This weekend was Rails 3.1 Hackfest. The rails community was called to test the upcoming version 3.1 to its limits, to find bugs and or flaws and get it polished for the final release. So I did:

I’m working with the rails 3.1 since it first release candidate, but never tried in production. So I made my task to finally test this, and bring my app in the wild – on my (not root) server. Rails 3.0 is running there smoothly so I didn’t expect any problems – wrong!
Show stopper was the Javascript Runtime dependency on production. Reason was quickly found: Coffee-Script – ahrg! It depends on ExecJS, which depends on a Javascript Runtime. Unfortunately, and that’s because I’m not on a root server, I got neither node.js, therubyraser, Mustang nor Johnson installed there.

I read this article, which supposed to precompile the assets – didn’t help either and runtime is needed again.

In the End, the solution was as simple as obvious: just don’t use coffee-script in production I did, removed the coffee-script gem form my Gemfile – and tatatata: it works! Uhh! This took me quite a long time to get it right. Javascript Runtime dependecy no good for prodcution, and reading Mr. Katz it’s looking good to get this fixed for the final release – uff! Happy so get tin final one soon! Yeah!

[cheesey image taken from PragDave - thx]

I was quite annoyed by the wasted time it took each time I grep the rails routes table.
Wait, can’t this be cached? – Sure it can!
So I came up this nice little alias to cache the output once:

alias route='CF=tmp/routes_cache; [[ ! -s $CF ]] && rake routes > $CF; cat $CF | grep '


now it’s ultra fast, try e.g.:

$ route root

bang!

First I checked Stackoverflow – Tian had similar problem over there: Nokogiri: Parsing Irregular “<”

As a quick fix I came up with this method using a reqular expression to identify unclosed tags:

def fix_irregular_html(html)
  regexp = /<([^<>]*)(<|$)/

  #we need to do this multiple time as regex are overlapping
  while (fixed_html = html.gsub(regexp, "&lt;\\1\\2")) && fixed_html != html
    html = fixed_html
  end

  fixed_html
end

See full code including test here: https://gist.github.com/796571

It works out well for me, I appreciate any feedback and improvements

See full code and test here:

https://gist.github.com/796571

So I developed a tiny command line client, which allows you to send request easily. It comes as a gem and easily to install:

gem install oauth-cli

After installation, execute oauthc. You either make onetime calls, with giving all required data as parameter, or just go into interactive mode, to get a shell for multiple calls and history. For not stating all connection data over and over again, it comes with multiple profile support, a wizard to create those easily and presets for Twitter and Qype.

See this nifty example call:
oauthc -p twitter get statuses/friends.json

I hope you like it – Bug reports, suggestions, updates go to:

http://github.com/rngtng/oauth-cli/issues

See Readme:

http://github.com/rngtng/oauth-cli/blob/master/README.rdoc

See Source:

http://github.com/rngtng/oauth-cli

Here’s a (maybe incomplete) list of my Mac OS X Development system setup. Mainly for me to remember, but maybe a help for you too:

Main Development Setup
Snow Leopard Lion
xCode (or latest iPhone SDK)
Mac Ports, now I prefer Homebrew
Ruby: rvm + rubygems + rails etc.
Database: Mysql 5.1 + Sequel Pro
OpenVPN: Tunnelblick, or Cisco VPN client + Shimo VPN Menubar Addon
Terminal Console Extension: SIMBL + Visor iTerm 2
TextMate + Missing Drawer + Get Bundles + Rails + AckMate …
jEdit + FTP + …
Git + GitX (Experimental)
FTP & Co: Cyberduck
Hudson status: CCMenu
Share Files: Dropbox
Google Chrome
Safari
Firefox + Firebug

Extended Development
Arduino
Processing
Fritzing
Eclipse

Nice to have:
System Notification: Growl + Growl Mail
Read RSS: NetNewsWire Now using RSS within Apple Mail
IRC Client: Colloquy and hide join messages Adium
Skype and Tweetie original Twitter client
Control iTunes: SizzlingKeys Bowtie
Spotify and Spotify Menubar and more goddies
Last.fm: iScrobbler
All Codecs: Perian
Dasboard widgets: IP + App Update
Copy&Paste History: Flycut
Track Work: MacTimeLog
Word replacement: iWork
Keep your Notes: Journler
Extend Finder: TotalFinder
Mail Archiver and other MailPlugins

Install hints
mac ports
sudo port selfupdate
sudo port install git-core +svn +bash_completion
sudo port install ImageMagick +no_x11
sudo port install wget

ruby gems

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/991708/rails-mysql-and-snow-leopard

sudo gem self update
sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config
sudo gem install rails
sudo gem install passenger
sudo gem install piston

Safari open always in tabs:

http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200812/make_safari_open_targeted_links_in_new_tabs_instead_of_new_windows/

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Safari enable Development mode:
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitDeveloperExtras -bool true
defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

Safari Plugins:

http://alexstaubo.github.com/keywurl/

TextMate install bundle
cd ~/Desktop && svn co http://svn.textmate.org/trunk/Review/Bundles/GetBundles.tmbundle/

Well, that’s it! Stay tuned for updated…

For that, I needed Serial communication within ruby. Thanks to ruby-serialport first steps went quite well. I could write OR read from and to Arduino easily. But for some reasons, writing AND reading using the same instance didn’t work out.

I used a simple ‘send-input-back’ sketch on the Arduino side. So every byte I’m sending is returned back. I checked with the Arduino IDE Serialmonitor and a simple Processing script – everything worked alright. But using ruby it was different. Writing to serial port worked okay, but reading from it was just random. Sometimes I read the response, sometime I didn’t – really, really weird. Some headaches and a lot of time testing I finally found the solution: just open two instances of the serial port. One for sending, one for reading – and, surprise, surprise – it works perfect! Who would have guessed that!? Strange..

// To be completed
require 'serialport'
port_write = Serialport.new()
port_read = Serialport.new()

Ok, continuing hacking, more soon…

module Kernel
   private
   def this_method
     caller[0] =~ /`([^']*)'/ and $1
   end
end

for Ruby >= 1.9 you can uses this:

module Kernel
   private
   def this_method
     __method__
   end
end

[see Stack Over Flow as well]

Check this out, here some lists of good techniques to get started and to impove your Ruby and Rails code:

http://nettuts.com/articles/web-roundups/10-awesome-ruby-on-rails-techniques-to-get-you-started/

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

http://www.rubyinside.com/21-ruby-tricks-902.html

[Awsm picture taken from DesignShark]

Unfortunately it didn’t provide the possibility to delete or update an image once it’s assigned to an object. Well no problem, another fork of mine, some coding and now it possible. I basically reused to code of the as_file_column_bridge. Check it out here:
http://github.com/rngtng/as_paperclip_bridge/tree/master

Update: changes got merged into trunk, check it out:

http://github.com/mnaglik/as_paperclip_bridge/

I rubyfied the class, did some code cleanup, added (yet a very simple) way to get the original message, and gained some performance by paring message only on demand. A testcase was broken as well the Rakefile, both are fixed. See the update here:
http://github.com/rngtng/bounce-email/tree/master