nano RAILS: development, testing and hosting tidbits

ANN: rails-undo-redo

Posted on Mon Feb 18 01:03:00 UTC 2008

To this day, very few web apps provide any undo/redo capabilities. This is really not such a good thing for usability. There are a few exceptions like gmail, but it does not go far enough to provide what every one is used on their desktop.

Ever since I read Assaf’s post on the subject, and left hungry for more, as Assaf only helps you on the UI side and leaves you all the heavy lifting, I have been thinking that there must be a way to make it a lot easier to implement undo/redo in a consistent manner, and in a way that is as easy as rails has gotten us used to.

After a few failed attempts, and building on the work of Brian Durand and his Acts As Revisionable and ActsAsTrashable plugins, that I’ve reused (and probably abused as well), I have come to realize a few (obvious?) things, namely that:

for Undo/Redo to work, it needs to

• Work across all models
• Capture the list of changed objects (UndoRecords)
• Group these UndoRecords per User Action (UndoActions)

Then undo and redo are just a simple matter of replaying the UndoRecords in the right order.

All my previous attempts, and most other plugins I got inspiration from focused on one model, and even though you need this as a building block, for any real application, you need to be able to undo changes across multiple models (even beyond belongs_to, has_many type changes).

When you look at the types of changes to a model in details, you really have 3 types of changes Create, Update and Destroy (these are the C-U-D in CRUD, even if you are not doing REST), and undoing each one requires special handling, so this is also tracked and managed by UndoRecord.

To make a long story short, I’ve packaged all these ideas into a new Rails plugin: Rails Undo Redo (and very soon a gem as well, because this can help, and that’s also easy, or very easy), you can now easily transform any Rails Application using Active Record into a full fledged multi level undo/redo application like most desktop application.

For a full how-to, read the Rails Undo Redo project page, or try the Rails Undo Redo demo.

Posted in News, Rails  |  Tags undo  |  5 comments

git, submodules and Capistrano

Posted on Sun Feb 17 21:47:00 UTC 2008

If you use git submodules, as git-rails does, and want to use Capistano, you’ll need to patch patch Capistrano (lib/capistano/recipes/deploy/scm/git.rb) to make sure your submodules get included.

        def checkout(revision, destination)
          git      = command

          branch   = head

          fail "No branch specified, use for example 'set :branch, \"origin/master\"' in your deploy.rb" unless branch

          if depth = configuration[:git_shallow_clone]
            execute  = "#{git} clone --depth #{depth} #{configuration[:repository]} #{destination} && " 
          else
            execute  = "#{git} clone #{configuration[:repository]} #{destination} && " 
          end

          execute += "cd #{destination} && #{git} checkout -b deploy #{branch}" 

          if submodules = configuration[:git_enable_submodules]
            execute += " && git-submodule init &&" 
            execute += "git-submodule update" 
          end

          execute
        end

set :git_enable_submodules,1

Or you can use the trunk version (post 2.1), which includes that support already.

Posted in Rails  |  Tags git, rails  |  1 comment

Debugging Specs

Posted on Sun Feb 17 00:11:00 UTC 2008

It is easy enough to debug specs on by one. For this you just run the ruby file that contains the spec with ruby-debug instead of ruby:

rdebug spec/rur_spec.rb

But when running via rake, you can’t do this. A simple solution is to add these lines in the spec file you want to debug (or in spec_helper.rb):

require_library_or_gem 'ruby-debug'
Debugger.start

And you are in business…

Posted in Rails, Testing  |  Tags debugging, rspec  |  1 comment

git branches, merges and remotes

Posted on Thu Feb 07 00:21:00 UTC 2008

After releasing the first version of git-rails, Ron Damen created a clone of the repository and started improving on it. And I liked what he was doing, so now was the time to figure out how to get some of his changes back in to the master repo.

Here is the list of steps (and what they mean) to get his changes into the master branch on Gitorious.

git remote add ron git://gitorious.org/git-rails/rons-mainline-clone.git

[remote "ron"]
        url = git://gitorious.org/git-rails/rons-mainline-clone.git
        fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/ron/*

git checkout -b ron/master

git pull ron master

git checkout master
git checkout ron/master

git branch merge-ron
git status # does not switch branch!
git checkout merge-ron

This could be used as a shortcut: checkout -b merge-ron

git cherry-pick dc3de57a073e24eeb398e0cacbe52340258e861b
git cherry-pick 61579f92e1bfc95e582728011fcd21c79f08c3ae

git checkout master
git merge merge-ron

git push origin

From now on, the only thing needed to get more changes from Ron is to pull changes into ron/master, cherry-pick changes and merge back into master. Sweet!

Posted in Rails  |  Tags git, rails  |  0 comments

ANN: git-rails

Posted on Tue Feb 05 01:12:00 UTC 2008

Git is quickly becoming one of the best option for using a DVCS (Distributed Version Control System). Git main goal is to be quick (most everything you do is local), and has already been battle tested by the Linux Kernel dev team.

Recently, I’ve started experimenting with git after Rick switched Mephisto to git.

