CH 2: TOUR OF RUBY & OBJECT ORIENTATION

Object

1. an object is a single instance of a class.
2. object is the actual object or “thing” itself.
3. an object of class Person is a single person

Classes

1. a class is the classification
2. the definition of a single type of object
3. starts with a capital letter just like global constants which therefore makes it available as a global constant.

attr in attr_accessor

1. stands for “attribute”

accessor in attr_accessor

1. roughly means “make these attributes accessible to be set and changed.”

Inheritance like Single Table Inheritance

1. hierarchy of classes; and sub/child classes inherits attributes and methods from the parent class
2. can still add class-specific code to sub/child class

Class Method

1. ruby supplies all objects a class by default
2. you can ask any object of which class it’s a member by using its class method, i.e. puts 2.class

Fixnum Class

1. numbers

Kernel & Kernel Methods

1. kernel is a special class(actually, a module) whose methods are made available in every class and scope throughout ruby.

puts

1. is a method made available from the Kernel module

Kernel module

1. a special type of class packed full of standard, commonly used methods, making your code easier to read and write

String Class

1. strings
2. has many methods, examples: capitalize, downcase, chop, hash, next, reverse, sum, or swapcase.

Braindumps from Beginning Ruby

What I've learned & still learning these past couple of months...

For the last couple of months, I've picked up new ideas and practices from working with several teams in Hashrocket. These are either required on the job or a set of tools that makes the task easier or something that peaks my interests. I will also recommend some screencasts/talks/book that I've seen/read recently.

So here's my list:

HAML
Haml by Hampton Catlin. I don't think I can ever go back to regular erb mark up and html after using haml. It did look daunting initially but now I love it so much. It makes the code views so much readable and pretty as in pretty organized. I don't have to deal with missing closing tags either as long as I know that my haml are structured well plus it keeps me disciplined. Discipline is exactly what you need for those views.

RSpec's Story Runner
RSpec's Story Runner is quite interesting and I'd really like to be able to do this. It adds a business value. I just wish I can do it with Shoulda. Can I? Does it run separately from RSpec? I haven't looked into it very well. But I'd love to know. If someone can explain it to me then I would love you forever in a friend-ish way! :)

Shoulda
I'm in two different projects at the same time where one was running in RSpec and the other one was in Shoulda. I found I was interested more in the Shoulda tests than the RSpec tests. Our RSpec tests were awesome now don't get me wrong with that but the Shoulda tests were more concise probably because of the macros or there maybe an "IT" factor to the Shoulda tests I've been reading and that would be: Tammer Saleh himself wrote the tests. Coincidentally, Josh Susser said he likes Shoulda too during his Great Test Framework Dance-Off at RailsConf 2008. That kind of solidifies it for me.

Selenium Tests
It's one of those tests that I think I'll be doing on a regular basis on any project I'll be in. Takes a little while to get used to but it's fun to watch as it executes in the browser. I've picked it up from Hashrocket and Jon/L4rk Larkowski did a Selenium demo for me while in Portland for RailsConf 2008 so I've been starting some Selenium tests locally on some personal projects too.

Factory and Factory_Girl
Factory is awesome that it makes it so much easier for me from the front-end side as an assigned front-end developer/designer to generate sample data/content in easy mode way. Now I can adjust the layout with the actual content and all attributes are there. That's a plus side for me. Moving into Facory_Girl but either one is good for me considering the sample data generation is just as easy.

Webrat
Already doing Selenium and still doing Webrat? Webrat just works seamlessly with Rspec's Story Runner so why not? You might write some clunky test but you can't over-test anything and over-testing might even lead to benchmarking which is what we're in dire need of with rails web apps.

Git + GitHub
ZOMG gitHub is the sexiest thing ever so far! Everyone was right about git. If you haven't looked into it yet, then do it now. I've watched the Git-Talk that Scott Chacon made available on gitcasts.com. (Git-talk was Scott's session during RailsConf 2008. One of the good sessions I've missed to see during RailsConf 2008). Then, immediately after watching Git-talk, I got the Git Peepcode. If you watch those two screen cast in those order, it gels more better with the ideas since Git-Talk covers the core principles and then the Git Peepcode by Geoffrey Grosenbach gives you the examples in length.

