Vinsol - Leading Ruby on Rails Development and Consulting Firm in India

Meet Vinsol at RailsConf 2010

kapil — Fri, 21 May 2010 12:44:46 +0000

Vinsol will be attending the RailsConf 2010 (June 7 – June 10).
Manik, Rishav and Gaurav will be there in Baltimore learning cool stuff and interacting with some cool rails developers. If you happen to be around, we would like to meet you! Drop us a comment, an e-mail , or catch Vinsol on Twitter.

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Upgrading Restful Authentication Plugin for Rails 3

kapil — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 06:57:59 +0000

Here at Vinsol, we love to be on cutting edge of Ruby on Rails.

When I tried to use restful authentication generator plugin for Rails 3 app, I got ‘Could not find generator authenticated’ error. Generator system in Rails3 is now replaced with Thor which is a scripting framework that replaces rake and sake. Rails 2.x.x finds generators in generators/ or rails_generators/ directory of a gem or a plugin, but the new Thor based system looks for lib/generators/ or lib/rails_generators/ directory.

I forked the original restful-authentication plugin and did the necessary changes to make it compatible with Rails 3.0.0.beta3. Updated code is available at http://github.com/Satish/restful-authentication and the original project page is here.

Comments welcome.

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Introduction to Active Scaffold Part I

payal — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 11:12:32 +0000

I originally wrote this article for fifth issue of Rails Magazine. In addition to print version, you can download all issues of Rails Magazine in pdf for free. Not only that, they also allow authors to self-publish their articles on blogs etc. after 30 days of issue release. I hope rails beginners will particularly find this post useful.

In this two-part series, I will trying to explain Active Scaffold from the ground up using a real world example.

Introduction

ActiveScaffold is a rails plugin that generates an ajaxified management interface based on the database tables. It is an incredibly powerful, configuration-driven framework that automatically provides all CRUD operations. It is easily and highly configurable. Let us have a walkthrough of active scaffold with details on configurability and customization options it provides using a sample application. The demo application which we are going to develop is a management site for a sports club.

Configuration

Here our example is about building an administration panel for a sports club “mysportsclub”. It consists of sports, players, coaches and equipments. There are various kinds of sports in the club. Each player can have membership for any number of sports. Each sport will have one trained coach for guidance and various equipments which will be issued to the players. Let’s begin with the implementation of “mysportsclub”

Let’s setup our rails application “mysportsclub”. Run the following commands:

rails mysportsclub

Install the latest version of the plugin which is compatible with latest stable rails (2.3.x):

script/plugin install git://github.com/activescaffold/active_scaffold.git

Note: Latest active scaffold version works only with rails version higher than 2.2. Also, install render_component plugin since it is now removed from rails 2.3 but used by active scaffold.

Layout:

This is the standard active scaffold layout admin.html.erb:




   My Sports Club
   <%= javascript_include_tag :defaults %>
   <%= active_scaffold_includes %>


   <%= yield %>

Model/Migrations:

script\generate model sport name:string description:text coach_id:integer
script\generate model player name:string date:birth_date
script\generate model equipment name:string sport_id:integer
script\generate model coach name:string
script\generate model players_sport player_id:integer sport_id:integer

rake db:migrate

Add the following code to the respective models. This code defines the associations for the various models:

sports.rb

class Sport < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :coach
  has_many	:equipments, :dependent => :destroy

  has_many	:players_sports, :dependent => :destroy
  has_many	:players, :through	=> :players_sports

  validates_presence_of	:name
  validates_uniqueness_of	:name
end

coach.rb

class Coach < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one	:sport
  validates_presence_of	:name
end

player.rb

class Player < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many	:players_sports, :dependent => :destroy
  has_many	:sports, :through	=> :players_sports

  validates_presence_of	:name
end

equipment.rb

class Equipment < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to	:sport
  validates_presence_of	:name
end

players_sport.rb

class PlayersSport < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to	:player
  belongs_to	:sport
end

Note I

Don’t forget to add the plural form of “equipment” as “equipments” in the config/intializers/inflections.rb.

 ActiveSupport::Inflector.inflections do |inflect|
   inflect.plural "equipment", "equipments"
 end

Active Scaffold will throw an exception if we do not define the above inflection rule. The controller generated for the ‘Equipment’ model will be ‘EquipmentsController’. But since active scaffold generates the controller name automatically using its inbuilt function: “active_scaffold_controller_for(class_name_of_the_model)”. It will not be able to guess the correct controller name and would throw an exception while we try to access the nested equipments:

Controllers:

script\generate controller sports
script\generate controller coaches
script\generate controller equipments
script\generate controller players