Even though things are pretty straightforward, some things are easier than others, especially when you have to take it all in in one shot.

So, over the weekend, I created git-rails, completed with a rubyforge project, an installable gem (gem install git-rails), and a git repository hosted by Gitorious

1. init repository (hookup to remote git repository, rails aware .gitignore)
2. install plugin managed by git (using git submodules)
3. update plugin

For now, I’m happy to use giston to manage svn hosted plugins, but I’m considering whether to add that functionality as well. We’ll see how things go.

To get started with git-rails, head over to the new git-rails project page.

Inspired by piston, and its newest sibling: giston/braid

Posted in News, Rails  |  Tags git, rails  |  3 comments

Ruby-debug quick tips: init file and -n option

Posted on Sat Jan 12 00:28:00 UTC 2008

I use ruby-debug quite a bit (too much? perhaps). And every time I start it, I find myself setting a few options (always the same ones), and it finally got to the point where I thought there had to be a better way. And there was! (Thank you, Kent)

The solution is even documented in some recent release notes:

Create a .rdebugrc in your home directory (it also looks for one in the current directory first):

set autolist
set autoeval
set autoreload
set forcestep

And voila! Each time you start rdebug, it executes this script.

An other good tip: run with -n to avoid stopping on the first instruction, now that you don’t need to run all these commands.

Update: with version 0.10, -n does not seem to be recognized, but —no-stop still works.

Posted in Rails  |  Tags debugging  |  5 comments

My Ruby on Rails Gentoo Setup

Posted on Mon Aug 20 22:24:00 UTC 2007

I had been hearing about Gentoo for a long time, and finally discovered it in depth about 6 months ago. Gentoo is really a different beast as Linuxes go. You get to build everything from sources. No binaries. That’s right. That means that you get to build everything with compatible flags, get to remove a lot of the unnecessary bloat (Do I hear X windows for example?). It also means that the initial setup could take you several days if your machine is not so powerful. Suffice it to say, I really, really like the approach and that is now what I’m using to run this blog.

Of course, if I need a server setup in a hurry, I’ll still go for a Debian or Ubuntu. But if I want a very fined tune system, Gentoo is it.

Of course, there is an ebuild for rails (ebuild is gentoo-speak for describing a package your can grab and build), but it did bring a lot more that what I cared for, so here’s the step by step instructions for getting Rails+Mongrel+nginx going on Gentoo.

This assumes that you are starting from a Gentoo 2006.1 stage 3 without much else.

A word of warning

Even though I’ve used these notes to successfully setup 3 machines (both on x86 and amd64), your experience may still be different, or you may need slightly different options or settings as the packages are bound to evolve, or I’ve made some assumptions that do not apply in your case, or something was obvious to me that should not have been, or, perish the thought, I just plain forgot something. If that happens, remember, Google is your friend, or don’t be shy, ask a question here, someone might know the answer.

So with that out the way, let’s get started.

Preamble

rc-update add sshd default

emerge --sync
emerge portage
emerge -av --update --deep world

find /etc -iname '._cfg????_*'

emerge -av app-admin/sudo app-portage/gentoolkit sys-apps/slocate

useradd user
passwd user

Add user to /etc/sudoers with ALL

emerge -av vim

vi /etc/rc.conf

emerge -av subversion

emerge -av traceroute bind-tools

emerge -av mail-client/mailx
emerge --unmerge mail-mta/ssmtp
emerge -av syslog-ng mail-mta/exim
rc-update add exim default

There are lots of options to do SMTP, but I find exim4 the quickest and simplest to setup:

create /etc/exim/exim.conf from /etc/exim/exim.conf.dist

To lockdown mail to localhost (you just want your Rails app to send emails), add this exim.conf:

local_interfaces = 127.0.0.1

##require verify        = sender

/etc/init.d/exim start

Rails Setup

My preferred database remains MySQL. I know, some people prefer PostgrSQL.

emerge -av dev-db/mysql
rc-update add mysql default

equery list mysql

emerge --config =dev-db/mysql-5.0.26-r2

dev-ruby/rubygems ~amd64

Replace with ~x86 if you are not on an AMD chip, then run:

emerge -av dev-lang/ruby dev-ruby/mysql-ruby dev-ruby/rubygems  dev-ruby/ruby-termios

dev-ruby/rmagick lcms gif imagemagick jbig jpeg jpeg2k pdf png svg tiff truetype unicode wmf xml xpm pcre
media-gfx/imagemagick lcms gif imagemagick jbig jpeg jpeg2k pdf png svg tiff truetype unicode wmf xml xpm pcre
emerge -av media-gfx/imagemagick dev-ruby/rmagick

1. add a new line to /etc/portage/package.keywords with (Again, on Intel, use ~x86)

"www-servers/nginx ~amd64

Then run emerge again:

emerge -av www-servers/nginx

Ok, now time to install what we actually wanted to install, Ruby on Rails and a few useful gems:

gem install -y rails rake capistrano daemons gem_plugin mongrel mongrel_cluster rmagick BlueCloth RedCloth ruby-debug termios ruby-openid ruby-yadis