Pragmatic Screencasts
Episode 1 Everyday Active Record by Ryan Bates. I watched this but unfortunately, I didn't get anything new out of it. I've been doing Rails for 2+ years after all. I would have to try Episode 2 soon. I also bought the three episodes on Ruby Metaprogramming by Dave Thomas. I stopped at Episode 1: Objects and Classes and I decided to resume after I finish reading the ruby book that I'm halfway through.

Book: Beginning Ruby
I've been doing Rails for 2+ years but Ruby is still new to me. Two years yet Ruby is new? Yup! I am perpetually on the front layer of a web app cause of my "I can haz CSS & design skills" as my peers would call it. I can still jam with those models, controllers and test files. In all honesty, I've tried reading every "learn" Ruby book out there but they make me sleepy as hell. Then I found Peter Cooper's Beginning Ruby book finally! I'm halfway into this book and if you want to learn Ruby then this book is an excellent start without getting sleepy. So, this book works for me but something else might work different for you so find your Ruby book if you haven't.

Other notable talks/sessions I've watched
I have not attended neither Goruco 2008 nor MountainWest RubyConf 2008 but these two talks are awesome. The SDD (Story Driven Development) talk by Bryan Helmkamp during Goruco 2008 available via confreaks.com. Bryan Helmkamp is also the author of Webrat.
The BDD with Shoulda talk by Tammer Saleh during MountainWest RubyConf 2008 also available via confreaks.com.

- - -

There's another secret sauce but I'm not sure I can talk about that "tracker" yet since it's in beta mode and we're lucky to be the first testers. Boohooo. I know :(

Now the list above are the things that comes to mind real fast. I'm sure there are others that I've completely overlooked. If given the chance, next time I'd want to pick up more on AJAX, Scriptaculous, more javascript goodness, some pairing and myself brushing up on CSS3.

The conclusion: Life and work is good. Learning new things constantly on the job and being resourceful on where to find the good stuff that makes work easier and funner will always be the factors/traits I'd look to when I say I'm happy with what I'm doing. I learn quick and I'm resourceful so I got those covered. But it's the WHO resource that makes Hashrocket the place to be! I'm not sucking up. It's just for realz. ;p

Extension of Railscasts Episode 67

============================

Update: [March 12, 2008] This blog post is outdated so if you found this page using google, I'd recommend reading something more up-to-date. Unfortunately, I don't know where else to refer you right now. I shared my thoughts and experience with the plugin at the time I was using it for a project. Living in the now, you can grab Obie Fernandez's Book "The Rails Way". That comes highly recommended!

============================

Ryan showed us how to set up restful_authentication a plugin by Rick Olson with his 67th Railscasts Episode: restful_authentication. Pretty awesome! Now, we will extend it to the activation part.

./script/generate authenticated user sessions --include-activation

With the added --include-activation option, more files and codes will be generated to handle "Activation for a User who just registered".

Shall we break them down in steps... baby steps and with codes. I would be happy to do a screencast for this but I dont own a podcast mic yet so lets do it the old school way. I know we're all spoiled by Ryan's RailsCasts and Geoffrey's PeepCodes. We are the little Brats! :)

After generating the files for restful_authentication, follow the 67th episode set up plus these...

Step 1: All about Environment.rb

Open your environment.rb file and set up the following:

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# First, specify the Host that we will be using later for user_notifier.rb
HOST = 'http://www.yourrailsapp.com'

# Second, add the :user_observer
Rails::Initializer.run do |config|
  # The user observer goes inside the Rails::Initializer block
  config.active_record.observers = :user_observer
end

# Third, add your SMTP settings
ActionMailer::Base.delivery_method = :smtp
ActionMailer::Base.smtp_settings = {
  :address => "mail.yourrailsapp.com",
  :port => 25,
  :domain => "mail.yourrailsapp.com",
  :user_name => "carmelyne@yourrailsapp.com",
  :password => "yourrailsapp",
  :authentication => :login
}

Note: Just a heads up -- if you're on SliceHost like I am, I can't get this to work on just Postfix on Ubuntu. I needed to set up the SMTP settings on the environment.rb file.

