There were simpler times where just reading the feeds of the most important blogs allowed me to be up-to-date, but either I’m getting old or the information has become too fractioned, because this time the only reason for me (and everyone in MIKAMAI) to get started with Rails 3 was to resume a practice that unfortunately we left behind in the past year: the internal presentations.

Starting last thursday, and hopefully never stopping, thursday afternoons aren’t about working for others, but are about everyone sharing his knoweledge with the others.

Last thursday was obviously all about Rails 3, so a couple of us connected their macs to the big screen and demoed new features of Rails 3.

It was nice, interesting questions were asked during the demos, and the overall mood was pretty good. I look forward to the next session.

The VPS we’re deploying to runs on Phusion Passenger, and that means we can’t use mod_alias or mod_rewrite to 301-redirect the old URLs, already indexed by Google, to their new locations.

To solve this problem I wrote a little Radiant Extension, called LegacyPathHandler, that reads a simple list of URLs from a text file and does a 301 redirection on them before handling the control to Radiant’s default SiteController.

It works quite fine for us, but it has no specs/tests or documentation. Please feel free to contribute to the project if you feel you can improve it.

Unfortunately I had strange quirks in my growl notifications. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t (I was using the standard :ran_command autotest hook at the time), so I switched to the newer :red and :green hooks, and only worsened the problem. No matter what the test output was, I always got a green notification.

I was able to trace the problem to the redgreen gem. Its colorized output wasn’t being recognized correctly by autotest and it kept thinking everything was ok.

A little ruby fiddling and this is my new improved (and working!) .autotest file:

# -*- ruby -*-
 
module Autotest::RedGreen
  Autotest.send(:alias_method, :real_ruby, :ruby)
  Autotest.send(:define_method, :ruby) do |*args|
      real_ruby + %[ -rrubygems -e "require 'redgreen'" ] 
  end
 
  # Clean the output so other modules can work correctly
  Autotest.add_hook :ran_command do |at|
    at.results.each do |r|
      r.gsub!("\033[31m", "")
      r.gsub!("\033[32m", "")
      r.gsub!("\033[33m", "")
      r.gsub!("\033[0m", "")
    end
  end
end
 
module Autotest::Growl
  AUTOTEST_IMAGE_ROOT = "~/.autotest_images"
 
  def self.growl(title, msg, img, pri=0, sticky="")
    system "growlnotify -n autotest --image #{img} -p #{pri} -m '#{msg.inspect} #{title}' #{sticky}"
  end
 
  Autotest.add_hook :red do |at|
    growl("FAIL", "#{get_results(at)}", "#{AUTOTEST_IMAGE_ROOT}/fail.png", 2)
  end
 
  Autotest.add_hook :green do |at|
    growl("Pass", "#{get_results(at)}", "#{AUTOTEST_IMAGE_ROOT}/pass.png")
  end
 
  private
  def self.get_results(at)
    results = [at.results].flatten.join("\n")
 
    if results.include? 'tests'
      output = results.slice(/(\d+)\s+tests?,\s*(\d+)\s+assertions?,\s*(\d+)\s+failures?(,\s*(\d+)\s+errors)?/)
    else
      output = results.slice(/(\d+)\s+examples?,\s*(\d+)\s+failures?(,\s*(\d+)\s+not implemented)?/)
    end
    output
  end
end
 
# Esclusioni
Autotest.add_hook :initialize do |at|
  %w{.hg .git .svn stories tmtags Rakefile Capfile README spec/spec.opts spec/rcov.opts vendor/gems autotest svn-commit .DS_Store }.each do |exception|
    at.add_exception(exception)
  end
 
  at.add_mapping(/spec\/defaults.rb/) do |f, _|
    at.files_matching %r%^spec/(controllers|helpers|lib|models|views)/.*\.rb$%
  end
end

Our setup had apache as webserver so I don’t need any special code to restart the application. In addition to this recipe, made to deploy to production I also wrote a couple of tasks that shine during development.