/etc/init.d/mysql start
mysqladmin -u root -p create test1_development
mysqladmin -u root -p create test1_production

And finally, install a rails app (we’ll use beast as it is pretty simple to install)

svn checkout http://svn.techno-weenie.net/projects/beast/trunk beast
cd beast/
rake rails:freeze:edge
#create config/database.yml from config/database.example.yml
rake db:schema:load RAILS_ENV=production
./script/server -e production

Test that everything’s fine fine by pointing your browser to port 3000.

cd [app]
sudo useradd -n mongrel
sudo chown -R mongrel:mongrel [app]
mongrel_rails cluster::configure -e production -p 8000 -N 3 -c [app] -a 127.0.0.1 --user mongrel --group mongrel

Later, a few useful commands to use

#start cluster
mongrel_rails cluster::start

#restart cluster
mongrel_rails cluster::restart

#stop cluster
mongrel_rails cluster::stop

To setup nginx, edit /etc/nginx/nginx.conf to match your setup

mkdir /etc/mongrel_cluster
ln -s [app]/config/mongrel_cluster.yml /etc/mongrel_cluster/[app].yml

ln -s /usr/lib64/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel_cluster-0.2.1/resources/mongrel_cluster /etc/init.d/mongrel_cluster
chmod +x /etc/init.d/mongrel_cluster

rc-update add nginx default
rc-update add mongrel_cluster default

For smooth reboot, you may need to delete the pid files Apply this patch (from http://textsnippets.com)

create file “mongrel_cluster.patch” with:

--- bin/mongrel_rails-orig      2007-05-16 14:41:51.000000000 -0400
+++ bin/mongrel_rails   2007-05-16 14:42:50.000000000 -0400
@@ -83,9 +83,17 @@
       config = Mongrel::Rails::RailsConfigurator.new(settings) do
         if defaults[:daemon]
           if File.exist? defaults[:pid_file]
-            log "!!! PID file #{defaults[:pid_file]} already exists.  Mongrel could be running already.  Check your #{defaults[:log_file]} for errors." 
-            log "!!! Exiting with error.  You must stop mongrel and clear the .pid before I'll attempt a start." 
-            exit 1
+            # mongrels that crash can leave stale PID files behind, and these
+            # should not stop mongrel from being restarted by monitors…
+            pid = File.new(defaults[:pid_file]).readline
+            unless `ps -ef | grep #{pid} | grep -v grep`.length > 0
+            # use "ps ax" for freebsd 
+                log "!!! PID file #{defaults[:pid_file]} exists, but is stale, and will be deleted so that this mongrel can run." 
+                File.delete(defaults[:pid_file])
+            else
+                log "!!! PID file #{defaults[:pid_file]} already exists and the process id referred to in it is running.  This mongrel is probably already running.  #{defaults[:log_file]} for errors.  EXITING." 
+                exit 1
+            end

           end

                 daemonize

then apply the patch

patch -p0 /usr/lib64/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.0.1/bin/mongrel_rails < mongrel_cluster.patch

And there you have it. A nice, humming Ruby on Rails+Mongrel+nginx on Gentoo.

Posted in Linux, Rails  |  Tags gentoo, rails, setup  |  4 comments

Mephisto Theme Gallery

Posted on Sun Mar 18 20:40:00 UTC 2007

What started as a 5 minutes hack a few weeks ago is now a reality. I’ve put together a new gallery, and unlike many other galleries, you get to see all the existing themes for Mephisto as they would appear in a real Mephisto installation, because that’s where they all run. All sites show the same content, which makes it really easy to find out how each one treats sections, static pages, comments, sidebars, etc.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the most extensive collection of Mephisto designs to date! It contains 34 templates (and would contain more if it was not for the fact that the license did not allow for free redistribution).

Some may require extra Mephisto plugins such as the ERB, Erubis or HAML renderers. Speaking of HAML, I’m going to be releasing a new template within a few days to demonstrate how you can use the HAML renderer for Mephisto.

I’m also officially introducing a new Mephisto theme: Cutline, very accurately translated from the original Cutline Template by Chris Pearson. This is a gorgeous design, with a clean layout, plenty of white space and very precise typography.

I’ll be posting some more details in the following days about why that 5 minutes hack turned out into a much bigger project, but I think the result is quite impressive, and a hats off to Rick for creating an impressive blog engine.

Posted in html/css, Rails  |  Tags mephisto, template, theme  |  17 comments

after_method

Posted on Wed Feb 14 18:52:00 UTC 2007

It started innocently enough. I was writing a Rails Plugin, and needed to call a Class Method on a Model. No problemo, right? In init.rb just call the method (To register a renderer in this case).

  Site.register_template_handler(".erubis", ErubisTemplate)

The method goes on and adds some date to a Class Variable. I try it and it worked…

... For the first request only :( After that, the data is gone from the class! What gives???

Well, there is a very convenient mechanism that reloads all your models, views and controllers so you don’t have to restart your app every time you make a change. Except here. Once the class gets unloaded, BAM! There goes the Class Variable and my carefully registered renderer.

