54:00.000-07:00

Here's a helper to convert a number to Philippine Pesos. For other currencies, just replace the symbol.


  def number_to_php(amt)
    return number_to_currency(amt, :unit => "PHP ")
  end

Tutorial: Email Authentication When Signing Up

2007-09-25T06:51:00.000-07:00

This is to help us remember how to do email authentication (emailing the password to the user, so that they can use that to log in) when signing up.

This assumes you're using the LoginGenerator.

1. In account_controller.rb, add this as a private method:


def generate_password(length = 8)
  chars = ('a'..'z').to_a + ('A'..'Z').to_a + ('1'..'9').to_a - ['o', 'O', 'i', 'I']
  Array.new(length) { chars[rand(chars.size)] }.join
end

2. Then add/edit this method to the account_controller.rb


def signup
    case @request.method
      when :post
        @password = generate_password

        @user = User.new(@params['user'])
        @user.password = @password
       
        if @user.save     
          #@session['user'] = User.authenticate(@user.login, @params['user']['password'])
          Notifier::deliver_account_details(@user, @password)
          flash['notice']  = "An email has been sent."
          redirect_to :action => "login"
        end
      when :get
        @user = User.new
    end     
  end

3. Make the notifier:


ruby script/generate model Notifier

4. Make the method that takes care of the emailing in notifier.rb:


class Notifier < ActionMailer::Base
  def account_details(user,password)
    # Email header info MUST be added here
    @recipients = user.email
    @from = "noreply@domain.com"
    @subject = "Account Details"
 
    # Email body substitutions go here
    @body["username"] = user.login
    @body["password"] = password
  end
end

5. Create views/notifier/account_details.rhtml like this:


Hello <%= @username %>,

Your password is:
<%= @password %>

When you log in, please change your password for security.

Thank you,
Mailman

6. Finally, add this to the bottom of config/environment.rb:


ActionMailer::Base.smtp_settings = {
  :address  => "mail.domain.com",
  :port  => 25, #some servers use 26 - I got stuck here before!
  :domain  => 'www.domain.com',
  :user_name  => "info@domain.com",
  :password  => "pass",
  :authentication  => :login
}

method: generate_password

2007-09-25T06:49:00.000-07:00

Generate a password. Make sure this goes hand-in-hand with encryption. You don't want to store passwords as-is in databases.


def generate_password(length = 6)
  chars = ('a'..'z').to_a + ('A'..'Z').to_a + ('1'..'9').to_a - ['o', 'O', 'i', 'I']
  Array.new(length) { chars[rand(chars.size)] }.join
end

I got this from "here":http://www.rubyonrailsblog.com/articles/2006/09/29/ruby-on-rails-random-password-generator.

plugin: relative dates

2007-09-25T06:47:00.000-07:00

For relative dates: today, yesterday, etc.

Run


ruby script/plugin install http://ar-code.svn.engineyard.com/plugins/relative_time_helpers/

See this for more details:


<%= relative_time(Time.now) %>
# today
<%= relative_time(1.day.ago) %>
# yesterday
<%= relative_time(1.day.from_now) %>
# tomorrow
<%= relative_time_span([Time.now, 5.days.from_now]) %>
# May 17th - 22nd

I got it from http://activereload.net/

Helper: user_authorized?

2007-09-25T06:41:00.000-07:00

When using ACLSystem, you can check if someone has permission to do something. However, before you ask, you have to make sure the user is logged in in the first place. Instead of having all that code in the view, I made a helper so that we won't have to check and see if the

session['user'].nil?

each time we want to ask if the user has permission to do so.


def user_authorized?(perm) #works with ACL controller
 return session['user'].authorized?(perm) if not session['user'].nil?
 return false
end

Documentation

2007-09-25T06:38:00.001-07:00

The world of Ruby on Rails doesn't have particularly complete documentation. When looking for a way to convert datetime to a date, I couldn't find a way. I searched in gotapi.com but found nothing.

I went to the #rubyonrails chatroom in EFNet and I was pointed to ruby-doc - another documentation site that I've found to be the best.

Helper: get_url(url)

2007-09-25T06:36:00.000-07:00

Answer to making our relative URLs to absolute URLs through the application helper:


def get_url(url)
  return "http://localhost:3000" + url
end

If URL were /model/file/1/a.jpg, then you'd get http://localhost:3000/model/file/1/a.jpg in return. When moving to a new webserver, we just need to edit the helper and change the base URL.

Helper: ms_to_hh_mm_ss(number)

2007-09-25T06:34:00.000-07:00

Convert a number (milliseconds) the format hh:mm:ss


def ms_to_hh_mm_ss(number)
  seconds = "%02d" % (number % 6)
  minutes = "%02d" % ( (number / 60000 ) % 60)
  hours = "%02d" % ( (number / 3600000) % 24) 
 
  return (hours + minutes + seconds).scan(/../).join(':')
end

Place this in the applications_helper.rb to make it available everywhere in the application.

World of Notes

2007-09-25T06:20:00.000-07:00

We used to post our code notes - Ruby on Rails notes, CSS notes, etc - in a password protected site.. when we realized we could just as easily share this information with others.

In this blog you'll find posts by different people in the team, talking about the little things we run to everyday, and how to solve them.