Design & Code

Performance Benchmarking Ruby with MiniTest

2011-10-05T10:08:25+01:00

A handy feature of MiniTest is the performance benchmarking assertions. Here's an example testing a couple of methods that are constant and linear in time as a function of their inputs:

require 'rubygems' require 'minitest/benchmark' require 'minitest/autorun' class Thing def constant_time_method(n) true # O(1) end def linear_time_method(n) n.times { |i| constant_time_method(i) } # O(n) end end class AwesomeTest < MiniTest::Unit::TestCase def setup @thing = Thing.new end def test_constant_time_method_performance assert_performance_constant 0.99999 do |n| @thing.constant_time_method(n) end end def test_linear_time_method_performance assert_performance_linear 0.9999 do |n| @thing.linear_time_method(n) end end end

Whilst I wouldn't go nuts with this, it's a nice solution for when you have optimized some code and want to add a check against regressions.

Scope the source and docs for more details.

Backport 1.9.3 load fixes to 1.9.2 with RVM

2011-08-13T02:35:31+01:00

$ wget http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/attachments/download/1958/ruby-1.9.2-p290-load-path-backport.diff $ rvm install 1.9.2-p290 --patch ruby-1.9.2-p290-load-path-backport.diff

This cut the load time for Rails 3 environment for a complex project from 31 seconds down to 15, and has been running fine with no issues for 2 weeks.

Made of Code Theme for Xcode 4

2011-04-20T06:32:16+01:00

A port of my TextMate theme, "Made of Code". Being a comic genius, I call it "Made of Xcode". It only works with Xcode 4.

To install download it and copy to ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/UserData/FontAndColorThemes. Restart Xcode and you can select it (Preferences > Fonts & Colors).

QUOTE: It’s the ephemeral but very real sense when you first make contact wit...

2011-03-16T16:53:43+00:00

It’s the ephemeral but very real sense when you first make contact with the product that someone really truly understands you.

More, better, faster: UX design for startups →

VIDEO: The Shape of Design — Frank Chimero

2011-02-01T06:05:01+00:00

LINK: Awesome Rubygem for Gmail

2010-10-21T22:27:36+01:00

Link: Awesome Rubygem for Gmail

A small selection of what you can do:

require "gmail" Gmail.connect(username, password) do |gmail| gmail.logged_in? gmail.inbox.count gmail.inbox.count(:unread) gmail.inbox.count(:read) gmail.inbox.find(:unread) do |email| email.read! email.attachments[0].save_to_file("/path/to/location") end end

(thx @bbergher)

LINK: Designing Beautiful Ruby APIs

2010-09-06T23:45:17+01:00

Link: Designing Beautiful Ruby APIs

Slides from a talk given by Wen-Tien Chang (@ihower) at Ruby Conf China 2010.

They're an amazingly rich source of information, especially the second half on Ruby's object model and meta-programming. If you use Ruby, you must read them!

LINK: ActiveSupport core extensions: Module

2010-07-11T07:07:30+01:00

Link: ActiveSupport core extensions: Module

ActiveSupport provides some very handy additions the Module class, including attr_accessor_with_default, attr_internal_accessor, included_in_classes and synchronize, amongst others.

LINK: TextMate bundles: Rails, HAML, SASS + Shoulda

2010-06-26T09:53:26+01:00

Link: TextMate bundles: Rails, HAML, SASS + Shoulda

An awesome set of TextMate bundles for Ruby, Rails, HAML, SASS and Shoulda from phuibonhoa. This script backs up any existing bundles you’ve installed with the same name first, then installs all of the ones above.