First Solution

  class << Dispatcher
    def register_erubis_template
      Site.register_template_handler(".erubis", ErubisTemplate)
    end
    def reset_application_with_erubis_registration!
      returning reset_application_without_erubis_registration! do
        register_erubis_template
      end
    end
    alias_method_chain :reset_application!, :erubis_registration
  end
  Dispatcher.register_erubis_template

Since reset_application! is not called till the second request, I had to also call the registration method once, which is why I created a register_erubis_template method.

It now worked. That was nice. But, then I started implementing a second plugin, which needed the same code. Not very DRY.

So I wrote down what ideally I wanted to end up with:

after_reset_application {
  Site.register_template_handler(".erubis", ErubisTemplate)
}

Lots of aborted attempts

Foolishly, I thought it would be quite easy to transform what I had into something reusable. A little dose of Monkey Patching here and there, a bit of Meta Programming, and there you have it. Well, I did not keep all the many iterations I tried, here are just a few that did not work for one reason or an other (I did not try to find out why, just moved on to the next attempt)

  Dispatcher.alias_method_chain :reset_application!, #{feature}
  Dispatcher.class_eval do
    def reset_application_with_#{feature}!
      returning reset_application_without_#{feature}! do
        register_#{feature}
      end
    end
  end

def after_reset_application(feature, &block)
  patch = <<-end_eval
    class << Dispatcher
      def register_#{feature}
        proc
      end
      def reset_application_with_#{feature}!
        returning reset_application_without_#{feature}! do
          register_#{feature}
        end
      end
      alias_method_chain :reset_application!, #{feature}
    end
  end_eval
  eval patch#, &block, __FILE__, __LINE__
  Dispatcher.send "register_#{feature}" 
end

Use the singleton-class, Luke! Use the singleton-class!

Then I retrieved a post from Ola Bini that I had read some months back: The ruby singleton class and I started to make some progress after I understood that to define methods, I needed to do it on the singleton class, not the class itself, because even though it did not fail, it did not accomplish much. And finally arrived at:

class << Dispatcher; self end

require 'dispatcher'

def after_reset_application(feature, &block)
  class << Dispatcher; self end.class_eval do
    define_method("register_#{feature}", &block)
    define_method("reset_application_with_#{feature}!") {
      returning Dispatcher.send("reset_application_without_#{feature}!") do
        Dispatcher.send("register_#{feature}")
      end
    }
    alias_method_chain :reset_application!, "#{feature}" 
  end
  Dispatcher.send("register_#{feature}")
end

after_reset_application("erubis_registration") {
  Site.register_template_handler(".erubis", ErubisTemplate)
}

The key reasons why this works is that it is adding the methods to the singleton class, not the class itself. It is using send to be able to build the method names, and using alias_method_chain to be able to monkey patch reset_application! as many time as needed. I had to add a parameter to after_reset_application for the same reason, so it can be called more than once. And it uses define_method because you can give it a block, plus you can define the method name from variables.

All good, except that it is still not very DRY. What if I want to use the same technique on a different class? A different method?

The final version (for now?)

def after_method(klass, target, feature, &block)
  # Strip out punctuation on predicates or bang methods since
  # e.g. target?_without_feature is not a valid method name.
  aliased_target, punctuation = target.to_s.sub(/([?!=])$/, ''), $1
  class << klass; self end.class_eval do
    define_method("register_#{feature}", &block)
    define_method("#{aliased_target}_with_#{feature}#{punctuation}") {
      returning klass.send("#{aliased_target}_without_#{feature}#{punctuation}") do
        klass.send("register_#{feature}")
      end
    }
    alias_method_chain target, "#{feature}" 
  end
  klass.send("register_#{feature}")
end

require 'dispatcher'

def after_reset_application(feature, &block)
  after_method(Dispatcher, :reset_application!, feature, &block)
end

after_reset_application("erubis_registration") {
  Site.register_template_handler(".erubis", ErubisTemplate)
}

Phew! The block gets called once the first time, and every time the classes need to be reloaded.

Posted in Just Enough, Rails  |  Tags meta, monkey, patch, programming, rails  |  0 comments

Out with Dream Host, in with Rails Playground

Posted on Mon Jan 15 19:25:00 UTC 2007

Well, well, well, almost a year after signing up with Dream Host, after going through many turbulent times, trying to fix things up myself, and again, surviving an unannounced, and not so welcome upgrade, after hoping for mongrel support, it really came down to a severe case of overselling. Performance had become abysmal, database connections hard to come by, site was down for longer and longer periods of time. Sometimes several hours without much I could do to revive it.

Don’t get me wrong, not all overselling is bad as long as it is managed properly. In my case, it came down to cpu and resource usage (database, memory). I mean, a rails application like typo is no small app. It routinely had 3 fcgi processes, each 70Mb plus, which on a 4 Gb machine is over 5% of memory, ouch! A good thing that not everyone there runs typo! But I don’t think that was the problem though. On average, the load of the machine was between 10 to 20, which is high but could be sustainable if it wasn’t for the fact that cpu usage seems to be above 90% all the time. This does not give much for a little boost when needed. And on that front, Dream Host needs to make some improvements quickly!

