Beyond The Type

An Introduction to Desktop Apps with Ruby

2010-09-28T00:00:00Z

In a guest post for Ruby Learning I run through how to create a desktop tray application using JRuby.

You can read the full article at: http://rubylearning.com/blog/2010/09/29/an-introduction-to-desktop-apps-with-ruby

Blogging evolved

2010-09-27T00:00:00Z

So I say goodbye to my customised Radiant install and hello to the ultra simple and easy to use Toto blogging engine.

Built on Rack, there is no database, all article content is stored in plain text and versioned by Git. Using the Dorothy template made it stupidly easy to get started. Not to mention hosting is a no brainer with a simple push to Heroku and the job is done. Very satisfying.

I do encourage you to checkout Toto’s source code, it does a heck of a lot for v.little LOC’s. Impressive.

The largest amount of time with anything like this was spent migrating from the existing blog; cleaning up the existing content, making sure urls rewrite and moving comments to Disqus. If you find yourself doing the same drop me a line as I have a couple of scripts that might make your life a bit easier.

What does this all mean? Well, I spend most of my day at the command line with a text editor already open… if this helps lower the barrier and gets me blogging more, all the better for it.

Reference

Spy on external HTTP API requests in Rails

2009-11-16T00:00:00Z

Ever had to use a third party API through a gem or library in your Rails app and wondered where the requests are going to?

Through the magic of Net HTTP Spy (a little gem I wrote) you can spy on the majority of HTTP traffic to external API’s taking place in your Rails application.

Installation

sudo gem install martinbtt-net-http-spy

Real World Example using Google Data API’s

You can now get access to pretty much any Google application/content through their comprehensive set of API’s – very handy indeed.

In this example we are going to use the DocList manager sample application as seen on the GData on Rails tutorial pages.

First grab the source:

svn co http://gdata-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doclist/DocListManager

Then create a new file initializers/api_logging.rb and add the following:

if ENV.has_key?('API\_LOGGING')
  gem 'martinbtt-net-http-spy'
  require 'net-http-spy'
  Net::HTTP.http_logger = Rails.logger
  Net::HTTP.http\_logger\_options = {:body => true} if ENV['API\_LOGGING\_FULL']
end

Sample Usage and Output:

API_LOGGING=true ./script/server
Processing DoclistController#documents (for 127.0.0.1 at 2009-11-14 20:24:47) [POST]
  Parameters: {"authenticity_token"=>"76e735433a9459f28a2dfb23090dec203b73e65c"}
CONNECT: ["docs.google.com", 80]
GET /feeds/default/private/full/-/document/mine
PARAMS {} 
BODY: Net::HTTPOK
Rendered doclist/_documents_list (7.4ms)
Completed in 1672ms (View: 11 | 200 OK [http://localhost/]

Processing DoclistController#show (for 127.0.0.1 at 2009-11-14 20:24:49) [POST]
  Parameters: {"url"=>"http://docs.google.com/feeds/default/private/full/document:0BUjxlHAOrFICZGh1aGdrZ18xM2ZudGt3M2Zz", "authenticity_token"=>"76e735434a9459f08a2dfb23090dec203b73e65c"}
CONNECT: ["docs.google.com", 80]
GET /feeds/default/private/expandAcl/document:0BUjxlHAOrFICZGh1aGdrZ18xM2ZudGt3M2Zz
PARAMS {} 
BODY: Net::HTTPOK
CONNECT: ["docs.google.com", 80]
GET /feeds/download/documents/Export?docID=0BUjxlHAOrFICZGh1aGdrZ18xM2ZudGt3M2Zz&exportFormat=png
PARAMS {} 
BODY: Net::HTTPOK
Rendered doclist/_show (7.7ms)
Completed in 2515ms (View: 15 | 200 OK [http://localhost/doclist/show]

Note 1: By setting API_LOGGING=full the BODY: portion of the logging output will be replaced with the actual body response from the server. In this case it is the XML used to display the documents.

Note 2: Not all API libs are built the same and many interact with Net::HTTP in ways not easy to capture. Also be warned.. this modifies the Net::HTTP class directly so be careful if you intend using this in production.