VSS – a vector space search engine in Ruby

2010-03-11T03:02:23+00:00

VSS is a vector space search engine with tf*idf weighting. Checkout the source on Github, or gem install vss to get started. If you want to know how it works, read on:

1. Tokenize the query

First our query string is tokenized into an alpha-only, downcased, porter stemmed array. We also remove common stop words and make sure the tokens are unique:

require 'stemmer' require 'active_support' STOP_WORDS = %w[ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z an and are as at be by for from has he in is it its of on that the to was were will with upon without among ] def tokenize(string) stripped = string.to_s.gsub(/[^a-z0-9\-\s\']/i, "") # remove punctuation tokens = stripped.split(/\s+/).reject(&:blank?).map(&:downcase).map(&:stem) tokens.reject { |t| STOP_WORDS.include?(t) }.uniq end

2. Find corpus vocabulary

Given a document collection (or corpus):

doc1 = "I'm not even going to mention any TV series." doc2 = "The Wire is the best thing ever. Fact." doc3 = "Some would argue that Lost got a bit too wierd after season 2." doc4 = "Lost is surely not in the same league as The Wire." @docs = [doc1, doc2, doc3, doc4]

We first tokenize everything, to find our @vocab:

@vocab = tokenize(@docs.join(" "))

3. Generate vector indexes for each token in the vocabulary

@vector_keyword_index = begin index, offset = {}, 0 @vocab.each do |keyword| index[keyword] = offset offset += 1 end index end

4. Perform the search, and return the ranked results

We can generate a vector for any document (or query):

require 'matrix' def vector(doc) arr = Array.new(@vector_keyword_index.size, 0) tokens = tokenize(doc) tokens &= @vocab # ensure all tokens are in vocab tokens.each do |token| tf = tokens.count(token) num_docs_with_token = @docs.count { |d| tokenize(d).include?(token) } idf = @docs.size / num_docs_with_token index = @vector_keyword_index[token] arr[index] = tf * idf end return Vector.elements(arr) # create a vector from arr end

And compare 2 vectors:

def cosine(vector1, vector2) dot_product = vector1.inner_product(vector2) dot_product / (vector1.r * vector2.r) end # ranks from 0 to 100 def cosine_rank(vector1, vector2) (cosine(vector1, vector2) + 1) / 2 * 100 end

So for our query, we just compare the cosine between each document vector and the query vector to get our rank. Then we annotate each document in our @docs collection with the rank and return the documents ordered by that value:

@query = "How can you compare The Wire with Lost?" query_vector = vector(@query) @docs.each do |doc| doc_vector = vector(doc) rank = cosine_rank(query_vector, doc_vector) doc.instance_eval %{def rank; #{rank}; end} # bit mental end @results = @docs.sort { |a,b| b.rank <=> a.rank } # highest to lowest

And here's what @results looks like:

>> @results.each { |doc| puts doc + " (#{doc.rank})" } Lost is surely not in the same league as The Wire. (68.2574185835055) The Wire is the best thing ever. Fact. (58.5749292571254) Some would argue that Lost got a bit too wierd after season 2. (55.5215763037423) I'm not even going to mention any TV series. (50.0)

It works! I'm sure there are lots of optimizations you could make (e.g. by caching some of the tokenization steps), but for small document collections it's plenty fast enough.

Credits

Thanks to Joseph Wilk's excellent article on building a vector space search engine in Python.

LINK: MyFonts Newsletters

2010-02-23T16:26:17+00:00

Link: MyFonts Newsletters

VIDEO: Amazing short film

2010-02-22T08:55:30+00:00

Least Smallest effective difference

2010-02-19T20:57:18+00:00

“Least effective difference” actually means something totally different, i.e. the difference which is least effective.

LINK: Useful tips for dig

2010-02-19T04:51:59+00:00

Link: Useful tips for dig

PHOTO: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a ...

2010-02-13T19:40:59+00:00

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle

via Contrast | The Blog

PHOTO

2010-02-11T01:08:23+00:00

Gu (Backpack CMS) new theme & Heroku demo

2010-02-10T04:39:32+00:00

Gu, my Rails app enabling you to use Backpack as a simple CMS, now has a nicer looking default theme! You can also find a demo running on Heroku which is powered by my own Backpack account. I also added some rudimentary query caching and fixed a couple of bugs.

See a preview of the theme below, or feel free to check out the updated version on Github. Any patches and/or ideas very welcome.