To be honest, this does not seem to be a big issue to run something like wordpress and my other sites on the same machine seem to be doing just fine and I don’t plan to move then anywhere anytime soon. I mean, it is hard to beat the amazing storage space and bandwidth allotment.

So with all that in mind, it was time for a new host! I knew what I wanted:

• mongrel support
• ssh support
• no need for extravagant bandwidth
• no setup fee, reasonable month to month cost

To find the best contenders, I used Google and the Hosting page on rubyonrails.org.

The best fit: Rails Playground. This post is hosted there, and so far, so good. For $12/month, that looks like a very competitive plan for a rails app. Granted I can only run one app with 2 mongrels, but that will do great for now.

The transition went really smoothly, all things considered.

First thing was to export the database, and I hit a first snag trying to get the data. I could not get a database connection to dump the data, fortunately, I was able to do the export using phpMyAdmin.

On the Rails Playground side, it came down to setting up a database, importing the data, setting up Capistrano, and putting out a request for mongrel setup. Less than a couple hours works and the request for mongrel setup was completed overnight.

Then the only thing left was to switch dns (so the old site was still up, at least as much up as it can be while the dns change propagates), and that’s where the only hitch happened. I ran into a perl error on the Dream Host control panel. Nothing their support couldn’t solve, and an hour later the whois database was updated, and dns servers all over started to pick up the change, and Voila! Rails Playground, here I come!

I now have the distinct (ahem… cough) advantage of having the 2 biggest processes running on this new machine but shush, don’t tell anyone…

And what a difference this makes. Average cpu usage seems to be below 5% and so far, not dreaded 500 error page :)

Note: if you read this via RSS, this may get delayed because as I write this, FeedBurner is still polling the old site. Hopefully this will update by tomorrow.

Posted in News, Rails  |  Tags hosting, over, rails, selling  |  11 comments

Bookmark It! Rails plugin for adding bookmarklets.

Posted on Mon Dec 18 15:17:00 UTC 2006

A while back I wrote BookmarkIt! , a social bookmarllet plugin for Typo, and it worked for a while, but the Typo plugin API changed, and changed again, and again, and keeping up was no fun. So since then, I’ve already changed my approach for my TextLinkAds plugin and instead wrote a bona fide rails plugin, and since Typo 4.0.3 broke the plugin one more time, it was time to take the same route. Morevover, the previous version did not allow for putting the Bookmkarlets inline with the post and this new version addresses that also. It is now a real Rails plugin, useable in any Rails app.

How to Get the plugin

script/plugin install http://svn.nanorails.com/plugins/bookmarkit/

script/plugin install -x http://svn.nanorails.com/plugins/bookmarkit/

script/plugin install --force http://svn.nanorails.com/plugins/bookmarkit/

How to configure the plugin

title: Bookmark It!
delicious: true(default)/false
digg: true(default)/false
reddit: true(default)/false
blinklist: true(default)/false
dzone: true(default)/false
newsvine: true(default)/false
furl: true(default)/false
spurl: true(default)/false
simpy: true(default)/false
fark: true(default)/false
blogmarks: true(default)/false
myweb2: true(default)/false
wists: true(default)/false

How to use the plugin

To use, inside any view (.rhtml), use:

<%= render_BMI(title, url) %>

<%= render_BMI(@article.title, @article.location) %>

<%= stylesheet_link_tag "/stylesheets/bookmarkit" %>

Adding more bookmarklets

All the bookmarklet html is in the _bookmarkit.rhtml partial.

      <a style="font-size:22px;" title="Blink '<%= title %>'" href="http://www.blinklist.com/index.php?Action=Blink/addblink.php&Url=<%= url %>&Title=<%= title %>">
            <img style="border:0;" hspace="3" class="bookrmarkit" alt="Blink" title="Blink '<%= title %>'" src="/images/bookmarkit/blinklist.gif" />
      </a>

If you want more bookmakrlets included, submit your patches in the comments or send to psq_at_no_spam_nanorails_dot_no_spam_com.

Posted in html/css, Rails  |  Tags bookmarkit, rails  |  3 comments

Installing Rails on Mac OS X Tiger (10.4.8)

Posted on Mon Oct 16 17:56:00 UTC 2006

Just a few days ago, I had the opportunity to upgrade my iMac from a 20” to a 24”. Not only does it have more real estate on the screen, not only is the CPU slightly faster, but it also can take up to 3 Gb of RAM, from 2Gb, which is quite an improvement, especially if you like to run multiple VMs (using Parallel).

So it was quite a relief to us my notes to install Rails on Mac OS Tiger. Except that a lot has changed in the past 3 months since I last wrote that article, and before I update the page to make more sense to newcomers, I’ll just write down a few notes on what I had to do differently.

These reflect the installation on MacOS 10.4.8 and the latest version of MacPorts (as of 10/14/06).

First of all, Darwin Ports is no more: long live MacPorts!

Which means that here is a new location for darwin ports installer.

Then I uncovered a problem in the order of the steps:

Set the PATH before running “sudo port -d selfupdate”, not after as suggested.

