“FullCalendar” provides a full-sized, drag & drop calendar. It uses AJAX to fetch events on-the-fly for each month. It also supports an intuitive interface to manage events that spans over multiple days or weeks. It is visually customizable and exposes hooks for user-triggered events (like clicking or dragging an event).

I decided to give it a try and utilize its hooks for user triggered events within our Rails application. This small effort resulted in a barebone Rails app that might provide a good base for your project which require calendar, scheduling or appointment features. I called it fullcalendar_rails and it is now available on github with a working demo at http://fullcalendar.vinsol.com.

Feel free to give your valuable feedback. I hope you will find this useful.

Update: On popular demand, I have added recurring events functionality with daily, weekly and monthly frequencies. It also allows for exceptions to recurring events including delete and edit features.

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“Yahoo! Search BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is an initiative in Yahoo! Search to open up Yahoo!’s search infrastructure and enable third parties to build revolutionary search products leveraging their own data, content, technology, social graph, or other assets. This release includes Web, News, and Image Search as well as Spelling Suggestions.”

Some of the possible implementation of Yahoo! Boss may be finding related posts for your article, suggested tag/category for an article/query, correcting misspelled words by providing suggestions, fetching latest news on a topic dynamically, search over delicious tags, customized language search. Some of these have been tried and successfully implemented. An example is the TechCrunch’s Search Engine.

Here is a concise guide on how to use this new service in your next rails application.

Obtain API key

Get an application key from http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/.

Install BOSSMan Gem

BOSSMan is a gem for interaction with the Yahoo BOSS web service written by John Pignata. Install it using the following commands:

gem install gemcutter
gem tumble
gem install bossman

Usage

Put this in your environment.rb

require 'bossman'
include BOSSMan
BOSSMan.application_id = <Your Application ID>

Web Search

Use the following code to execute search over the web:

boss = Search.web("Apple Pie", { :count => 2, :filter => "-hate" })
puts "Number of results: #{boss.totalhits}"

boss.results.each do |result|
  puts "#{result.title}"
  puts "#{result.dispurl}"
  puts "#{result.abstract}"
end

# => Number of results: 2618888
# => <b>Apple</b> <b>pie</b> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
# => <b>en.wikipedia.org</b>/wiki/<wbr><b>Apple</b>_<b>pie</b>
# => English <b>apple</b> <b>pie</b> recipes go back to the time of Chaucer. <b>...</b> The basis of Dutch <b>apple</b> <b>pie</b> is a crust on the bottom and around the edges. <b>...</b>

boss = Search.web("Moon", { :count => 10, :type => "nonhtml,-pdf" })

boss.results.each do |result|
  puts "#{result.title}"
  puts "#{result.dispurl}"
  puts "#{result.abstract}"
end

# => BACKGROUND:
# => www.<b>radford.edu</b>/~rusmart/<wbr><b>moon</b>.doc
# => We noticed was that one of the scan lines took longer to scan the <b>moon</b> then any other. This occurred toward the middle of the <b>moon</b>. <b>...</b>

boss = Search.web("Star", { :sites => "wwe.com", :style=>'raw' })
boss.results.each do |result|
  puts "#{result.title}"
  puts "#{result.dispurl}"
  puts "#{result.abstract}"
end

# => John Cena - WWE: Raw
# => www.<b>wwe.com</b>/super<b>star</b>s/raw/<wbr>johncena
# => Official profile from WWE for the professional wrestler John Cena, who has been training since he was 15. Features lots of photos and video clips, including John ...

Apart from universal arguments mentioned at the end of this document, the following arguments can also be used:

Click here to view list of response fields returned by web search.

Images Search

For searching images on web, use the following code:

boss = Search.images("snow hills", { :dimensions => "large" })

boss.results.each do |result|
  puts "#{result.url}: #{result.abstract}"
end

# => http://www.amanita-photolibrary.co.uk/photo_library/BI_habitats/gb96_chiltern_hills_from_ivinghoe_snow_std.jpg: Copyright © 2004 Chiltern hills east from near Ivinghoe snow habitats landscapes British Isles

Click here for list of additional arguments that can be provided with image search.

Click here to view list of response fields returned by image search.

News Search

Yahoo! BOSS also provides news search capabilties.

boss = BOSSMan::Search.news("free shipping", { :age => "1d-2w", :orderby => "date", :count => 1})

boss.results.each do |result|
  puts "#{result.title} [from #{result.source}]"
  puts "#{result.abstract}"
end
# => Wal-Mart announces weekly price cuts for holidays [from USA Today]
# => Wal-Mart said it will cut prices this holiday season for a week at a time on thousands of items, from bananas to board games. The first group of cuts hit Wednesday.