Drupal has the problem of storing most of the important stuff in the database, and if you do local development, showing the status of the work to your clients can be a chore. The following tasks allow you to easily dump the development db and import the dump to the staging server to show your progresses to your customers and allow testing the site:

# Callbacks
before 'deploy:start', 'drupal:db:import:production'
 
before 'deploy:restart', 'mikamai:permissions:fix', 'mikamai:production:symlink', 'drupal:configure:production'
before 'deploy:start', 'mikamai:permissions:fix', 'mikamai:production:symlink', 'drupal:configure:production'
before 'deploy:cold', 'drupal:db:dump:development'
 
# DB Stuff
 
set :mysqldump, "/opt/local/bin/mysqldump5" # your path to mysqldump
# local db credentials
set :local_db_user, "root"
set :local_db_password, ""
set :local_db_name, "database"
# remote db credentials
set :db_user, "user"
set :db_password, "secret"
set :db_name, "database"
 
namespace :drupal do
 
  namespace :configure do
    task :production do
      sudo "cp #{latest_release}/sites/default/settings.production.php #{latest_release}/sites/default/settings.php"
    end
 
    task :development do
      sudo "cp #{latest_release}/sites/default/settings.development.php #{latest_release}/sites/default/settings.php"
    end
  end
 
  namespace :db do
    namespace :dump do
      task :development do
        raise RuntimeError.new("failed dump") unless system "#{mysqldump} -u #{local_db_user} --password=#{local_db_password} #{local_db_name} > dump.sql"
      end
    end
 
    namespace :import do
      task :production do
        ENV["FILES"] = "dump.sql"
        deploy::upload
        run "mysql -u #{db_user} --password=#{db_password} #{db_name} < #{latest_release}/dump.sql"
      end
    end
  end
end

Stacktrace was and idea of Antonio Cangiano. He felt that Italy missed an authoritative and original technology reference, and contacted about thirty of the best Italy has to offer, people I am very proud I could work with, to prepare the lightning quick launch of a wonderful site, full of original, well written and interesting content.

If you can understand Italian, even a bit of it, I strongly suggest you check Stacktrace. You’ll be glad you did.

$ rails my_new_application
$ cd my_new_application
$ capify .

Then I edit Capfile:

load 'deploy' if respond_to?(:namespace) # cap2 differentiator
 
load 'lib/recipes/site5' # This is my site5 recipe
load 'lib/recipes/medlar' # The general use recipes
 
load 'config/deploy'

The site5 and medlar namespaces hold default configuration values, define some callbacks and the following tasks:

cap deploy:medlar:rails:freezer:edge   # Fetch Rails edge and puts it into sh...
cap deploy:medlar:rails:freezer:stable # Fetch Rails stable and puts it into ...
cap deploy:medlar:rails:link           # Links Rails to application/vendor
cap deploy:medlar:rails:update         # Updates the fetched version of rails.
	
cap deploy:site5:kill_dispatch_fcgi    # Kills Ruby instances on Site5

cap deploy:site5:link_public_html      # Links public_html to current_path/pu...

Last but not least, here’s the simple, clean and elegant deploy.rb:

set :application, "my_new_application"
set :user, "the_username"
 
set :repository,  "repo_address"
set :deploy_to, "/home/#{user}/apps/#{application}"
 
role :app, "server.com"
role :web, "server.com"
role :db,  "server.com", :primary => true

Quite readable, isn’t it?

The recipes are available via anonymous subversion: https://svn1.hosted-projects.com/medlar/recipes/

Enjoy and let me know if you found them useful.

In an application I’m working on I have a list of people with a checkbox each. In the load event of the page I add a click handler to every checkbox using this javascript code:

  $$('.ConfermaInvitati').each(function(element) {
    Event.observe(element, 'click', clickHandler);
  });
 
// ... 
 
function clickHandler(event) {
  var e = Event.element(event);
  new Ajax.Updater(e.up(), 'my/invited/toggle', {
    parameters: { id: e.up().up().id },
    onLoading: function() { e.src = "/images/admin/spinner.gif"; },
    onSuccess: function() { new Ajax.Request('my/refresh', {}) }
  });  
}

This works fine until I add a new person via an Ajax call. That person won’t have a clickHandler because the element wasn’t on the page when I called the click handler. So I thought it was time to test page.call in the render :update block I had in the rails application.

I tried this code:

render :update do |page|
  # Do stuff that creates the new objects and adds it to the page
  # The data I need is in @invited
  page.call("Event.observe($$('##{@invited.permalink} .ConfermaInvitati').first()), 'click', clickHandler)")

Obviously that didn’t work, and it turned out I have to read documentation before doing fancy things

The rails docs told me that I had to use call passing the function name as the first argument and an array of parameters as the second argument, the problem is that call turns all the parameters into strings—this means I could not pass the clickHandler function to Event.observe.

I found the solution in <<. If you do page << "foo", foo will be evaluated as raw javascripts. This meant I was able to do

page << "Event.observe($$('##{@invited.permalink} .ConfermaInvitati').first()), 'click', clickHandler)

and finally have the functionality I was looking for. So remember, don’t page.call if you need to pass javascript variables to your functions.

