As I got my code embedded in the Rails Core, I am proud to be recognized as Rails Core Contributor. Tarmo was one of the most active and really appreciable contributor in August Rails Hackfest. Because of this participation I paid very less attention to the other important things including the clients’ projects as well :D. Moreover in the middle of the month I needed to go out to give Rails Training to a really enthusiastic team of a Bangalore based company. It was lovely experience there, but I got out of touch from the Hackfest for those crucial 5 days. After returning back I tried to keep the pace again. I am desperately waiting for the result of the August Rails Hackfest which might get published in a day or two. The first prize is the Entry Pass to the RailsConfEurope. I am looking for submitting more patches now onwards but not with the same pace as of last month, coz I will not be participating in the Hackfest but keeping the spirit of Rails Core Contributor and the pay back policy of open source. I will also be releasing some rails plugins and probably a ruby gem as well this month.

Have you tried this..

Manik presenting SOLR

More photos here.

It was really a nice experience attending the meetup, sharing the ruby/rails thoughts and upcoming features. It helps keeping yourself up-to-date with the latest trends in this technology domain at least in Ruby and Rails(what else m talking except ruby :D). So, there were two presentations in the meetup — first Manik presented Full text search implementation for Rails using SOLR(it was really an interesting presentation, i got SOLR learning for free, thanks Manik :)), second I presented Some Advance Ruby Skills which i am going to share in this post too. Though in the first meetup I presented Caching on RubyOnRails but i haven’t posted here…

Some Advance Ruby Skills

1.) Everything is object

A popular phrase about Ruby, “Everything is Object”. At the root of the ruby it is Object. Everything we define in ruby is object. Even the classes we define are actually object. A class defined with class ClassName; end is actually an object of the class Class.
The Object keeps the record of whatever class or module we define. We can justify it as

2.) module_eval

Use module_eval to define instance and class methods of a class at runtime, when you are outside the class.
example 1
defining an instance method

example 2
defining a class method

example 3
another form of using module_eval
when method body is available as a String object

3.) alias_method

It is NOT method call delegation but insertion of customized functionalities on a specific method call.

4.) The Anonymous class

I just presented same a la this post

5.) send

Calling a method when method name is stored as a string object in a variable i.e. you can not see which method to call.
example 1
when method name is simply stored as a String object

example 2
making set method at runtime

example 3
this is interesting, when attribute name itself is send

well, don’t say “what if attribute name is __send__”

6.) The Method class

Methods of the class are objects of the Method class when retrieved with the method method and can be called with the method call.
example 1
anything we define with def-end is an object of the class Method

example 2
method can hold the object’s reference and associated instance variables

example 3
we are able to let this method object flow throughout the application code and let it available anywhere in the code.

7.) what is “self”

I just presented a la this post

8.) Single Method Delegation - using Forwardable

Allows you to delegate named method calls to other objects.

Notice the beauty of ruby here… The methods [], []= of a hash object are usually called as

BUT in the above delegation code we are calling them as(delegating the method call on them as)

9.) Full class Delegation - using Delegator

Extending an object(instance of Class) with the capabilities of another.

10.) SimpleDelegator

Write memory optimized code with SimpleDelegator…

RMagick requires ImageMagick and which further requires loads of dependencies already available to get installed and work properly. I was figuring out of those all, and thank god got a quite simple and elegant way to do all that in just three commands.
First you will have to install imagemagick then libmagick9-dev and then finally you can install rmagick.

Here are the commands…

Check out the plugin Validate Attributes
It provides a simple way to validate specific attribute(s) unlike the function valid? which collectively validates all the attributes.

For more information about the plugin regarding SVN repository, usage, example please visit here

If you like/dislike the plugin or if you have some issue/conflict, please do not forget to post a comment.

Hey guys, finally i have released the captcha plugin for public usage.

Check it out here

I have provided the source code of the ajax based drag drop tree in rubyonrails in one of my previous posts.
I found some of the people are getting problems to incorporate the code into their running applications so i am providing a sample rails application in which all the code for tree is already been placed well.
However the code written seems to be lagged behind the current trends followed in rails development coz of the fire growth of rails itself, but its simply that when i wrote this tree i was very new to rails so you may find the code looks like an old wine but still tastes good to go with.

CHECK THIS OUT…

Four simple steps to make the tree working…

1. DOWNLOAD the sample application. (let me know if you are getting any error in downloading the application.)
2. Create a test database in mysql or modify the file /config/database.yml according to the database and user u need.
3. Run the command

   ajaxtree> rake db:migrate

   from the application root.

4. Run the application server by running

   ajaxtree> ruby script/server

   and watch the working tree at http://localhost:3000

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Well, its a natural feel to get amazed out of every other delighted feature provided by RubyonRails and so appreciating it before actually talking about the feature in every second post. This line is for those people who have published that the worst thing about rails is that every rails programmer always just focus on the appreciation of rails and not on the framework per se. As i think the reason behind his(let say) perception is that he might not have tried rails and probably in all posts he have been through yet is that he would have got jealous out of gaining popularity of ruby on rails over jsp and asp and else, and therefore he might not be reading the whole post due to which he just remained untouched with the real appreciable features.
Anyhow, here is my post on a fantastic rails feature – Integration Testing…
RoR is the only web application framework which provides an inbuilt high level of testing. Out of the whole testing the most interesting real time testing is Integrations Testing where you can synchronize with the sessions too unlike in the Functional Testing.