Step 2: All about app/models/user_notifier.rb

Now you can see how we set a dryer way to add the HOST via #{HOST}. The codes below is also an example if you've extended it to handle resetting the passwords. Although you will have to add an additional user migration for "password_reset_code" and adding it to your user model/controller codes and more to your routes....
Anyway, code snippets below:

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class UserNotifier < ActionMailer::Base
  def signup_notification(user)
    setup_email(user)
    @subject    += 'Please activate your new account'  
    @body[:url]  = "#{HOST}/activate/#{user.activation_code}"
  
  end
  
  def activation(user)
    setup_email(user)
    @subject    += 'Your account has been activated!'
    @body[:url]  = "Visit #{HOST}!"
  end
  
  def forgot_password(user)
    setup_email(user)
    @subject    += 'You have requested to change your password'
    @body[:url]  = "#{HOST}/reset_password/#{user.password_reset_code}" 
  end

  def reset_password(user)
    setup_email(user)
    @subject    += 'Your password has been reset.'
  end   
  
  protected
    def setup_email(user)
      @recipients  = "#{user.email}"
      @from        = %("/Poke by carmelyne" <CT@yourrailsapp.com>) # Sets the User FROM Name and Email
      @subject     = "[YourRailsApp] "
      @sent_on     = Time.now
      @body[:user] = user
    end
end

Step 3: All about app/views/user_notifier/activation.rhtml

This gets sent out for the activation email so you can change the verbiage to something like this:

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Thank you!

<%= @user.login %>, your account has been activated.  You may now start using the member only features.

<%= @url %>

I think that should be it. :)

I wrote this up to give you an idea for activation. If you extended it way beyond for forgot_password/reset_password, make sure you extend your user model and controller to handle these additional functions. More snippets....

Extras

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# more for routes
map.forgot_password '/forgot_password', :controller => 'users', :action => 'forgot_password'
map.reset_password '/reset_password', :controller => 'users', :action => 'reset_password'

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# app/models/user_observer.rb
class UserObserver < ActiveRecord::Observer
  def after_create(user)
    UserNotifier.deliver_signup_notification(user)
  end

  def after_save(user) 
    UserNotifier.deliver_activation(user) if user.recently_activated?
    UserNotifier.deliver_forgot_password(user) if user.recently_forgot_password?
    UserNotifier.deliver_reset_password(user) if user.recently_reset_password?   
  end
end

Update

But of course, there's a much better resource for the plugins, I was just referred to it after this long post from the man himself => Rick's Stikipad for Acts As Authenticated and RESTful authentication.

The additional methods for activation/forgot_password/reset_password does not fall under REST.

New tools new tool new tools

1. Aliases in bash

I'm a mac newbie. It sounds like a bad thing but it's not. Many moons ago, I only watched people type ss on their terminals and tada! it magically starts the built in webrick/mongrel server. I've been meaning to get aliases working since I converted but never got around to actually doing it. Thankfully, John Nunemaker posted his I Can Has Command Line? article. I can do bash magic now. My bash talk: ss sc a e et sup wu omg inbd idk my bff jill tinf! I think I'll use those for shortcuts anyway. ;p

2. Growl

I am a happy peepcoder. I recently saw the RSPEC Basics PeepCode. Geoffrey had a happy face/ sad face flashing bar on his screen when he would run tests. Oh, I so want. I want! You'll just have to buy the peepcode now, dont you? Anyway, it was Growl. I installed Growl but can't get it to work with autotest. Now I just do "a" to run autotest but I get this error: "177 examples, 0 failures sh: line 1: growlnotify: command not found". Obviously, I missed something here. I copied the .autotest file to ~
I'm off to search for a fix and will post it here too as an update.....