Summary

Net HTTP spy provides a great way to peek at what is going on under the hood of your application and find out which http requests are being made to third parties. I’ve used this technique successfully with my team at work to track down API issues and I’ve also had numerous reports of other developers making use of the gem for the same reasons.

I hope you find this post helpful and if you have any further questions or feedback feel free to ask in the comments section.

Quick Reference

HTTP Spy on GitHub: http://github.com/martinbtt/net-http-spy
GData on Rails tutorials: http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/articles/gdata_on_rails.html
Google API Directory: http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/docs/directory.html

Edge Monkeybars

2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

Monkeybars lets you create elegant looking cross platform desktop apps with JRuby.

You’ll want to play with the latest and greatest versions of Monkeybars without conflicting with your current gem install. Here is a little guide on how to do just that.

Download

Fire up a terminal and enter the following:

mkdir -p ~/code/gems
git clone git://gitorious.org/monkeybars/mainline.git monkeybars-mainline
cd monkeybars-mainline
rake jar
mate ~/.bash_profile

This might take a while so grab a cup of coffee while you wait. At last count the Monkeybars repo was ~90MB.

Edit your bash profile

Once your bash profile pops up in Textmate add the following to the bottom of it:

function monkeybars-edge() {
 ruby ~/code/gems/monkeybars-mainline/bin/monkeybars $1 $2
}

Great, almost there. You’ll just need to reload you bash profile, so either start a new terminal or run the following

. ~/.bash_profile

Note the leading dot.

Result?

Lets see if that worked:

martin$ monkeybars-edge myapp
Creating directory myapp
Copying monkeybars project structure

Excellent.

Anything else?

The version of Monkeybars added to the classpath in src/manifest.rb is likely to be an older one. If you peek in the lib/java directory you’ll see which version you have. Update the manifest line accordingly. In the example below it was 0.6.4 and I updated to 0.6.5.

require ‘resolver’

case Monkeybars::Resolver.run_location
when Monkeybars::Resolver::IN_FILE_SYSTEM
  add_to_classpath ‘../lib/java/monkeybars-0.6.5.jar’
end

Tweetobix

2008-11-22T00:00:00Z

Published as a follow up to my talk given at RubyManor in November 2008.

A JRuby Twitter client built using MonkeyBars. As demo’d at RubyManor!

Before you start

JRuby (latest version – currently 1.1.5) (including copy of jruby-complete.jar)
NetBeans (full version)
Monkeybars gem (sudo gem install monkeybars)
Rawr gem (sudo gem install rawr -v 0.3.2)
Twitter gem (jruby -S gem install twitter)

Create the App skeleton

  $. monkeybars projectname
  $. cd projectname
  $. rawr install
  # (choose option 2)
  $. jruby -S rake generate ALL=‘src/login’

Install Gems & Unpack Gems

  $. jruby -S gem install twitter
  $. cd lib/ruby
  $. jruby -S gem unpack twitter
  $. jruby -S gem unpack hpricot

Enter NetBeans

File > New Project. Choose Java category > Java Project with existing sources
Give your app a name and set project folder to where you created your app [hit next]
Exsisting sources – choose the src directory in your app [hit finish]

Your project will now appear in NetBeans. There are a couple more things to do before you can begin.

In a terminal (not NetBeans) copy jruby-complete.jar into the lib/java directory.
Back in NetBeans.. right click the Libraries folder. Choose ‘Add Jar/Folder’ and choose jruby-complete.jar you just added.
Again right click on the Libraries folder and choose ‘Add Library…’ and select ‘Swing Layout Extensions’

Next we setup a frame to display the GUI for the login:

Right click on login directory. Choose ‘New > New Frame Form’.
Name it ‘LoginFrame’ (it can be anything you like but probably best sticking with NameFrame convention)
You can now start building your interface. woot!

Remember to update your login_view.rb with the name of the frame. e.g.

class LoginView < ApplicationView
  set_java_class ‘login.LoginFrame

Running the project

Still in NetBeans.. Hit the run (play icon) button. It will ask which class you want to choose for the ‘main class’. Choose ‘org.rubyforge.rawr.Main’.

Note, if things don’t go to plan you can still set this by right clicking on the project name and choosing from the menu ‘Set Configuration > Customize…’. The main class can be set in the ‘Run’ section of the configuration dialog that pops up.