One thing that I did not realize, is that you need to actually install a C compiler before you can get started! The easiest is to install XCode 2.4. There is a free registration you need to fill in.

cp httpd.conf.sample httpd.conf => sudo cp httpd.conf.sample httpd.conf

The path to the launchctl file for apache2 has changed:

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.apache2.plist instead of sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.darwinports.apache2.plist

add "sudo -u mysql mysql_install_db5"

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.mysql5.plist instead of sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.darwinports.mysql5.plist

replace rb-mysql5 with rb-mysql since rb-mysql supports both flavors

And that’s where it got a bit tricky. With that combination of MacOS 10.4.8 and the current version of MacPorts, rb-mysql fails to compile.

gcc -I. -I. -I/opt/local/lib/ruby/1.8/i686-darwin8.8.1 -I. -DHAVE_MYSQL_SSL_SET -DHAVE_MYSQL_H -I/opt/local/include/mysql5/mysql/ -I/usr/local/include -O -pipe -I/opt/local/include -fno-common -O -pipe -I/opt/local/include  -fno-common -pipe -fno-common  -c mysql.c
mysql.c: In function 'Init_mysql':
mysql.c:2015: error: 'ulong' undeclared (first use in this function)
mysql.c:2015: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
mysql.c:2015: error: for each function it appears in.)
mysql.c:2015: error: parse error before numeric constant
mysql.c:2018: error: parse error before numeric constant
{standard input}:6318:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_cMysqlTime" minus "L00000000065$pb" 
{standard input}:6318:symbol: "_cMysqlTime" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:5382:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_cMysqlRowOffset" minus "L00000000045$pb" 
{standard input}:5382:symbol: "_cMysqlRowOffset" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:5355:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_cMysqlRowOffset" minus "L00000000044$pb" 
{standard input}:5355:symbol: "_cMysqlRowOffset" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:5333:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_cMysqlRowOffset" minus "L00000000044$pb" 
{standard input}:5333:symbol: "_cMysqlRowOffset" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:4861:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_cMysqlTime" minus "L00000000042$pb" 
{standard input}:4861:symbol: "_cMysqlTime" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:4359:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_cMysqlTime" minus "L00000000041$pb" 
{standard input}:4359:symbol: "_cMysqlTime" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:4106:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_eMysql" minus "L00000000041$pb" 
{standard input}:4106:symbol: "_eMysql" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:3957:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_cMysqlTime" minus "L00000000040$pb" 
{standard input}:3957:symbol: "_cMysqlTime" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:3895:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_eMysql" minus "L00000000040$pb" 
{standard input}:3895:symbol: "_eMysql" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:3824:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_eMysql" minus "L00000000039$pb" 
{standard input}:3824:symbol: "_eMysql" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:3803:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_eMysql" minus "L00000000038$pb" 
{standard input}:3803:symbol: "_eMysql" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:3256:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_cMysqlRowOffset" minus "L00000000023$pb" 
{standard input}:3256:symbol: "_cMysqlRowOffset" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:3226:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_cMysqlRowOffset" minus "L00000000022$pb" 
{standard input}:3226:symbol: "_cMysqlRowOffset" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:3200:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_cMysqlRowOffset" minus "L00000000022$pb" 
{standard input}:3200:symbol: "_cMysqlRowOffset" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:2749:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_eMysql" minus "L00000000019$pb" 
{standard input}:2749:symbol: "_eMysql" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:2595:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_eMysql" minus "L00000000018$pb" 
{standard input}:2595:symbol: "_eMysql" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:2412:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_cMysqlStmt" minus "L00000000016$pb" 
{standard input}:2412:symbol: "_cMysqlStmt" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:973:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_eMysql" minus "L00000000008$pb" 
{standard input}:973:symbol: "_eMysql" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:290:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_cMysqlField" minus "L00000000004$pb" 
{standard input}:290:symbol: "_cMysqlField" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:232:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_cMysqlRes" minus "L00000000003$pb" 
{standard input}:232:symbol: "_cMysqlRes" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
{standard input}:190:non-relocatable subtraction expression, "_eMysql" minus "L00000000002$pb" 
{standard input}:190:symbol: "_eMysql" can't be undefined in a subtraction expression
make: *** [mysql.o] Error 1

At this point your are either stuck waiting for an update version, or if you are not afraid to dip into the code, you can arm-twist it into working by following these steps:

rb-mysql patch

cd /opt/local/var/db/dports/build/_opt_local_var_db_dports_sources_rsync.rsync.darwinports.org_dpupdate_dports_ruby_rb-mysql/work/mysql-ruby-2.7.1
sudo ruby extconf.rb --with-mysql-include=/opt/local/include/mysql5/mysql/ --with-mysql-lib=/opt/local/lib/mysql5/mysql/

add '#include "my_global.h"' to mysql.c (as the first #include)
sudo make clean
sudo make
sudo make install

And voila. Running the tests will show 3 failing tests, mostly due to imprecisions, but I think you can live with them. Further testing with rails apps did not reveal any problems with MySQL access.

Note: I’ve contacted the maintainer of that port but I have not heard back yet. I will update this post when I do.

