Özgün Koyun | Freelance Web Developer (Ruby on Rails)

A few git tips

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 01:55:09 +0000

To enable spell checking with git-gui, Install aspell and aspell-en packages.

$ sudo pacman -S aspell aspell-en

Colorful outputs

Over Here-

To ignore all “.swp” files add the following line to your “.git/info/exclude” file.

*.swp

My .gitignore file.

tmp/**/*
log/*.log
db/*.sqlite3
db/*.sql
db/schema.rb
config/database.yml
config/deploy.rb
.loadpath
.project
.DS_Store
cache/views/*
test/fixtures/settings.yml

Initializing a bare repo

$ mkdir myapp.git
$ cd myapp.git
$ git --bare init

Creating a remote branch

$ git checkout -b mynewbranch
$ git push origin mynewbranch

Playing with branches(create, switch, merge)

$ git branch #Display local branches
$ git checkout -b newbranchname # Create a new branch and switch to it.
$ git checkout master # Switch back to master
$ git checkout newbranchname # Switch back to newbranchname
$ git merge master #Merge master branch into newbranchname
$ git checkout newbranchname # Switch back to newbranchname

Adding a new remote repository

$ git remote add origin ssh://user@example.com/home/user/repositories/myapp.git/
$ git remote add origin file:///home/user/repositories/myapp.git/

Undo(revert) committed changes

$ touch file.txt
$ git add file.txt
$ git commit -a -m "Adding file.txt"
$ git log # ==> commit 9972713b5677302580959644aebd33196eefa38e 
$ git-revert 9972713b5677302580959644aebd33196eefa38e
$ git status

To revert the most recent commit

$ git revert HEAD

Lets say you changed some files in your working tree and you haven’t committed yet, but suddenly you decide that it was a big mistake and you want to go back to last committed state. You could undo uncommitted changes with the following command.

$ git reset --hard HEAD

Lets bring some colors to "git"

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 01:39:41 +0000

Create your .gitconfig file in your home directory.

vim ~/.gitconfig

Copy and paste the following lines to ~/.gitconfig file.

[color]
  ui = auto
[color "branch"]
  current = yellow reverse
  local = yellow
  remote = green
[color "diff"]
  meta = yellow bold
  frag = magenta bold
  old = red bold
  new = green bold
[color "status"]
  added = yellow
  changed = green
  untracked = cyan

Now, run some git commands to see some colorful output:

git status
git branch
git log -p

Bonus: Lets add some aliases to .gitconfig.

[alias]
  st = status
  df = diff
  lg = log -p

Wanna learn more about git ? Lets cheat!

$ sudo gem install cheat
$ cheat git

Generating diagrams with Railroad for Rails apps

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 04:57:02 +0000

RailRoad is a class diagrams generator for Ruby on Rails applications.¹

Installation

$ sudo apt-get install graphviz
$ sudo gem install railroad

Generating Diagrams

Generating models diagram in .dot file format and converting it to png:

$ railroad -o models.dot -M
$ dot -Tpng models.dot > models.png

Models diagram in svg format.

$ railroad -M | dot -Tsvg > models.svg

Models diagram with all classes showing inheritance relations

$ railroad -a -i -o full_models.dot -M

Controllers diagram in png format.

$ railroad -C | neato -Tpng > controllers.png

Resources

¹ Railroad gem
Graphviz
Ruby on rails diagram generator – RailRoad

Rails 2.2 released

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:04:10 +0000

Rails 2.2 has just released. You can read the new features of this release in Rails weblog. Some highlights for the new release which are mentioned in Rails weblog are:

Internationalization by default
Stronger etag and last-modified support
Thread safety and a connection pool
Ruby 1.9 and JRuby compatibility
Better API docs, great guides

Installation

Rails 2.2 requires the latest RubGems version which is 1.3.1. If you haven’t upgraded yet, you can do it with the following command:

sudo gem update --system

After updating RubyGems, you are ready to install the new shiny Rails 2.2

sudo gem install rails

Upgrading your rails app from 1.2.x to 2.1.x

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:33:49 +0000

These are the steps I followed while upgrading 2 of my rails applications. One of them was developed with Rails 1.2.2 and the other was 1.2.3. They are not complicated apps, so my job here was easy. If you have a sophisticated application you may need to work a little bit harder.

First of all, backup your rails app, in case something bad happens!

$ cp -r myapp myapp.backup

Backup your database.

$ mysqldump -u username -ppassword db_development > db_development.sql
$ mysqldump -u username -ppassword db_production > db_production.sql

Dive into your old applicaiton and remove all session files.