Click here for list of additional arguments that can be provided with news search.

Click here to view list of response fields returned by news search.

Spelling Search

Correct your misspelled words using its spelling suggestion feature:

boss = BOSSMan::Search.spelling("acknowlegment")
puts boss.suggestion # => acknowledgment

Site Explorer

You can also search for the pages from other sites linking into your site pages.

links = Search.se_inlink("http://mail.yahoo.com", :count => 2)
links.results.map { |result| p result.url }
# => http://www.aol.com/
# => http://groups.yahoo.com/

For displays a list of all pages belonging to a domain in the Yahoo! index, use se_pagedata method provided.

links = Search.se_pagedata("twitter.com", :count => 1)
links.results.map { |result| p "#{result.url} - #{result.abstract}" }
# => http://twitter.com/ - Use Twitter to send status updates (tweets) through your cell phone, instant messenger, or via the Web, and notify friends and followers of the little things <b>...</b>

Universal Arguments for Web, Images and News

Following is the list of most commonly used arguments with web, image and news search. For more comprehensive list click here

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While implementing caching in a recent rails project I came across some typical caching issues. In a lot of pages the content is same for all users but certain components in them have user specific actions. As an example, I have a page listing all public messages that users have posted(similar to the public timeline in twitter) but actions on those messages are user specific(eg: only owner or admin can delete a message). Also, most of these actions use ajax and the rails authenticity token in them also gets cached resulting in subsequent failures if the session changes. Another issue was that the timestamps in most pages is fuzzy and they become irrelevant if a page gets cached for too long. I could have created separate caches for each user but if the user base really grows managing the caches would become a nightmare and that would still not solve the authenticity token and the timestamp problem. The simplest solution was to use JavaScript, more specifically jQuery.

I have been a big fan of jQuery since I started using it about a year and a half ago and try to use it in all my projects. There is an excellent Rails plugin called jRails that replaces Prototype with jQuery and provides all the default Rails helpers for JavaScript making jQuery even more tempting to use. The examples I use below all use jQuery.

1. Handling User Specific Components

Taking the delete action as explained in the example above, the code in the cached view looks something like this:

<% if logged_in? %>
<li class="delete <%= 'only_' + (message.owner.login) + '_delete_allowed' %>">
  <%= link_to_remote "Delete",
    :url => user_message_path(current_user, message)
    :method => :delete,
    :confirm => "Are you sure you wish to delete this message?",
    :html => { :title => "Delete Post" } %>
</li>
<% end %>

This will create an li element with class “delete” and “only_kratos_delete_allowed” if the username of the message owner is “kratos”

In the non-cached part of the view I have the following code:

<% if logged_in? %>
  <% if current_user.is_admin? %>
    <%= javascript_tag "$(document).ready(function() { MessageView.removeInvalidDeteteButtons('only_#{current_user.login}_delete_allowed', 'true'); });" %>
  <% else %>
    <%= javascript_tag "$(document).ready(function() { MessageView.removeInvalidDeteteButtons('only_#{current_user.login}_delete_allowed'); });" %>
  <% end %>
<% end %>

If the current user is an admin I pass the JavaScript function an additional parameter.

In the application.js file I have the following code:

var MessageView = {
  removeInvalidDeteteButtons: function(element_class, admin) {
    if (admin == undefined)
    {
      $('.delete').each(function() { if (!$(this).hasClass(element_class)) { $(this).remove(); } });
    }
  }
}

If the second parameter is passed(in the case of an admin) the function does nothing, else it iterates over all li elements with class “delete” and removes all elements that do not also have, in this case, the “only_kratos_delete_allowed” class.

2. Handling Rails Authenticity Token

This part describes how to take care of the authenticity token problem:

I added the following code to the layout:

<%= javascript_tag "var AUTH_TOKEN = #{form_authenticity_token.inspect};" if protect_against_forgery? %>

This code creates a JavaScript variable named “AUTH_TOKEN” that contains the current authentication token. Since this section is not cached it always get the correct token.