A few bonus gems I’ve found helpful, or can’t live without

And since you are in setup mode, you might as well add them to your collection.

sudo gem install acts_as_versioned ajax_scaffold_generator BlueCloth builder fastercsv ferret gettext  htmltools mocha payment radiant  radius rcov rdig RedCloth ruby-debug rubyful_soup selenium shipping
sudo gem install map_by_method what_methods

A word from nano RAILS sponsors

The business of web hosting has a strong influence over the internet as a web site can not exist without hosting services. Whether it is a microsoft certifications web site or a web site with original material about home based business work. The leading web hosts provide different types of hosting packages such as domain or email hosting. Along with other comprehensive services such as web site development.  Sites do needs proper search engine submission in order to capture a good rank, whether it is a web site for online certification or a site for holiday planning.

Posted in Mac, Rails  |  Tags install, macos, osx, rails, tiger  |  8 comments

A new Rails plugin for TextLinkAds (including support for Feedvertising)

Posted on Sun Oct 01 10:17:00 UTC 2006

Change of Strategy

Instead of updating my constantly breaking Typo sidebar plugin, and to implement Feedvertising from TextLinkAds, I’ve changed gears and chosen to implement just a regular plugin (very close to the new way of doing sidebar plugins in typo 4.1). This approach should work in all versions of typo, as well as any other Ruby on Rails’s application.

The support for feedvertising is slightly different than the one from the Wordpress plugin that is the only option offered so far, but should be fairly close.

Installation

Get the plugin from subversion:

script/plugin install http://svn.nanorails.com/plugins/textlinkads/

or to use svn:externals and get future updates via svn update

script/plugin install -x http://svn.nanorails.com/plugins/textlinkads/

The installation will copy a file textlinkads.yml into your config directory.

key: TLA_KEY
affiliateid: 0
title: Sponsors
advertisehere: Advertise here!
testing: false
caching: true

Replace TLA_KEY with the one provided by TextLinkAds, set your affiliateid if you’d like to have a link to TextLinkAds with your affiliate id (so you can get credit if someone signs up for a TextLinkAds account). Change the title and advertisehere messages if you don’t like the defaults.

Set testing to false once you’ve verified it works (while testing=true, the plugin will use a special page provided by TextLinkAds that displays to links. However, that page does not contain any RSS links)

Finally, if the caching done by Rails is not enough, the plugin can cache the calls to retrieve the links. See the caching section for explanations on how to setup caching.

Integrating with Typo

Adding the display of regular links

To add the regular TextLinkAds links, you need to add a call to render_TLA anywhere in the rendering code. In typo, the most likely place is in your template’s default.rhtml

<div id="sidebar">
  ...
  <div class="sidebar-node"><%= render_TLA %></div>
  <% response.lifetime = 6.hour %>
  <%= render_sidebars %>
</div>

<div id="sidebar">
  <%= render_sidebars %>
</div>

Add the RSS links

For RSS2.0 for example, edit the file app/views/xml/_rss20_item_article.rxml to add a call to render_TLA_RSS(post_id)

here’s the original file:

  xm.item do
    xm.title post_title(item)
    if this_blog.show_extended_on_rss
      content = item.full_html
    else
      content = item.body_html
    end
    xm.description content
    xm.pubDate pub_date(item.published_at)
    ...

xm.item do
  xm.title post_title(item)
  if this_blog.show_extended_on_rss
    content = item.full_html
  else
    content = item.body_html
  end
  content += render_TLA_RSS(item.id)
  response.lifetime = 6.hour
  xm.description content
  xm.pubDate pub_date(item.published_at)

Depending of which format you need, you may need to edit a different file.

That’s it.

Integrating with other apps

For other apps, just take a similar approach and add calls to render_TLA and render_TLA_RSS where most appropriate. Both calls are accessible from any Controller or Helper class.

Caching

Set “caching: true” in textlinkads.yml. Make sure Rails is configured with some caching. Typically, you need to have

config.action_controller.perform_caching = true
config.action_controller.fragment_cache_store = :file_store, "#{RAILS_ROOT}/tmp/cache" 

either set from config/environment.rb or config/environment/[CURRENT ENVIRONMENT].rb

This will cache the pages where the ads appear, and cache the feed pages. But to make sure these pages will update properly if the TextLinkAds ads inventory is updated, you must ensure the cache will expire.

The best way to do that is to use the expiring_cache_action plugin. To install:

script/plugin install http://typosphere.org/trac/browser/trunk/vendor/plugins/expiring_action_cache

response.lifetime = 6.hour

This way, the cached page will expire 6 hours later so that would be the lapse of time to wait to see the updated ads.

No need to expire the cache for RSS, it should get expired automatically every time an article is added.

If you use this plugin in other applications, add a comment or send me a not (psq_0×40_nanorails_0×2e_com) and I’ll add a link to your instructions or code.

Posted in Rails  |  Tags plugin, rails, textlinkads, typo  |  3 comments

Adding CodeHighlighter to Typo

Posted on Fri Sep 29 16:38:00 UTC 2006

Recently, I ran across CodeHighlighter by Dan Webb. This looked like a pretty cool javascript, and I thought a better way than to do it on the server side.

