Recent Projects
Categories
Updrift is the home of J. Wade Winningham. He helps make the web work.
Deploying a Rails app with Thinking Sphinx
Now that I’m using Thinking Sphinx I eventually had to deploy it. Since I didn’t find much info about deploying it using Capistrano here’s what I did to get deployments running smoothly.
Putting Rails gems into the vendor directory
Over on Err The Blog is an article on placing your gems into the vendor directory rather than relying on them being in the environment.
I’ve run into the issue before where a Rails app doesn’t run on a server due to a gem not being installed. Adding them to your application seems like a perfect solution and deals with other computers possibly having various versions of gems installed.
Rails Hash Ordering
My expectation was that when I create a hash it’s going to act like a queue and be sorted in the order in which I inserted things. As I found out today, that is definitely not the case.
There is a very easy way that Rails offers to give a hash this behavior and it’s the OrderedHash function found in the ActiveSupport libraries.
my_hash = ActiveSupport::OrderedHash.new
After that initialization, your hash will be maintained in the order you insert things. Something to watch out for.
A couple of Ruby on Rails v1.2 gotchas
I recently upgraded a few projects to Rails v.1.2 and had a couple of issues arise.
Disappearing objects when dropped using drag and drop in Safari
For one project I use the drag and drop re-ordering provided by the Scriptaculous library. Not sure what did it, possibly even a Safari update, but only in Safari, once you let go of a dragged object, that object would disappear. It would come back when you refreshed the page and would have successfully triggered its intended action.
I did update my javascript files upon upgrading to v.1.2.1, but had not upon the upgrade to v1.2.2 since I wasn’t aware of any changes. I think the release of Scriptaculous on its actual site is newer (v1.7 right now) than that included in Rails so I updated my scripts and that solved the problem.
Model attributes not in the database were inaccessible
I wasn’t able to figure this one out, but was able to get around it. I have a model which has some methods to send/receive messages to a device. I had a
attr_accessor :last_response
which is an attribute that’s not in the database. It was simple a place to temporarily store the full message of the last response for use later on in the code. After the upgrade to v1.2.1 things were fine. However after updating to v.1.2.2, I started getting “Method not defined” errors. It seems like other people have hit this one, too.
My solution was simply to remove the property and change it to @last_response which worked for my limited use of it.
I’m still scratching my head though, since similar attributes work fine in other classes. The problem class, however, is unique in that instead of having ActiveRecord:Base as its parent, the actual parent is a generic class whose parent is ActiveRecord:Base.
Keep up with your Rails tests
I haven’t updated my progress on the project I’ve been working on in a while. This is somewhat due to simply getting caught up in the development of it. I’ve also been working the past few weeks on creating the CSS/HTML based on the delivered design. Here’s two things I’ve learned about my experience since last time…
Don’t forget about running your tests
While I think I did a good job creating unit tests, I definitely let my functional tests slide. I have also not been religiously running my existing tests, so it wasn’t much of a surprise that a number of them were failing when I ran them again recently. As I fix them up, I’ll be keeping track of where they would have helped me out.
One thing I do know is where I need to have functional tests. I’m not nearly as concerned with pages which do nothing but display information, mostly ones where it would change, or redirect you based on security.
IE7 is much easier to style than IE6, but still not quite as good
Okay, This isn’t really Ruby on Rails specific. This assumes you create styles like I do. Create your CSS to work in Firefox and Safari and then get it to work in IE. I did run into some IE7 weirdness, but overall, there will be far less tweaks with it than you’d have with IE6. I created separate stylesheets with IE6 and IE7 fixes and the IE7 one is roughly 80% smaller than the one for IE6.
Agile Web Development 2nd Edition
If you’ve got the first edition of this book or about to buy it to get yourself started with Ruby on Rails, don’t buy it. The 2nd edition is now available in a beta form and it’s well worth it. The most recent additions to Rails really the original print largely obsolete. Yes, that much has changed.
Getting a little off track with my project
I got to a point where I think I’m getting a little off track with my Rails project. In trying to make sure everything’s perfect along the way, I think I’ve lost sight of the rapid development part of it all. When building my models, I wrote out a lot of tests to make sure things were working. While I am glad I did that, it isn’t the way to get the application in a usable state right away.
I’m very glad I did write the unit tests, since I’ve already had to make a change where the tests were correct but my models stopped working. Running the unit tests helped me fix the problems quickly.
As I proceed to build the controllers, I’m doing what I can to get the pages to work navigationally so people can login and click around the site and see at least static content. I’ll go back in and add actual logic, including funtional tests, as I code the details.
It just dawned on me that I’ve been doing a lot of work and my co-workers haven’t been able to actually see the site. This is Ruby on Rails, so I figured that was backwards. I guess I’m still getting used to it all.
I have decided that authentication plugins for Ruby on Rails suck
My first thought when it came to implementing the authentication for my current application was to check out plugins and generators others are using to make adding this a simple five minute process. I had read about some issues with one of the first such plugins like this from when Rails was first made available, but I figured by this time they had matured a bit. I checked out a few, the primary contenders being the acts_as_authenticated plugin and the LoginEngine. LoginEngine had a nice video demonstration showing how easy it was to integrate with your site. I was going to need role-based security and part of what won me over was that LoginEngine had a sister engine for dealing with just that.
After an entire day of playing around with LoginEngine and not getting anywhere close to the results I wanted, I decided to scrap using it and any other ready-made authentication system and just write my own. I ended up wasting more time failing to adjust LoginEngine to my needs than just writing it from scratch based on information in the Agile Development with Rails book and the upcoming Rails Recipies.
But hold on, these things are great. Lots of people are using them.
Lots of people may be using them, but they are not great in all situations. I can only see them saving time in applcations where they would work out-of-the-box without modification. I do have some custom requirements which are not built into any of these plug-and-play systems.
Here’s what’s wrong
- If you’re learning Rails, using an authentication system will not teach you anything.
- In a lot of cases, you’re not saving much time.
- If you need to change much with what’s there, it will take you longer than if you had written it yourself in the first place. I’m sure if you had a lot of knowledge about them, this would not be as big an issue, though.
- David Heinemeir Hanson is vocal about his cautious view on Engines and other high-level components.
- Just the other day, the release of Rails v1.1.1 broke LoginEngine. Look through the comments. The Engine people fixed it quickly, but it broke.
This sums it up
David Heinemeir Hanson summed up how I feel about these things from my short-lived experience with them.
The short summary is that high-level components are a mirage: By the time they become interesting, their fitting will require more work than creating something from scratch.