Next I added the following code to application.js:

$(document).ajaxSend(function(event, request, settings) {
  if (settings.type == 'get' || settings.type == 'GET' || typeof(AUTH_TOKEN) == "undefined") return;
  var authTokenRegExp = /authenticity_token=\w{40}/
  settings.data = settings.data || "";
  if (authTokenRegExp.test(settings.data))
  {
    settings.data=settings.data.replace(authTokenRegExp, "authenticity_token=" + encodeURIComponent(AUTH_TOKEN));
  }
  else
  {
    settings.data += (settings.data ? "&" : "") + "authenticity_token=" + encodeURIComponent(AUTH_TOKEN);
  }
})

This code is a slight modification of the code posted here. ajaxSend is jQuery function that is executed before every ajax request is sent and I use it here to replace or append the authenticity token to the request, unless the request is GET or the AUTH_TOKEN variable is not defined.

3. Handling Fuzzy Timestamps

The code for timestamps in the cached view looks like this:

<span>
  <%= process_message_body_timestamp(message) %>
</span>

And the helper code is:

def process_message_body_timestamp(message)
  link_to "#{message.created_at}", show_message_url(message), :class => "timestamps"
end

I put the following code in the layout(non-cached):

<%= javascript_tag "$(document).ready(function() { CustomDate.datify(#{get_custom_date_arguments}) });" %>

The get_custom_date_arguments helper is defined in application helper and returns a string containing the current time arguments needed for the JavaScript function:

def get_custom_date_arguments
  current_time = Time.zone.now
  "#{current_time.year},#{current_time.month-1},#{current_time.day},#{current_time.hour},#{current_time.min},#{current_time.sec}"
end

I put the following code in application.js:

var CustomDate = {
  datify: function(current_utc_year,
                   current_utc_month,
                   current_utc_day,
                   current_utc_hour,
                   current_utc_minute,
                   current_utc_second) {
    $('.timestamps').each(function() {
      $(this).html(CustomDate.humane_date($(this).html(),
                                          current_utc_year,
                                          current_utc_month,
                                          current_utc_day,
                                          current_utc_hour,
                                          current_utc_minute,
                                          current_utc_second)).removeClass('timestamps')
    })
  },

  humane_date: function(date_str, current_utc_year, current_utc_month, current_utc_day, current_utc_hour, current_utc_minute, current_utc_second) {
    var time_formats = [
                        [60, 'less than a minute ago'],
                        [90, '1 minute'], // 60*1.5
                        [3600, 'minutes', 60], // 60*60, 60
                        [5400, '1 hour'], // 60*60*1.5
                        [86400, 'hours', 3600], // 60*60*24, 60*60
                        [129600, '1 day'], // 60*60*24*1.5
                        [604800, 'days', 86400], // 60*60*24*7, 60*60*24
                        [907200, '1 week'], // 60*60*24*7*1.5
                        [2628000, 'weeks', 604800], // 60*60*24*(365/12), 60*60*24*7
                        [3942000, '1 month'], // 60*60*24*(365/12)*1.5
                        [31536000, 'months', 2628000], // 60*60*24*365, 60*60*24*(365/12)
                        [47304000, '1 year'], // 60*60*24*365*1.5
                        [3153600000, 'years', 31536000], // 60*60*24*365*100, 60*60*24*365
                        [4730400000, '1 century'], // 60*60*24*365*100*1.5
                      ];

    var time = ('' + date_str).replace(/-/g,"/").replace(/[TUTC]/g," "),
        dt = new Date

    dt.setUTCFullYear(current_utc_year, current_utc_month, current_utc_day)
    dt.setUTCHours(current_utc_hour, current_utc_minute, current_utc_second)

    var seconds = ((dt - new Date(time) + (dt.getTimezoneOffset() * 60000)) / 1000),
        token = ' ago',
        prepend = '',
        i = 0,
        format;

    if (seconds < 0) {
      seconds = Math.abs(seconds);
      token = '';
      prepend = 'in ';
    }

    while (format = time_formats[i++]) {
      if (seconds < format[0]) {
        if (format.length == 2) {
          return (i>1?prepend:'') + format[1] + (i > 1 ? token : ''); // Conditional so we don't return Just Now Ago
        }
        else {
            return prepend + Math.round(seconds / format[2]) + ' ' + format[1] + (i > 1 ? token : '');
        }
      }
    }

    // overflow for centuries
    if(seconds > 4730400000) {
      return Math.round(seconds / 4730400000) + ' Centuries' + token;
    }

    return date_str;
  }
}

The datify function iterates over all timestamps(elements with class “timestamps”) and replaces them with fuzzy timestamps. The humane_date function(yanked from here) generates the actual fuzzy timestamps.

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This is my very first blog post and so I though it should be about a tool that is indispensable for me – Git. I started using git about 10 months ago and looking back I can’t imagine how I managed to get work done without it. The purpose of this post however is not to sing git’s praises, there are lots of good articles on the web that do so much better than I ever could. Instead, I wish to share the work-flow I use on my projects. I developed this work-flow by trial and error over the months and is currently the most efficient and productive approach I can think of. If any experienced git users happen to stumble upon this post, please do provide suggestions/alternatives to help me improve my process.