Adding it to typo is fairly straightforward, baring a small patch.

Get the code

Get it from Dan’s site via subversion: http://svn.danwebb.net/external/CodeHighlighter/trunk

Adding CodeHightlighter to your template

Add to your template (themes/[YOUR THEME]/layouts/default.rhtml)

<%= javascript_include_tag "code_highlighter" %>
<%= javascript_include_tag "javascript" %>
<%= javascript_include_tag "css" %>
<%= javascript_include_tag "html" %>
<%= javascript_include_tag "ruby" %>

The code as provided by Dan has a small incompatibility with prototype used by Ruby on Rails. The following line

for (var i in this.styleSets) highlightCode(this.styleSets[i]);

behaves quite strangely and will pretty much kill your browser (Firefox runs out of memory and displays a bunch of “undefined” after several minutes) because it ends up calling hightlightCode way too many time because of all the methods added to all objects.

To make codehighlighter.js play nicely with prototype.js, replace that last line with:

if (this.styleSets.each) {
  this.styleSets.each(highlightCode)
} else {
    for (var i in this.styleSets) {
      highlightCode(this.styleSets[i]);
    }
}

Essentially, if prototype is present, we can use each to iterate on the styles, otherwise it is safe to used the old code.

Using Codehightlighter

Now, addng styling is easy. Using Textile, you can just put your code around a <pre> and a <code> block. If you have a javascript snippet, use a class of “javascript”.

<pre><code class="javascript">
if (this.styleSets.each) {
  this.styleSets.each(highlightCode)
} else {
    for (var i in this.styleSets) {
      highlightCode(this.styleSets[i]);
    }
</code></pre>

The other available styles are “html”, “css” and “ruby”.

For example, here’s how ruby would look like:

  def display_article(article = nil)
    begin
      @article      = block_given? ? yield : article
      @comment      = Comment.new
      @page_title   = @article.title
      auto_discovery_feed :type => 'article', :id => @article.id
      render :action => 'read'
    rescue ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound, NoMethodError => e
      error("Post not found...")
    end
  end

And it looks easy to create other styles. See the stylesetguide.html file for details.

Update: Turns out Dan already had a fix, so if you grab the trunk, you will be fine.

Here’s his version of the patch:

    for (var i=0; i < this.styleSets.length; i++) {
        highlightCode(this.styleSets[i]);  
    }

Posted in html/css, Rails  |  Tags javascript, ruby, typo  |  0 comments

Install your own ruby on a shared host

Posted on Fri Aug 11 18:13:00 UTC 2006

Since I upgraded to Typo 4.0, and in the process rails 1.1.6 I have had a few occurrences where nanoRAILS would hang, several bloated processes would be sitting there and not respond, and the only option at that point was to kill all ruby processes once I realized what was happening, which could be several hours. Suffice it to say, this is not a good option.

So after struggling during last rails upgrade to 1.1 on my host, the next logical step is to also use my own version of ruby so I can have better control on its environment, and even apply patches if necessary.

The following steps apply on a lot of systems. More specifically, my host is DreamHost (aff), and as best I can tell, I’m on a host with Debian Sarge.

Build your own Ruby

Download ruby from http://www.ruby-lang.org. The latest version is currently ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/ruby-1.8.4.tar.gz

Create the makefile using

 ./configure prefix=[YOUR_OWN_RUBY_PREFIX]

Since you most likely don’t have root access, you need to override where ruby think it resides, and the way to do that is to set the prefix to somewhere into your home directory. Something like /home/USERNAME/ruby for example. From that point on, libraries, other builtin ruby files, gems will automatically install into your own ruby repository so you never have to worry about getting in trouble with an unforeseen upgrade.

Optionally, you can apply the patch used by Railsbench, with hardcoded default values because I haven’t figured how to set the environment variables for the dispatch.fcgi process (since apache in my case determines that). Download my version of rubygc.patch .

 patch gc.c rubygc.patch

Build and install ruby

 make
 make install

Additionally, so that the command line uses the same version of ruby, add this to your .bashrc or equivalent for your shel.

export PATH=[YOUR_OWN_RUBY_PREFIX]/bin:$PATH

Install your own gems

Now you are ready to install your own gems. Here’s the bare minimum you need.

First, install rubygems

 wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/11289/rubygems-0.9.0.tgz
 tar xzvf rubygems-0.9.0.tgz
 cd rubygems-0.9.0
 ruby setup.rb

Then install the minimum set of gems:

 gem install mysql
 gem install fcgi
 gem install rails --include-dependencies

Now, the only thing you need is to change the path to ruby in your dispatch file (dispatch.rb for mod_cgi, dispatch.cgi for regular cgi, and dispatch.fcgi for FastCGI/fcgid)

Typically, replace

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

by

#![YOUR_OWN_RUBY_PREFIX]/bin/ruby

Replace [YOUR_OWN_RUBY_PREFIX] by your own value you used earlier.

Posted in Linux, Rails  |  Tags hosting, patch, rails, ruby, shared  |  24 comments