LINK: Jasmine Pearls Green Tea

2010-02-08T23:12:32+00:00

Link: Jasmine Pearls Green Tea

This is really nice, I drink about 5 cups of it a day.

VIDEO: Espresso, Intelligentsia

2010-02-08T22:01:01+00:00

LINK: Please Scroll

2010-02-05T15:41:21+00:00

Link: Please Scroll

Best method ever?

2010-02-04T12:25:42+00:00

module AdsHelper def show_ads? true end end

I wrote this the other day. Pure genius.

LINK: Useful resource for CSS browser quirks

2010-02-02T17:17:29+00:00

Link: Useful resource for CSS browser quirks

LINK: Jammit: Asset Packaging for Rails

2010-01-26T03:23:36+00:00

Link: Jammit: Asset Packaging for Rails

RubyGems version specification tip

2010-01-22T05:24:18+00:00

RubyGems version string “~> 2.5.1” will look for any 2.5.x version, greater than or equal to 2.5.1. For example in Rails:

config.gem 'mygem', :version => '~> 2.5.1'

PHOTO: 5 minute redesign of 1Password software update dialog.

2010-01-22T02:31:25+00:00

5 minute redesign of 1Password software update dialog.

PHOTO: via micasaessucasa

2010-01-22T02:02:05+00:00

PHOTO: Cool approach for the redesign of the boarding pass. via http://passfa...

2010-01-22T01:53:01+00:00

Cool approach for the redesign of the boarding pass.
via http://passfail.squarespace.com/

LINK: Miracle Roles — simple roles for Rails

2010-01-21T01:19:51+00:00

Link: Miracle Roles — simple roles for Rails

Snow Leopard, TextMate & Font smoothing

2010-01-20T21:02:12+00:00

To get Inconsolata looking nice on my iMac’s LCD, I had to setup some custom font smoothing for TextMate:

defaults write com.macromates.textmate AppleFontSmoothing -int 1

QUOTE: If somebody admits that HAML wishes it was Python and that you still h...

2010-01-20T19:25:00+00:00

If somebody admits that HAML wishes it was Python and that you still have to think in HTML when using it, and still says it’s great, I’d say good for them if they found a tool they like.

RubyPanther via #rubyonrails

LINK: Building Blocks of Modularity by Jim Weirich

2010-01-11T21:53:26+00:00

Link: Building Blocks of Modularity by Jim Weirich

PHOTO: “The Journey of a tweet” via www.ngonlinenews.com

2010-01-08T16:38:24+00:00

“The Journey of a tweet” via www.ngonlinenews.com

Best maintenance notice ever?

2010-01-08T16:33:17+00:00

Received the other day from Freckle, an awesome time-tracking app.

 Hello there Mark, beloved Freckle customer! 
 ——-
 SCHEDULED DOWNTIME: Sunday, Jan 10 from approx. 14:00 UTC to 18:00 UTC
 (find in your local time zone: http://bit.ly/8kZKwM) 
 ——-
 Some of you have written in recently, noting that Freckle is not as zippy as it used to be. You’re right. 
 And a few days ago, we even had a little bit of downtime due to server load.
 That means… it’s time for a server upgrade! Unfortunately, that also means that we will have to take some scheduled downtime. 
 Now, Freckle will most likely NOT be down for the entire period. However, there may be scattered “outages” during this time. So be aware!
 Again, that time and date is: 
 ——-
 SCHEDULED DOWNTIME: Sunday, Jan 10 from approx. 14:00 UTC to 18:00 UTC
 (find in your local time zone: http://bit.ly/8kZKwM) 
 ——-
 But when we come up, it’ll be with a much beefier server and things will be faster and more pleasant all around. 
 Please excuse the interruption and thanks for your business!
 Best wishes, 
 Your freckle team
 Amy, Thomas, Dieter and Joe
 http://letsfreckle.com

QUOTE: Inflation, rising food prices, graduate unemployment and a property bu...

2010-01-01T00:50:51+00:00

Inflation, rising food prices, graduate unemployment and a property bubble are all mounting concerns.