$ cd myapp
$ cd tmp/sessions
$ find . -name "*_sess*" -exec rm '{}' \;

Update RAILS_GEM_VERSION in your config/environment.rb file.

RAILS_GEM_VERSION = '2.1.2' unless defined? RAILS_GEM_VERSION

Update your rails app.

$ cd myapp
$ rake rails:update

Install necessary plugins. With Rails 2.x some integrated features turned to plugins such as acts_as tree, acts_as_list..

$ cd myapp
$ ./script/plugin install acts_as_tree
$ ./script/plugin install acts_as_list

Add secret key to your config/environment.rb file.

config.action_controller.session = { 
    :session_key => "_myapp_session", 
    :secret => "your secret here .. don't tell anyone" 
}

Install “classic_pagination” plugin if you used pagination in your application. The official source for this plugin should be “svn://errtheblog.com/svn/plugins/classic_pagination”. However, this URL is unreachable. So we are going to try another workaround to install it.

$ cd myapp
$ cd vendor/plugins
$ git clone git://github.com/masterkain/classic_pagination.git

Find and replace all “find_all” with “find(:all)”. To find out:

$ cd myapp
$ grep find_all * -r

If you used “start_form_tag” and “end_form_tag” in you app, you should add 2 methods to application helper. If you don’t want to add these 2 methods, then you should convert your forms to code block. Check out this google group discussion for more info.

$ cd myapp
$ vim app/helpers/application.helper

def start_form_tag(*args)
  form_tag(*args)
end
def end_form_tag
  '</form>'
end

I’ve realized that I didn’t use RAILS_ROOT in my application while setting file or directory paths. Rails 1.2.x version didn’t complain about that, however, Rails 2.x complains about not finding directory paths. I solved this issue by using RAILS_ROOT while creating directory or file paths. If you have file uploads in your application, I suggest you look over your codes.

Show time! Start your application server and test with your browser. I know you run Firefox

$ ./script/server

This is how I managed to work my old rails app work in Rails 2.1.2. They are not very complicated apps, so it was easy to switch to Rails 2.1.2. If you want to add something to my list please be my guest. Thanks!

Resources:

Deprecation

Looking up coordinates with google-geocode gem in Ruby

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 02:33:28 +0000

“google-geocode” helps you to look up the coordinates of a given address.

Installing google-geocode

sudo gem install google-geocode

Getting your google maps api key.

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html

Here is the simple code to fetch coordinates of a given address.

#!/usr/bin/ruby
require 'rubygems'
require 'google_geocode'
api_key = 'yourapikey'
address = "34357 Istanbul Dolmabahce"
begin
  gc = GoogleGeocode.new(api_key)
  location = gc.locate(address)
  puts "Adress queried: #{address}"
  puts "---------------------------------------"
  puts "Fetched results:"
  puts "latitude: #{location.latitude}"
  puts "longitude: #{location.longitude}"
  puts "Coordinates lat,lon: #{location.coordinates}"
  puts "Adress fetched: #{location.address}"
rescue GoogleGeocode::KeyError => e
  puts "GoogleGeocode::KeyError => #{e.message}"
rescue GoogleGeocode::AddressError => e 
  puts "GoogleGeocode::AddressError => #{e.message}"
rescue GoogleGeocode::Error => e
  puts "GoogleGeocode::Error => #{e.message}"
rescue Exception => e
  puts "Exception => #{$!}"
end

Resources:

google-gecode gem

Hall of Fame of Rails Rumble 2008

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 20:06:37 +0000

Rails Rumble is a competition for Ruby on Rails developers which developer teams compete during a weekend (48 hours) to create a working web application from scratch. 130 applications qualified in Rails Rumble 2008. The winners are decided with the users votes. Yeah, it’s democary in action. So I’ve reviewed and voted at least a dozen of apps during last week. It was amazing to see how fast talented developers produce web applications using one of the most effective and productive web development framework Ruby on Rails.

Let me cut to the chase and introduce the winners to you:

Application	Developer Team	Awarded
Meet In Between	Great Lakes Geeks	First Overall
Qflip	Scatapult	Second Overall
Riverdex	New Media Logic	Third Overall
Jot.ly	Team Handcrafted	Best Appearance
TrackClass	The Loose Knuckles	Best Completeness
So2Speak	The Verbose	Best Innovation
What Does this Error Mean?	Team GiraffeSoft	Best Usefulness
Forever Home	Leaf on the Wind	Best Solo Team

The list above summarizes the winners. However, I can say that there are more than 8 apps which you can find useful and intersting. Here, I want to share my favorites with you.