The project I am currently working on requires me to maintain two parallel deployment branches. One is a “production branch” which is deployed on the live server and the other is a “development branch” which is deployed on a staging server. All enhancements and feature additions are done in the “development branch” and the only changes made in the “production branch” are production bug fixes that need urgent attention. Once the “development branch” is deemed stable it is merged into “production branch” and deployed.

I’ve divided my work-flow into two parts. The first part is a generic approach which I follow in all projects, the second part is specific to the case mentioned above and discusses how I manage the two branches using git. Although I mention “Rails” in the title of this post, the work-flow I define below is not “Rails” specific and can be applied to any project where multiple deployment branches need to be maintained. I assume the reader has a basic understanding of git and is comfortable with git branches. There are lots of configuration settings in git which help you setup things like you git author name, email and colors for git commands etc. There are two I would like to mention here though:

git config --global push.default "tracking"

This command tells git to perform a push only to the tracked remote branch in which you are currently working.

git config --global pack.threads "0"

This command tells git to auto-detect the number of threads to use for packing repositories and is useful when working on a machine with more than one core.

1. Generic Workflow

a. Start with a clean master branch.

git checkout master
git pull

You now have a clean master branch. Never work directly in the master branch, instead make all changes to a local branch.

b. Create a local branch.

git branch my_local_branch
git checkout my_local_branch

or do both in one command:

git checkout -b my_local_branch

This creates a new local branch named “my_local_branch” and switches to it. You can now perform all changes in this branch. One good practice to follow when using git is to commit often and in small chunks. This gives you finer control on the work done and allows you to fix mistakes without losing other work. Once you are satisfied, all those smaller commits can be consolidated in a single meaningful commit.

c. Merge with master branch.

git checkout master
git pull

if new changes were pulled do the following:

git checkout my_local_branch
git rebase master

A rebase will apply the newly pulled changes in the master branch to your local branch and then apply local branch changes on top of that. This will ensure a clean merge with master. Conflicts are very common during a rebase and will need to be resolved before you can have a successful rebase. You can also pass the “-i” option to rebase to perform an interactive rebase which will alllow you to squash multiple commits into one if you so require. Once you are finished with the rebase do the following:

git checkout master
git merge my_local_branch
git push

Once you are satisfied with the push you can delete the local branch:

git branch -d my_local_branch

2. Managing Multiple Deployment Branches

The master branch is set as the branch for production deployment and a new remote branch is created for development phase. Since I use capistrano for project deployment I set it up to have three separate tasks: “production”, “production_staging” and “development_staging”. The “production” and “production_staging” tasks use the master branch and the “development_staging” task uses the newly created remote branch. For both the remote branches you must follow the above work-flow i.e: never work directly in the branches themselves, instead create local branches to work in.

a. Create a new remote branch.

First create a new remote branch from our master branch:

git push origin master:refs/heads/development_phase_1

b. Track the remote branch.

Track the newly created remote branch:

git checkout --track -b development_phase_1 origin/development_phase_1

This will create a new local branch named “development_phase_1″ that is tracking the remote “development_phase_1″ branch. Everyone who needs to work on development branch tracks this remote “development_phase_1″ branch and pushes to it. The only pushes to master branch are production fixes.

c. Merge the development branch with the master branch.

Once work on development branch is finished we are ready to merge the two branches:

git checkout development_phase_1
git rebase master
git checkout master
git merge development_phase_1
git push
git branch -d development_phase_1
git push origin :heads/development_phase_1

Normally a rebase is not a good idea in a remotely tracked branch but since our phase is finished and we will create a new remote branch for the next phase, I do so here. Alternatively, I could do a force push for the remote development branch and everyone working on it would need to remove and retrack it again. The second last line removes our locally tracked development branch and the last one removes it from the remote repository.

Final Thoughts

As I mentioned before, the above presented work-flow is not perfect by any means but it works for me. I would appreciate feedback from anyone who reads this and has some suggestions/recommendations to help me manage my projects better.

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Following the DRY (don’t repeat yourself)  principle, I am just putting the links of best tutorial (in my opinion) for every operating system.