Telegraph on China in 2010

Now, why do those problems sound familiar…

PHOTO: I really like the simplicity of this Chrome ad.

2010-01-01T00:32:31+00:00

LINK: 140 Characters

2009-12-20T16:43:53+00:00

Link: 140 Characters

LINK: Objectified: A Documentary Film by Gary Hustwit

2009-12-16T17:47:05+00:00

Link: Objectified: A Documentary Film by Gary Hustwit

LINK: A shorthand for designing UI flows

2009-12-16T17:37:41+00:00

Link: A shorthand for designing UI flows

LINK: jQuery Plugin: Cross-browser placeholders

2009-12-12T22:49:48+00:00

Link: jQuery Plugin: Cross-browser placeholders

PHOTO: My new favourite way to collect addresses on forms. Usable, and compac...

2009-12-12T09:22:27+00:00

My new favourite way to collect addresses on forms. Usable, and compact.

[18 Dec 2010] Update: Since this post, I've made a couple of jQuery plugins for this. Check them out on Github.

LINK: A very useful tip for ActiveResource logging

2009-12-11T01:37:49+00:00

Link: A very useful tip for ActiveResource logging

Test by example

2009-11-26T20:47:37+00:00

I like this pattern for testing by example. It's very readable and easy to add more cases.

context "#domain" do should "return correct domain from given host" do examples = { "foo.bar.mydomain.com" => "mydomain.com", "foo.bar.www.mydomain.com" => "www.mydomain.com", "foo.bar.www.mydomain.co.uk" => "www.mydomain.co.uk", "www.mydomain.com" => "www.mydomain.com", "foo.mydomain.co.uk" => "mydomain.co.uk", "foo.bar.www.my-domain.com" => "www.my-domain.com", "foo.m.net" => "m.net", "foo-bar.mydomain.www.mydomain.co.uk" => "www.mydomain.co.uk", "www.www.mydomain.com" => "www.mydomain.com" } examples.each do |host, domain| @request.host = host get :index assert_equal domain, @controller.send(:domain) end end end

LINK: Handy gem for making block helpers for Rails

2009-11-26T19:56:47+00:00

Link: Handy gem for making block helpers for Rails

PHOTO: My new TextMate theme, “Made of Code” — Download. [9 Feb 2010] Update:...

2009-11-24T02:16:39+00:00

My new TextMate theme, “Made of Code” — Download.

[9 Feb 2010] Update: The font used in the screenshot above is Inconsolata at 18pts. In Snow Leopard, I had to tweak the font smoothing to make it look nice.

Cross Browser CSS Opacity

2009-11-24T01:51:23+00:00

/* the joy of browser standards... seriously, IE8 - why? */ .foo { -ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(Opacity=50)"; /* IE 8 */ filter: alpha(opacity=50); /* IE 6 + 7 */ -khtml-opacity: 0.50; /* Safari < 1.2 (KHTML) */ -moz-opacity: 0.50; /* FF < 1.5, Mozilla <= 1.6 */ opacity: 0.50; /* FF 1.5+, Safari 1.2+, Opera 9+ (CSS3) */

PHOTO

2009-11-08T17:37:40+00:00

PHOTO

2009-11-07T15:30:28+00:00

PHOTO

2009-11-06T15:33:06+00:00

PHOTO

2009-11-05T21:02:24+00:00

LINK: Stop people changing the URL in Safari

2009-10-30T02:22:58+00:00

Link: Stop people changing the URL in Safari

Only tested this in Safari 4.0.3, does this count as a bug?

Easy tests catch easy to debug problems...

2009-10-29T01:10:46+00:00

Tests that are easy to write generally catch easy to debug problems. For an example, consider a method that generates a token on saving a model. Testing the token is generated on save is easy, but if the token was not generated then you could debug it fairly quickly without a test.

On the other hand, tests that are hard to write generally catch problems that would be harder to debug. Testing that the token is always unique is more difficult, and if we didn’t have a test it would be hard to debug an non-unique token generation problem, which may well be intermittent.