MyIdeaDrawer which helps you to organize and share your projects easily, was created by TeamWNN. The team consits of one developer and one designer: Ryan Bates and Kelli Shaver . (I’m sure Rails fans will remember Ryan Bates from Railscasts ) After a quick signup with OpenID, you could immediately start to create your projects. Your project may include codes snippets, notes, links, screenshots, color palletes and photos. Control panel is really easy to use. You could see recent activites on your project in the sidebar. And the design is pretty nice.

Another favorite of mine is Remindr which is kind of a reminder service supporting Twitter, Jabber, Email and Cell Phone. It was developed by the theam Getalime . The purpose of the app is very simple: It reminds you what you want to remember and when you want to remember, via the services you define. I’ve tried twitter reminder service. Worked great. So if you are lookig for a simple reminder, Remindr could be the solution for you.

So you decided to become a writer and you don’t know where to start. Luckily you, I could suggest you some place to start. StorySeed . It was created by the team Bibliophiles . After signing up and loggin in, you could start to create your book which may hit the shelves and may become best seller soon! Who knows?

“Life! Don’t talk to me about Life” says Marvin the Paranoid Android. If you are a fan of great quotations too like me, I suggest you to give a chance to Quotagious which created by CphFTW . After you singed up, you could enter your favorite quotes and share them with the rest of the world. If you follow Quotagious on Twitter you will get a free quote everyday.

I think it’s enough for one article! Maybe I’ll continue to review more rumble applications at another time. By the way, what took my attention about the apps created in the Rails Rumble that how widely OpenID is used. At least i run into it many apps I’v reviewed.

I hope to compete in Rails Rumble in 2009. We’ll see… Oh, by the way, if you want to share your favorites here, please be my guest.

User Authentication with restful-authentication Plugin in Rails

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 17:10:10 +0000

This is a tutorial about how to integrate restful-authentication plugin to your rails application. restufl-authentication is a plugin that makes user authentication easy for you. Installation and configuration is rather simple.

Before starting, I want to give information about my system. I’ve Linux Ubuntu 7.04 installed on my computer. Installed Ruby version is 1.8.6. And the Rails version running on my desktop is 1.2.1.

Preparing/Installing Requirements

First of all, we’ll handle requirements by installing required gems. This step is necessary if you plan to use rspec tests in your rails apps. Since our installation requires this feature, first we need to install the following 2 gems.

$ sudo gem install rspec
$ sudo gem install rspec-rails

Create your rails app which will be used during this tutorial. I called it “restauth”. You are free to give any name you like. For the sake of simplicty i chose to use “sqlite” instaead of “mysql” database. If you want to use mysql rather than sqlite, run the “rails” command with “-d mysql” parameter. After creating your rails app, change your current working directory to your newly created rails app.

$ rails restauth
$ cd restauth

Installation

$ cd vendor/plugins
$ git clone git://github.com/technoweenie/restful-authentication.git restful_authentication
$ cd ../..
$ ./script/generate authenticated user sessions --include-activation --stateful --rspec

Install “acts_as_state_machine” plugin.

$ ./script/plugin install http://elitists.textdriven.com/svn/plugins/acts_as_state_machine/trunk

Running the commands above will add some files to our rails app and also add piece of code to existing files.

Routes created: (config/routes.rb)

map.logout '/logout', :controller => 'sessions', :action => 'destroy'
map.login '/login', :controller => 'sessions', :action => 'new'
map.register '/register', :controller => 'users', :action => 'create'
map.signup '/signup', :controller => 'users', :action => 'new'
map.resources :users
map.resource :session

Models generated:

app/models/user_mailer.rb
app/models/user_observer.rb
app/models/user.rb

Controllers generated:

app/controllers/sessions_controller.rb
app/controllers/users_controller.rb

Views generated:

app/views/sessions/*
app/views/user_mailer/*
app/views/users/*

Migration generated: (XXXXXXXXXXXXXX depends on the time you create migration)

db/migrate/XXXXXXXXXXXXXX_create_users.rb

rspec tests and stories generated:

spec/
stories/

So far so good. If you still haven’t run into any errors it’s time to run migration:

$ rake db:migrate

Add user activation routes to “config/routes.rb” file. (Because we used “—include-activation” parameter.)

map.activate '/activate/:activation_code', 
             :controller => 'users', 
             :action => 'activate', 
             :activation_code => nil

We used “—stateful”, so we need to add an observer to enviroments and resource for users to routes.