Update:

I knew I was missing something. I had to install growlnotify that came with the install files. (http://growl.info/documentation/growlnotify.php). I got my happy/sad bars now!

3.RSpec

New to RSpec and would you hold it against me if I said lazy with writing test? Ok then no, I love writing tests!!! Learning RSpec makes it easier to do test. I find that I do like BDD. I'm no expert but it's very fun to do, that I can say.

ID + permalink. The id gets a to_i

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# using .join
def to_param
  [id, permalink].join('-')
end

# just another way to do it
def to_param
  "#{id}-#{permalink}"
end

The big picture is with the redirects.

The quick work around...

If you've read my post about FreeImage, then you might be interested to know about the conflict I encountered with a RESTful app on LiteSpeed and using attachment_fu.

This was quite perplexing to be honest. I installed attachment_fu on a restful app, tested on my dev environment which is using Mongrel. I committed to my svn, updated files served on LiteSpeed and uh oh, the upload feature wont work. There's no error message, nothing gets saved at all and returns back as a 200 code. I couldn't debug alas I'm not the all perfect coder either. /wink /wink. I resorted to finding a work around.

First let's get some things clear, the conflict with REST, LiteSpeed and Attachment_fu is on another slice but not on this blog's slice. When I was looking for a work-around the first thing I did was to test the attachment_fu on this blog done by Rick Olson. Justin Palmer did the UI which is great. First, it wouldn't work since I had to give proper permissions to the assigned public image folder. Then everything after that was fine and dandy. Why does it work on here and not on the other slice. I go deep into the code reading line by line but time is running short. I need the upload feature working like yesterday.

For a quick fix, I thought to myself that I will just get LiteSpeed to work with Mongrel for the time being till I get a fix. I visited PickledOnion's excellent blog because he has the LiteSpeed set up goodies. I couldn't find any about Mongrel. That's fine since you really don't need Mongrel if you've chosen LiteSpeed. I emailed Paul aka PickledOnion and told him about my scenario. He said he was looking to getting attachment_fu to work on his project so he'll let me know if he ran into any issues. Us slicers have that special slicer bond. I don't know what that means but OK. ;p

I'm very happy with using LiteSpeed. The free version is good for a simple less traversed site like this blog of mine. Now having said all that, back to the workaround. I went now to the LiteSpeed and Mongrel sites to find some docs on how to set it up. Unfortunately, no docs on LiteSpeed with Mongrel at the LiteSpeed site but there was a short version on the Mongrel site. The one on the Mongrel site is a bit too complex, I can write down my fewer steps for a next blog post. After that, the work around was great. The upload function works under LiteSpeed, Mongrel using attachment_fu.

It continues....

It doesnt stop there. A few nights ago, just one of those long coding nights, I get an email back from Paul saying he has encountered the same issues I was having with LiteSpeed. He's heavy into the detailed configurations and was able to figure out some fixes. He's posted a ticket on the LiteSpeed forums to look into the issue. It looks like the LSapi version has issues with the restful redirects. The LiteSpeed support team is now looking into this so we'll see but for now, I'll be trying Paul's fix. The ticket is right here. It has the fix Paul suggested. I hope they patch it.

Update: (Aug. 5, 2007)

The LiteSpeed Team has updated the LSapi version to perform redirection more intelligently and to do redirect if there is an index file under that directory, otherwise, return it as a 404; that way the URI will be kept when handled by rails dispatcher. The thread

I've tested the LiteSpeed Enterprise version and all works perfectly. Restful Rails app with Attachement_fu on LiteSpeed is a happy little working wonder now.

Unrelated Windows Issue: (Aug. 7, 2007)

If you found this post while looking for a windows solution to error: 'Size is not in the list', I recommend adding the :size option on the model. Starting from 0.kilobytes to your max upload limit as sampled below.

