Web developers specialized in Ruby on Rails: Martian Interactive

RubyJax 2010: MongoDB & Mongoid Introductory Video

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:12:00 GMT

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

RubyJax 2010: MongoDB & Mongoid Introductory Video

Durran Jordan from Hashrocket introduces MongoDB and Mongoid, an ODM (Object-Document-Mapper) framework for MongoDB in Ruby.

We had explored MongoDB in the past but this video made us get into it and start using MongoDB/Mongoid on real projects. We'll soon be deploying a production-ready application for one of our newest clients, the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, that combines ActiveRecord and Mongoid.

Here are some of Mongoid features:

Effortless mapping of Ruby objects to documents and embedded documents.
Rich criteria API for document retrieval from the database.
Chained criteria.
Chained named scopes.
Support for versioning of documents.
Full callback support on documents and embedded documents.
Compatibility for most modern Rails targeted frameworks.
Proper master/slave distribution against the database.
Optimized for use with extremely large datasets.

The advent of Document Oriented Databases is here. If you are a (Ruby) web developer, you should consider taking a look.

MongoDB & Mongoid - RubyJax February 2010 from Hashrocket on Vimeo.

Posted by sbayona

A new Radiant CMS extension: employees-directory.

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:00:57 GMT

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

A new Radiant CMS extension: employees-directory.

We are publicly releasing an extension for the excellent and powerful Radiant CMS. The extension was built for a client who needed a way to easily update the company’s employee directory and profiles. With the employees extension you only need to deal with two templates which can be modified from the CMS. The index template showing a list of employees:

and the employee profile template:

Employee records aren’t treated as pages. There’s a separate employees database table with first name, last name, title, phone number, etc., so you can sort and filter by any of these attributes.

There is a demo application that shows how to use the employees extension tags, you can get the demo application code here

Posted by jpemberthy

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Our New Portfolio!

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:36:23 GMT

Monday, September 21, 2009

Our New Portfolio!

A few weeks ago we announced the release of the new website. Today we are happy to announce that the portfolio section is finished. Feel free to check it out and give us your feedback. You can contact us through the contact form on the homepage, via email:contact@martianinteractive.com or via Twitter at @martianinteract

Posted by jpemberthy

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Rspec and Test::Unit

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:19:05 GMT

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Rspec and Test::Unit

This post is not intended to discuss which of the two testing frameworks is best. We have use both of them in many applications and we would like to share some of our experiences.

RSpec has lots of English-like syntax making our specs look sexy. It leads us to write things like: user.should have(1).error_on(:password). This is sufficiently explicit even for non-programmers people. The expressiveness introduced by RSpec help us to compare our client requirements with the specifications we write in order to complete the TDD cycle.

On the other hand we have Test::Unit. A simpler and powerful testing framework where practically all of our tests are reduced to assertions. It makes assert user.errors.on(:password) no more expressive than user.should have(n).errors_on(:password), but is still explicit enough and simple to understand.

Most of time you’ll be writing longer and expressive specifications with RSpec than Test::Unit, so it’s up to you decide which one to use. Pick one that fits your personal preference and feel more comfortable. Both are just as flexible and capable of testing your code. The main difference is the way in which you write tests.

Lately, many people are moving from Test::Unit to RSpec. RSpec is an awesome framework, but Test::Unit simplicity would make testing things easier in most situations so it’s an option you should consider when deciding what testing framework to use.

Posted by jpemberthy

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Our New Website!

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:54:57 GMT

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Our New Website!

Welcome to our new website! After a few weeks of design and production work we decided to deploy our new website. There are still rough spots here and there so please bear with us. We’ll be progressively improving it. The “Deep Space” theme goes right along with our green lizard-like skin and bulging eyes.

Martian Interactive has been open for business since last November and although our old website was simple and well built, we weren’t very happy with the way it looked. Thanks to Joe Chuang for the fantastic design he put together. Hopefully as time goes by you’ll see more of Joe’s designs in our portfolio.

Feel free to check it out and give us your honest feedback. You can contact us through the contact form on the homepage, via email: contact@martianinteractive.com or on twitter at @martianinteract

Posted by sbayona