Add user observer to “config/environment.rb” file (inside “Rails::Initializer.run do |config|” block)

config.active_record.observers = :user_observer

p. Add users resource to “config/routes.rb” file.

map.resources :users, :member => { :suspend   => :put,
                                   :unsuspend => :put,
                                   :purge     => :delete }

Configuration

As you may remember, we had used “—include-activation” parameter while we were installing the plugin, so we need to make a few quick and easy changes.

Now, open the file “app/models/user_mailer.rb” and find and replace “YOURSITE” with your website url, “ADMINEMAIL” with your email address, “[YOURSITE]” with your website’s title/name.

@body[:url]  = "http://YOURSITE/activate/#{user.activation_code}"
@body[:url]  = "http://YOURSITE/"
@from        = "ADMINEMAIL"
subject     = "[YOURSITE] "

If you don’t want to use randomly generated site key, you could change the value of “REST_AUTH_SITE_KEY” located in “config/initializers/site_keys.rb” file to something you want.

REST_AUTH_SITE_KEY = "Life, Don't talk to me about life!"

More Customization

If you want to change the contents of the activation email or signup notification mail sent to users, feel free to alter the following templates to meet your needs.

app/views/user_mailer/activation.erb
app/views/user_mailer/signup_notification.erb

Default installation of the plugin doesn’t enable the “Remember Me” option. However, you don’t need to worry about it, it’s so very easy to enable it. Just edit the file “app/views/sessions/new.html.erb” and uncomment the following lines.

<p><%= label_tag 'remember_me', 'Remember me' %>
<%= check_box_tag 'remember_me', '1', @remember_me %></p>

Show Time!

Now, fasten your seatbelt and prepare to take off!

$ ./script/server

Signup: Make sure your mail server is running and enter a valid email address of yours. If you don’t
have mail server installed on your computer you may want to glance at this tutorail which explains how to use gmail to send emails with your rails app.

hppt://localhost:3000/signup

htpp://localhost:3000/login

That’s all. If you have any questions about this tutorial don’t hesitate to ask. Thanks for reading.

Resources:

Garfield - My favorite ones

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:01:50 +0000

A few Garfield comic strips that make me laugh.

The following one is kind of special for me.

More info and comics about Garfield and his creator Jim Davis:

Garfield at Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Davis_(cartoonist)
Official Website of Garfield
Searchable Garfield comic strips

Naming Conventions in Ruby

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 05:27:43 +0000

It’s good to follow Ruby convetions while writing Ruby programs. In this short tutorial I will a cover a few rules about naming variables, methods, classes and modules in Ruby.

Global Variables: Golabal variables in Ruby start with a dollar sign: $

$i_am_a_global_variable

Class Variables: Class variables are prefixed with two “at” signs: @@

@@i_am_a_class_variable

Instance Variables: Instance variable starts with an “at” sign: @

@i_am_an_instance_variable

Local Varaibles: Local variables are in lowercase letters.

i_am_a_local_variable

Constants: Constants start with an uppercase letter.

PI
FeetPerMile

Class Names: Class names begin with an uppercase letter.

class String 
  ...
end
class ReadOnlyAssociation
  ...
end

Module Names: Module names start with an uppercase letter like class names.

module Kernel 
  ...
end
module ActiveRecord
  ...
end

Method names and parameters: In Ruby, method names and parameters should start with smallcase letter. If method name or parameters has includes than one words, you should separate them using underscores.

def my_method(param1, param2)
  ...
end

Resources:

Programming Ruby – The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide

Özgün Koyun | Freelance Web Developer (Ruby on Rails)

A few git tips

Links:

Lets bring some colors to "git"

Create your .gitconfig file in your home directory.

Copy and paste the following lines to ~/.gitconfig file.

Now, run some git commands to see some colorful output:

Bonus: Lets add some aliases to .gitconfig.

Wanna learn more about git ? Lets cheat!

Generating diagrams with Railroad for Rails apps

Installation

Generating Diagrams

Resources

Rails 2.2 released

Installation

Further readings

Upgrading your rails app from 1.2.x to 2.1.x

Looking up coordinates with google-geocode gem in Ruby

Hall of Fame of Rails Rumble 2008

User Authentication with restful-authentication Plugin in Rails

Preparing/Installing Requirements

Installation

Configuration

More Customization

Show Time!

Resources:

Garfield - My favorite ones

Naming Conventions in Ruby