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has_attachment :content_type => :image,
               :size => 0.kilobytes..500.kilobytes

FreeImage woes are better than RMagick woes.

First I tried installing FreeImage using this article:
http://seattlerb.rubyforge.org/ImageScience.html

Unfortunately, I get an error with make:

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Source/Metadata/Exif.cpp:498: error: cast from 'BYTE*' to 'DWORD' loses precision
make[1]: *** [Source/Metadata/Exif.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/FreeImage'
make: *** [default] Error 2

And If I proceeded with sudo make install, another error:

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make -f Makefile.gnu install 
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/local/src/FreeImage'
install -m 644 -o root -g root Source/FreeImage.h /usr/include
install -m 644 -o root -g root libfreeimage.a /usr/lib
install: cannot stat `libfreeimage.a': No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [install] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/FreeImage'
make: *** [install] Error 2

After Googling awhile I found another repo for FreeImage.

So Let's try this again:

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cd /usr/local/src
sudo wget http://ftp.cica.es/ubuntu/ubuntu/pool/universe/f/freeimage/freeimage_3.9.3.orig.tar.gz
sudo tar -xvf freeimage_3.9.3.orig.tar.gz
cd freeimage-3.9.3.repacked/FreeImage
make
sudo make install

Then I did:

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gem install -y rubyinline
gem install -y image_science

Now off to my attachment_fu and crossing my fingers that it works.... Yup it works.

I'm not sure if freeimage_3.9.3.orig.tar.gz is the latest version but I'm happy enough that it works with attachment_fu.

I really have no idea why I got the errors above but one thing is for sure: It didn't work for me!

Lets do this quickly:

Note: This is not for an upgrade.

1. cd /usr/src
2. sudo wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/18421/ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz
3. sudo tar -xvf ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz
4. cd ruby-1.8.6
5. sudo apt-get install build-essential
6. ./configure
7. make test
8. make
9. sudo make install
10. ruby -v (# == ruby 1.8.6 (2007-03-13 patchlevel 0) [x86_64-linux])
11. irb (# make sure irb works)

Then just do a quick update sweep for ubuntu:

1. apt-get update
2. apt-get dist-upgrade

UPDATE: Getting script/console to work

Error:
/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/irb/completion.rb:10:in `require’: no such file to load – readline (LoadError)

Eeek now script/console won't work. So let's fix that. We'll go back to the archive and do the following:

1. cd /usr/src/ruby-1.8.6/ext/readline
2. ruby extconf.rb
3. make
4. sudo make install

Do I need a disclaimer? Hey! I was on my own too when I did this compile. ;p

'A'..'Z' paging cause I'm being lazy & I don't want to mess around with default paginate.

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# Starts with 'A'..'Z' Paginate / model
def self.sort(sort)
  if sort
    find(:all, :conditions => ['name LIKE ?', "#{sort}%"])
  else
    find(:all, :order => 'name')
  end  
end
  
# index action / controller
@models = Model.sort(params[:sort]) 
 
# Sort link A-Z / view
<a href="models?sort=A">A</a>

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case foo
   when 1    then puts "Foo is equal to 1"
   when 2..9 then puts "Foo is between 2 and 9"
   when 10   then puts "Foo is equal to 10"
end

Source: http://railsforum.com/viewtopic.php?pid=27834#p27834

• Part I (MP3, 26 minutes): Women in Development I
• Part II (MP3, 20 minutes): Women in Development II

My apologies. It just didn't cross my mind to post about the Women in Development podcast when it first came out. I had a lot in my plate right after the conference. I was mostly trying to catch up with tasks at work since I'm acting as Lead Developer at PWIM for the time being.

Anyhow, in these podcasts you will hear the views of women on the absence decline of women in development and absence during conferences. Desi shares her vision and goals about where she wants devChix to be. devChix is a collective group of women with backgrounds in Computer Science and Computing. It was so immensely uplifting to be in the company of such great women that day. I enjoyed participating in the discussion. I was more nervous than anything else during the entire podcast session. Mind you, I was sitting two feet away from Geoffrey Grosenbach. Cool, right?