The easy tests are quick to write and give breadth, but then the bugs they catch are obvious, whilst tests that are tricky give depth of coverage but catch problems that are more complex to debug.

PHOTO

2009-10-27T19:10:29+00:00

PHOTO: I love the subtle use of gradients here.

2009-10-21T02:49:43+01:00

Paperclip, S3 & Delayed Job in Rails

2009-10-01T01:28:00+01:00

Here’s how I use Paperclip (with storage on S3) and delayed_job to process images after they’re uploaded in the background. This means users don’t have to wait while the images are resized to the versions you’ve specified in Paperclip’s :style option.

Assumes you have Paperclip configured using S3 for an existing model (Image in this example) and delayed_job installed (as plugin or gem) with the required table created.

Add a :processing flag to our model:

class AddProcessingToImages < ActiveRecord::Migration def self.up add_column :images, :processing, :boolean end def self.down remove_column :images, :processing end end

Then, in our model:

class Image # define our paperclip attachment has_attached_file :source ... ... # cancel post-processing now, and set flag... before_source_post_process do |image| if image.source_changed? image.processing = true false # halts processing end end # ...and perform after save in background after_save do |image| if image.source_changed? Delayed::Job.enqueue ImageJob.new(image.id) end end # generate styles (downloads original first) def regenerate_styles! self.source.reprocess! self.processing = false self.save(false) end # detect if our source file has changed def source_changed? self.source_file_size_changed? || self.source_file_name_changed? || self.source_content_type_changed? || self.source_updated_at_changed? end ... end

Create a job wrapper, which used by DelayedJob:

class ImageJob < Struct.new(:image_id) def perform Image.find(self.image_id).regenerate_styles! end end

Thanks to this article which helped a lot.

LINK: Heroku rocks

2009-09-29T18:19:00+01:00

Link: Heroku rocks

I've been trying out Heroku for the past few weeks, and I absolutely love it. You can literally just type git push heroku and you're deployed.

Don't be fooled by it's simplicity though. It's not a limiting platform – it supports background jobs, database replication, cron jobs, SSL, custom domains, database exporting/importing, backups, staging servers (for free if you use a simple instance). Pretty much everything you'd need for a production app. And because it's on Amazon cloud you can talk to other Amazon web services (like S3) for free and quickly.

The constraint of not having a writable file system is not a problem if you use S3 (which is a good idea anyway). You can rely on the filesystem for temporary files which will last the scope of a request, so it allows any processing you need to do of files from/to S3.

It's worth mentioning that whilst the Heroku docs are very well written and organised, the support seemed a bit slow the few times I needed help.

LINK: ivar_get, ivar_set and boolean_attr_accessor

2009-09-25T12:36:38+01:00

Link: ivar_get, ivar_set and boolean_attr_accessor

A few useful Ruby extensions which I made.

My favourite is boolean_attr_accessor which provides a Rails compatible boolean virtual attribute. You get #attr? and it’ll also handle setting the correct boolean value when passed things like 1 or 0, or strings like true or false so it works with Rails view helpers and checkboxes.

Generate gem.yml and .gems for Rails

2009-09-23T13:05:13+01:00

A rake task which will generate gem configuration files based on your config.gem specifications in Rails. This comes in handy when deploying to Engine Yard, or Heroku. Just run it before deploying to update the files.

namespace :gems do desc "Spit out gems.yml and .gems in root of app (for Heroku + EY etc.)" task :specify => :environment do gems = Rails.configuration.gems # output gems.yml yaml = File.join(RAILS_ROOT, "gems.yml") File.open(yaml, "w") do |f| output = [] gems.each do |gem| spec = { "name" => gem.name, "version" => gem.version_requirements.to_s } spec["install_options"] = "--source #{gem.source}" if gem.source output << spec end f.write output.to_yaml puts output.to_yaml end # output .gems dot_gems = File.join(RAILS_ROOT, ".gems") File.open(dot_gems, "w") do |f| output = [] gems.each do |gem| spec = "#{gem.name} --version '#{gem.version_requirements.to_s}'" spec << " --source #{gem.source}" if gem.source output << spec end f.write output.join("\n") puts output.join("\n") end end end