Packaging for distribution

rake rawr:bundle:app    # Bundles the jar from rawr:jar into a native Mac OS X application (.app)
rake rawr:bundle:exe    # Bundles the jar from rawr:jar into a native Windows application (.exe)
rake rawr:bundle:web    # Bundles the jar from rawr:jar into a Java Web Start application (.jnlp)

Gotchas

Embedding images in Netbeans kills the rawr build (null.pointer.exception) – there is a workaround for this in rawr 1.0
Some Ruby gems won’t run on JRuby e.g. Twitter4R
Hpricot doesn’t compile using the latest version of RAWR
Monkeybars doesn’t seem to require frozen gems automatically from lib/ruby
Make sure you have jruby-complete.jar and swing-layout-1.0.3.jar in you lib/java directory
Both those jars need to be added to the manifest for packaging.
Sometimes build paths get set incorrectly, and it can be difficult to find out why..
Have to remove all mention of “require ‘rubygems’” from frozen gems to make packaging work?!

Sample Application – Download and Source code

Coming Soon!

Download for Mac (app)
Download for Windows (.exe)
Download for Linux and all other platforms (jar)

Source Code:


 git clone git://github.com/martinbtt/tweetobix.git

Or go direct to the Tweetobix project page on github

Useful Resources

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-monkeybars/index.html
http://groups.google.com/group/monkeybars
http://groups.google.com/group/rawr-lib
http://jruby.codehaus.org
http://monkeybars.rubyforge.org/tutorials/usage2.html – Hello world app
http://jrubyinside.com
http://wiki.jruby.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/tools/netbeans_part1
http://monkeybars.rubyforge.org/api/index.html

Notes

At the time of writing there are a few aspects of the packaging process that are not working. (See gotchas…) Hopefully with a bit of further investigation and feedback we can get it working. I will keep updating this page as things progress.

Screenshots

Tweetobix friends timeline page and tweet box.

RailsConf Europe presentation slides now published

2008-09-08T00:00:00Z

The presentation files from the talk I gave at RailsConf Europe are now available for download.

Direct link: Stories on a Cloud – Distributed Browser Testing with Selenium Presentation (PDF format).

I really enjoyed giving the talk and their seemed to be enough interest for follow up material. All good! I’ll be publishing supporting links and research details very soon, so watch this space.

Speaking at RailsConf Europe

2008-09-02T00:00:00Z

A quick shout about our talk tomorrow at RailsConf Europe:

Drive your browser (or somebody else’s!) through an RSpec story. In this talk I’ll be covering Rspec stories, Selenium, message queues, packaging your apps for cross platform distribution, and more!

Read more info over at the O'Reilly Conference page

Is this thing on? Converted to Radiant from Mephisto

2008-07-29T00:00:00Z

More news to follow shortly..

sneak peak: http://github.com/martinbtt/radiant-import-mephisto

New RSS feed URL

2008-01-03T00:00:00Z

Just a quick note to say the RSS feed for this blog has changed. Please update your feed reader to use:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/BeyondTheType

New Year, New start. Hello CitySafe

2008-01-02T00:00:00Z

As of January this year I’m pleased to announce I will be working with the team at CitySafe.

CitySafe build tools to help emergency responders collaborate and communicate. These include mission critical apps in use daily by the Police, Government, and high profile financial and retail institutions. It’s predominately Ruby (on Rails) based so I’m looking forward to getting stuck in.

For those of you wondering about Working With Rails…. This remains under ownership of DSC and I have passed all the day to day running over to colleagues there. Prior to my departure I ensured that the Hackfests would continue up until March. Much thanks goes to Josette @ O'Reilly for the RailsConf ticket prizes.

All in all WWR has been an amazing project. I’m so pleased to have created it and see it grow from strength to strength benefiting the community so greatly. Many thanks to everyone who uses the site and contributed in some way over the past year. It has been fantastic to have your input and feedback.

I’ve heard many success stories from developers starting user groups as a result of finding each other on WWR, to getting a job through recommendations, collaborating on projects or helping to get Rails adopted in their workplace. Not forgetting to mention the numerous prizes given away through the regular Hackfests.

I hope it has benefited you in some way and continues to do so. Thanks everyone!

Stay tuned…

Continue to keep up with my news via this blog (rss) and via Twitter