After hearing the podcast again, I think it's time to live up to my nickname "multi-talented". Oh the pressure mounts!

Single line comments:

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AppleScript (*Hello I am a comment*) 
ASP <% 'Hello I am a comment. %>
Bash # Hello I am a comment 
C // Hello I am a comment
C++ /* Hello I am a comment */
CSS /*  Hello I am a comment */
Coldfusion <!--- Hello I am a comment --->
DOS :: Hello I am a comment 
Erlang % Hello I am a comment 
HTML <!-- Hello I am a comment -->
Java // Hello I am a comment 
JavaScript  /* Hello I am a comment */ 
Liquid {% comment %} Hello I am a comment {% endcomment %} 
Lua -- Hello I am a comment --
Perl # Hello I am a comment  
PHP <?php // Hello I am a comment ?>
Python # Hello I am a comment  
Regex (?#Hello I am a comment)
Rails <%# Hello I am a comment %>
Ruby # Hello I am a comment 
Smarty {* Hello I am a comment *}
XML <!-- Hello I am a comment -->
YAML # Hello I am a comment  

I've been wondering what comment style is used in Liquid.

Got any to share?

Image Credit: Dave Thomas' Website

What did I like most about the conference?

That would have to be the keynotes.

DHH didn't announce anything life changing but I think it's a challenge to continue exploring the beauty of REST and the simplicity with a great productivity feel of the whole Rails on Ruby architecture. On the other end of the spectrum, we have Avi Bryant who I'd teasingly call now the Adam Brody of computing. It was great to hear Avi's perspective.

Tim Bray's reality check that Java, PHP, .NET will not go away and will be there to stay. That's fine. As a developer, I do prefer that because if we're all doing Rails then it would be plain silly. Imagine the 5 sec maintenance and off to the beach skit by RailsEnvy? I'd get no beach spot! Tim also mentioned that there were no women in the conference or perhaps the lack of. As a male geek in the development world, would you encourage your daughters to enter it? I would like to hear your thoughts on that.

Koz and Buck. That was really cool to see them refactor and why they recommend the different things they recommend. I am a big fan of The Rails Way blog.

I love Cyndi Mitchell's final slide on the enterprise during the keynote "Bring Ruby to the Enterprise. Not the Other Way 'Round." She's an excellent speaker and I met her briefly at Rock Bottom during one of the party nights.

Dave Thomas is The Uber! I wanted to yell I love you Dave! when he briefly mentions rubychix.com and turned around and showed their very own white male version site. I wish someone would send me my pic from the rubychix site cause I never got the chance to see the pic.

Ze! That keynote made me cry and laugh at the same time. I actually checked the safety cards and was looking for the bags on the plane on my way home to Chicago.

Lastly, RailsEnvy's series of "Hi, I'm Ruby on Rails".

What were my favorite sessions?

Spam I Have Known by Jim Weirich and Memcaching Rails by Chris Wanstrath.

What were my favorite BOF sessions?

Hackety Hack with Snackety Snack. Err was that the right title? It was engaging. All the thoughts and suggestions were so brilliant that I wish _why heard them all.

Cool people I met?

I can't even begin to enumerate them all. There were a TON of wonderful people. Let's do the reverse instead. Who were the people I wish I got the chance to approach, say hi to and chat with for a bit? Those would be Damon Clinkscales, Eric Hodel for sharing his Coda notes with me, Marcel, Tobias, Koz and Jamis of the core team, PragDave, Mike Clark and Ze!

Coolest thing during the conference

As of today, $33,000 was raised for charity by attendees. Now how cool is that?

Getting female tees from Peepcode from Geoffrey Grosenbach!!!

Sitting down with other female developers in room 201 on Sunday to participate in the DevChix podcast interview by Geoffrey. That was really cool. I'm looking forward to its release.

Updated: 05/22/2007

Forgot Chad Fowler's and Joey Devilla's ode to DHH via "I'm A Noob".