LINK: Bash shortcut for opening TextMate projects

2009-09-07T05:34:00+01:00

Link: Bash shortcut for opening TextMate projects

Opens project file if it exists, or else just opens the directory.

mm(){ [ -f *.tmproj ] && open -a 'textmate' `ls -lG *.tmproj | awk '{print $9}'` || mate . }

LINK: Abandoning Cucumber where I'm the client

2009-09-07T05:32:00+01:00

Link: Abandoning Cucumber where I'm the client

Here’s a real example of a test I recently converted from Cucumber to plain old Rails IntegrationTest. I don’t see the benefit of Cucumber for projects were I am the one and only client. It just creates overhead.

require 'test_helper' class SignupTest < ActionController::IntegrationTest test "signing up" do # Given there are X users 2.times { Factory(:user) } users_count = User.count # When I go to the signup page visit path_to('the signup page') # And I fill in "Name" with "joebloggs" fill_in "Name", :with => "joebloggs" # And I fill in "Password" with "password" fill_in "Password", :with => "password" # And I fill in "Confirm password" with "password" fill_in "Confirm password", :with => "password" # And I press "Save" click_button "Save" # Then I should see "Dashboard" assert_contain "Dashboard" # And there should now be X+1 users assert_equal (users_count + 1), User.count end end

LINK: Use 37signals' Backpack as a CMS

2009-08-24T01:38:00+01:00

Link: Use 37signals' Backpack as a CMS

A tiny rails app allowing you to use 37signals’ Backpack as a basic CMS.

PHOTO: The recently redesigned website for my web design consultancy, mkdynam...

2009-08-24T01:07:22+01:00

The recently redesigned website for my web design consultancy, mkdynamic. It’s much simpler than the previous version and more focused on the work rather than having heaps of text.

I’ve also concentrated on the 3 core areas of business; website design, building web apps, and providing email marketing. Previously I had loads of stuff about extra services which I rarely provided.

LINK: Nicely designed login screen

2009-08-18T22:12:14+01:00

Link: Nicely designed login screen

LINK: Twitter 101 for Business — A Special Guide

2009-08-06T21:30:20+01:00

Link: Twitter 101 for Business — A Special Guide

Show size of all MySQL tables

2009-08-06T21:13:00+01:00

It’s not pretty but it does the job:

`which mysql` -u root -p INFORMATION_SCHEMA -e 'SELECT s.schema_name, CONCAT(IFNULL(ROUND((SUM(t.data_length) +SUM(t.index_length))/1024/1024,2),0.00),"Mb") total_size, CONCAT(IFNULL(ROUND(((SUM(t.data_length)+SUM(t.index_length)) -SUM(t.data_free))/1024/1024,2),0.00),"Mb") data_used, CONCAT(IFNULL(ROUND(SUM(data_free)/1024/1024,2),0.00),"Mb") data_free, IFNULL(ROUND((((SUM(t.data_length)+SUM(t.index_length)) -SUM(t.data_free))/((SUM(t.data_length) +SUM(t.index_length)))*100),2),0) pct_used, COUNT(table_name) total_tables FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SCHEMATA s LEFT JOIN INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES t ON s.schema_name = t.table_schema GROUP BY s.schema_name ORDER BY SUM(t.data_length)+SUM(t.index_length) DESC;'

+--------+------------+-----------+-----------+----------+--------------+ | schema | total_size | data_used | data_free | pct_used | total_tables | +--------+------------+-----------+-----------+----------+--------------+ | foo | 63.99Mb | 63.99Mb | 0.00Mb | 100.00 | 2 | | bar | 0.03Mb | 0.03Mb | 0.00Mb | 100.00 | 2 | +--------+------------+-----------+-----------+----------+--------------+

LINK: What should your app should cost?

2009-08-04T02:28:00+01:00

Link: What should your app should cost?