Where exactly we should use Integration Testing ?
Whenever we need to test a series of functionalities which belongs to more than one controller , we should go for Integration Testing and not the Functional one.

Since the functional and unit testing are controller and model centric respectively, rails automatically creates the related functional and unit tests files. But as integrations testing is not confined in any criteria of a specific controller or model, we have to create the integrations file manually… Well, nothing is headache in rails. Its a simple pre-written script, all you need is to call that script with a name you like for whole story you wish to test in the integration test.

Here is a real example of Integration Test in Ruby on Rails

Considerations for test…
We will simply test

• signing in
• posting a new article
• deleting an article with xml_http_request (ajax post request)

Create the test file by running

ruby script/generate integration_test initial_features

Make sure that now you have the file /test/integration/initial_features_test.rb. Rails automatically appends _test at the end of the file name.

For god sake Lets start the testing now
Code for the file /test/integration/initial_features_test.rb

require "#{File.dirname(__FILE__)}/../test_helper"

class InitialFeaturesTest < ActionController::IntegrationTest
  fixtures :users, :articles

  def test_initial_features
     user = user_for_test
     user.try_to_signin
     user.signin
     user.post_an_article
     user.delete_an_article_with_xhr
  end

  def user_for_test
    open_session do |user|
      def user.try_to_signin
        assert_nil session[:user] # assert_session_has & _has_no have been deprecated
        get "user/signin"
        assert_response :success
        post "user/signin", :email=>"test failure string", :password=>"test failure string"
        assert_nil session[:user]
      end
      def user.signin
        assert_nil session[:user]
        user = users(:first)
        post "user/signin", :email=>user.email, :password=>user.password
        assert_not_nil session[:user]
        assert_response :redirect
        assert_redirected_to "articles/show"
        # now as the session is set once, we need not to signin again
      end
      def user.post_an_article
        get "articles/show"
        assert_response :success
        assert_template "articles/show"
        user = session[:user]
        articles_count = user.articles.length
        post_via_redirect "article/new", :title=>"Integration Tetsing in Rails", :description=>"another relishing rails feature"
        assert_template "articles/show"
        assert_equal articles_count.next, user.reload.articles.length
      end
      def user.delete_an_article_with_xhr
        user = session[:user]
        articles_count = user.articles.length
        xml_http_request "articles/delete", :id=>articles(:first).id
        assert_equal articles_count-1,user.reload.articles.length
      end
    end
  end

end

Although these are not that high level integration tests that rails can provide but its just an overview on the integration tests. I will explain them soon.

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Ruby on Rails is creating the storms in the web development all over the world. RoR is even capable to challenge Big Caps like Microsoft’s Asp.NET and so everything else in the specific area. World is continuously changing… The current WEB not solely depends on the old,encoded,paid,stressful technologies but the fresh,open-source,free,joyful technologies like Ruby on Rails are now creating the new highways to connect the WEB… What else ?.. Providing a beautiful atmosphere to web-developers. At the moment the whole world of web-development is cherishing the fresh breeze of RoR.
How much of INDIA is delighted by Ruby on Rails ?
Currently, the INDIAN side of Rails is a small community…but growing at a rapid rate. I am proudly working at VINSOL(New Delhi,India), a company full fledged working on rails.
VINSOL is currently holding some good clients for web-development and providing efficient services in Ruby on Rails.

Hello Everyone !!
I have released a captcha plugin Simple Captcha. It is really simple to implement, and provides a cool feature of multiple styles of images.

ruby script/plugin install http://svn.2750flesk.com/validates_captcha

Make sure that you can now see the directory vedor/plugins/validates_captcha.

Now run these commands from your application root to make the image and data directories

  ruby script/generate captcha store_directory
  ruby script/generate captcha image_directory

Here is the complete API for the usage of this plugin. I am describing the same idea as given in this API but in a bit more specific means.

Lets consider a model User in which we will implement the captcha.
Add the following code in the file app/models/user.rb

  class User < ActiveRecord::Base

    validates_captcha :if => :request_captcha_validation?
    attr_accessor :request_captcha_validation

    def request_captcha_validation?
      (self.request_captcha_validation==true)? true : false
    end

  end

Handle View and Controller

Add the code in the view inside your existing form.

  <% c = prepare_captcha :type => :image -%>
  <%= captcha_hidden_field c, 'user' %>
  <%= captcha_image_tag c %>
  <%= captcha_label 'user', 'Type in the text from the image above' %>
  <%= captcha_text_field 'user' %>

Your controller will look like

  def save
    # the line in bold represents that you need captcha validation.
    # if captcha validation is not required then remove this line from your controller.
    @user = User.new(params[:user])
    @user.request_captcha_validation = true
    @user.save
  end

However image is too noisy and it contains repeated strings.
To improve the quality of images generated by the plugin validates_captcha visit Here.

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