Mac	Official Rails Tutorials from Apple Developer Website – http://developer.apple.com/tools/rubyonrails.html
Leopard	This is one of the most comprehensive tutorial on installing rails on Mac OS X 10.5(leopard)  http://hivelogic.com/articles/2008/02/ruby-rails-leopard
Ubuntu	Installing Rails on Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn http://www.urbanpuddle.com/articles/2007/05/09/install-ruby-on-rails-on-ubuntu-feisty-fawn
Vista	http://www.michaelwales.com/ruby-on-rails/installing-ruby-on-rails-on-windows-vista
Windows XP	http://agilo.us/2009/03/15/rails-on-windows/
Windows 2003	http://kosmaczewski.net/2005/11/25/how-to-install-ruby-on-rails-in-windows-2003/
RedHat	http://www.redhat.com/magazine/025nov06/features/ruby/
Solaris	http://www.nowastedmoves.com/2009/geekery/installing-ruby-on-rails-on-solaris-10-1008-2/ Also check out cskruby optimized for the Sun Solaris Platform http://cooltools.sunsource.net/coolstack/
CentOS	http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/178186
Virtual PC	http://www.grapethinking.com/installing-ubuntu-feisty-fawn-on-virtual-pc-to-run-ruby-on-rails Yes, I know this is not a operating system

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Yes, We are going to Rails Conf this year.  Manik, Gaurav and Rishav(subject to his getting the visa) will be attending the RailsConf 2009. Are you going to be there too? Drop us comment, an e-mail , follow Vinsol on Twitter. Let’s get together for some ruby talk, beer and a beverage.

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I like the basic idea behind defining some sort of maturity model for rails but I don’t think RMM or anything like that should be modeled on CMM.

After spending  hours looking at views of many people regarding RMM in blogosphere, twitter and rails business google group , I concluded  that we might need some open system instead of something like RMM.

Following is an aggregation of views by various people who feel the need of a some model but dont like the idea of auditors, closed systems or certifications :

For time being , I am calling it Open Maturity Model and trying to draft some  basic principles and guidelines.

So, What is Open Maturity Model ?

For Developers

1. Roadmap for Rails developers to adopt best practices defined by the community.

2. Community giving newcomers a more-or-less official set of guidelines for how to produce quality work. Having some sort of guideline from a trustworthy source is becoming more difficult.

3. It will not take fun out of rails or kills innovation. It will just make the rails community stronger and will attract more people who are not yet sure about rails.

4. Judge yourself , instead of an expensive auditor judging you – if you are serious about doing quality work, open maturity model will give you a good point to start with.

5.  Let experienced developers share their experience on a common wiki in addition to blog posts about their experiences all on their own.

For Clients

1. A no nonsense, no lingo system to help a prospective client to choose a ROR shop. Give them more than just testimonials , a blog post, or a portfolio. The intent is to establish a minimum standard of operational efficiency so that clients who hire based on it can be sure they aren’t dealing with complete idiots.

2. Let’s share Business Knowledge – most development shops are busy coding and spend little to no effort on marketing or business development. Groups like rails business is a good start in this direction.

For Process

1. XP , SCRUM or whatever. One size doesnt fit all. At Vinsol, we follow a process which has evolved after lot of not-so-successful iterations. It works for us and we want to improve and share it with community. But we don’t want to call our process or anybody else’s practice “The Rails Way”. Again , a community website  where companies can register and document the level of process they implement allowing for clients and other companies to provide feedback so they could get ranked.

2. Instead of wasting resources proving that we are level 4 or level 5 by an external auditor, lets just focus on why we are in the business – writing good quality code, having fun doing it and building awesome applications.

3. Continous improvement is very important for growth and survival of many rails companies with thousands of rails shops opening around the world.

Certifications

1. Replace open source projects with certification – open source can play the role of  certification.  Have you ever contributed or tried to contribute  to rails core ? or, show us an interesting/useful open source project you started, or point to bugs that you submitted.

Looking for ideas and suggestions.

Update :  Matthew Ford has started a rails manifesto document in github. Please add your best practices here – http://gist.github.com/65183

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You can ask me if you have any doubt.

Error occurred specially when dealing with some image handling, or with attachment_fu.

The cause of this error is image_science 1.1.3 . Add :processor => “Rmagick” to has_attachment options and get rid of this problem.

Enjoy!!!

Also if you have 2-3 or more apps running in production then managing such exception mails is also a big headache. In such case one have to keep track of many things like which type of error is resolved/unresolved for which project etc… .

So, here is a good news for those who don’t know about Hoptoad. It is an hosted service by thoughtbot which receives your exceptions, notify you once per error type by email and keep track(resolved/unresolved, count etc…) of your errors on project basis.

By now its a free service. I’m gonna use this as my next project goes live. What abt you??? ;-P