My professional development life started on a PB Titanium running OSX 10.2, and continued through a PB Aluminium and a Macbook Pro. Each time I changed laptop I also reinstalled everything again, and each time I tried to come up with a better setup.

Now I’ve finally found a setup I’m comfortable with, and it has the following advantages:

• Sudoless: everything runs from my user directory
• Non-system-tampering: doesn’t touch files in the original osx installation
• Crash-proof-easy-reinstall: you can just delete everything and reinstall without fear of rendering your system unstable
• Fink based: uses everything it can use from the fink repositories

Now that I’ve sold you on my setup it’s time to explain how to implement it.

Step one: XCode and Developer Tools

If you don’t have XCode already installed you can install it from the disks you got with your Mac or, better, download the newest version from Apple Developer Connection. Once you got it installed you can proceed to the next step.

Step two: Fink

Go to the Fink Download Page, and get the package that works best on your Mac (intel or powerpc). Follow the installation instructions and install the base fink system. After you’ve done that add these lines to your _/.profile

# Dev Enviroment
 
LDFLAGS=-L/sw/lib
export LDFLAGS
 
CPPFLAGS='-I/Users/your_username/unix/include -I/sw/include'
export CPPFLAGS

_/Users/your_username/unix/include_ doesn’t exist yet, but we’ll create it when installing ruby.

Step three: Ruby from Sources

This is the first tricky part. Before OSX 10.4.6 the Ruby version shipped by Apple didn’t work with rails, so you were on your own. Now it works, but I prefer to have ruby in my home directory so I can mess with the sources and with the gem files and upgrade painlessly. So download the latest ruby sources and unpack them wherever you wish (I like /src).

Now you’re ready to go. First make sure you have readline and readline5-shlibs installed via fink so you can have a comfortable irb environment:

user$ fink install readline readline5-shlibs

After that it’s time for ruby:

user$ cd <sub>/src/ruby-1.8.6
user$ ./configure <del>-prefix=/Users/your_username/unix
user$ make && make install

The whole magic (and it’s not a big magic btw) is in -prefix. Installing ruby will create the /Users/your_username/unix path. Now it’ time to add the unix dir to $PATH. Edit /profile once again and add these lines:

PATH=/Users/your_username/unix/bin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH
export PATH

Step four: MySQL

Quite simple with the packages from mysql.com.

Step five: Last but not least, rubygems

Fetch the gem package from RubyForge and install it:

user$ cd src/unpacked-rubygems-directory
user$ ruby setup.rb

Step six: This is the real last step – Rails and a little hack

Now you’re free to install rails (and friends) using

user$ gem install rails --include-dependencies
user$ gem install mysql-ruby
user$ gem install capistrano --include-dependencies
user$ gem install mongrel --include-dependencies

The small hack I was talking about is a symlink:

user$ sudo mv /usr/bin/ruby /usr/bin/ruby-apple
user$ sudo ln -s /Users/your_username/unix/bin/ruby /usr/bin/ruby

This way applications that insist on using /usr/bin/ruby (TextMate’s RubyMate for example) will work fine.

Have fun with your self-made rails stack

Here’s a sample of working callbacks:

namespace :deploy do
  after "deploy:setup", "deploy:sposivip:create_galleries", "deploy:sposivip:freeze_rails"
  after "deploy:update", "deploy:site5:link_public_html", "deploy:sposivip:link_rails", "deploy:sposivip:link_galleries"
end

Here I have two callbacks. The first one runs after setup, creating shared paths and freezing rails in the shared directory, so I avoid having a copy on rails in each release.

The second callback runs after deploy:update, so it will be called whenever I do a simple deploy or a cold deploy, it links back various directories in the shared path and it links the shared rails in vendor.

I read the rails docs about the cookies method and decided to give it a try with this code:

def foo
  if cookies[:friends].blank?
    cookies[:friends] = [params[:id]]
  else
    cookies[:friends] = cookies[:friends] << params[:id]
  end
end

It seemed to work correctly but the Array was converted to a String before going in the cookie. This is where my cookie ignorance showed as I tried again and again to store an Array in it, to no avail.

After googling around for a little while I discovered there was no way I could store an object in the cookie without some sort of serialization, so I had to use good old Array#join and String#split.

def bar_write
  if cookies[:friends].blank?
    cookies[:friends] = params[:id]
  else
    cookies[:friends] = cookies[:friends] << ",#{params[:id]}"
  end
end
 
def bar_read
  @var = cookies[:friends] ? cookies[:friends].split(",") || []
end