Add the following code to your controllers:

sports_contrpller.rb

class SportsController < ApplicationController
  active_scaffold :sport do |config|
    config.columns = [:name, :description, :coach, :equipments]
  end
end

coaches_controller.rb

class CoachesController < ApplicationController
  active_scaffold :coach do |config|
    config.columns = [:name, :sport]
  end
end

players_controller.rb

class PlayersController < ApplicationController
  active_scaffold :player do |config|
    config.columns = [:name]
  end
end

equipments_controller.rb

class EquipmentsController < ApplicationController
  active_scaffold :equipment	do |config|
    config.columns = [:name, :sport]
  end
end

players_sports_controller.rb

class PlayersSportsController < ApplicationController
  active_scaffold :players_sport do |config|
    config.columns = [:sport, :player]
  end
end

routes.rb

map.root :controller => 'sports', :action => 'index'

map.resources :sports, :active_scaffold => true
map.resources :players, :active_scaffold => true
map.resources :players_sports, :active_scaffold => true
map.resources :coaches, :active_scaffold => true
map.resources :equipments, :active_scaffold => true

The above code will generate a complete interface for our club.

Following code for your layout will provide a navigation bar in your view.

admin.html.erb



  
    
    <%= stylesheet_link_tag 'admin.css' %>
    <%= javascript_include_tag :defaults %>
    <%= active_scaffold_includes %>
    <%= "Admin" %>
  
  
    
      
        Agent Website Admin Panel
        
          
            
              <%= link_to 'Sports', sports_path %>
            
            
              <%= link_to 'Players', players_path %>
            
            
              <%= link_to 'Coaches', coaches_path %>
            
            
              <%= link_to 'Equipments', equipments_path %>
            
            
              <%= link_to 'PlayersSports', playerssports_path %>
            
          
          
          
        
      
      
        
          <%= yield %>

There are various customization options available. As per our requirement we can customize the columns, links, fields, actions etc. We would discuss them in the concluding part of the series.

Payal Gupta is working working as software engineer with Vinsol. She has over two years of industry
experience.

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SSL checklist for Ruby on Rails Applications

sid — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:59:02 +0000

Cross posted from darthsid

The purpose of SSL is to provide a reasonable level of protection against eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks. Although SSL provides a greater level of security, it introduces a lot of overheads and hence should be used sparingly. Two of the most common places to use SSL is for payment transactions and user registration/login.
This post intentionally focuses only on the Rails application as there are numerous post on the net for SSL setup on the server. Enabling SSL in a Rails application is really trivial and there are just a few points that need your attention..

1. Enabling SSL
a. Install the ssl_requirment plugin:

./script/plugin install git://github.com/rails/ssl_requirement.git

b. Include it in your application_controller.rb:

include SslRequirement

c. Specify actions that require SSL in their respective controllers. For eg. my session controller has the following line:

ssl_required  :new, :create if Rails.env.production?

d. Add the following line in development.rb to bypass SSL in development mode:

SslRequirement.disable_ssl_check = true

2. Gotcha’s
a. Include all submit actions in requirement
Any action that processes form data from a SSL page should also be added to the requirement. In the above example, the form on the login page(new action) is processed by the create action and hence it is also included in the requirement.
b. Ajax actions
Ajax actions on a SSL page should also use SSL and must be included in the requirement. At times you do not have a body for the Ajax action and it is rendered using it’s respective RJS template. In such cases create an empty action and include it in the ssl_requirement.
c. Mixed content
A lot of browsers show you a “Mixed Content Warning” if your SSL page references non-SSL assets. IE displays a scary looking confirmation dialog while Firefox and Chrome show a exclamation in the url bar. Any relative paths(eg. using _path helpers) on the page will automatically use the https protocol but any absolute paths(eg. using _url helper or by manually specifying as a string in link_to) will need to be changed to use https.
d. Asset host issue
If you are using Rails asset hosts and do not have a SSL certificate that supports wildcard(for subdomains), then you need to disable them for the SSL pages. Just add the following code to your production.rb:

ActionController::Base.asset_host = Proc.new { |source, request|
  if request.ssl?
    &quot;#{request.protocol}#{request.host_with_port}&quot;
  else
    &quot;#{request.protocol}assets%d.yourdomain.com&quot; % (source.hash % 4)
  end
}

Replace “yourdomain” with your apps domain and “4″ with the number of asset hosts required.

The above should ensure that you have a proper SSL setup without displaying warnings to the user.

Ruby on Rails Caching And JavaScript Techniques Cross posted from darthsid While implementing caching in a recent...
11 Things to Consider Before Deploying Your Ruby on Rails Application At VinSol, we have been developing and deploying Rails applications...

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Jquery Full Calendar with Ruby on Rails

Akhil Bansal — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 12:17:25 +0000

Contrary to popular belief, working on a client project gives us a generous margin of creativity and explore innovative solutions. Take the example of a recent project I was working on. The client required a collaboration-based calendar module for their application similar to Google Calendar. Initially we started developing it from scratch , but then, we found an awesome Jquery plugin.

“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.

Ruby on Rails Caching And JavaScript Techniques Cross posted from darthsid While implementing caching in a recent...

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11 Things to Consider Before Deploying Your Ruby on Rails Application

kapil — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:13:46 +0000

At VinSol, we have been developing and deploying Rails applications for more than four years. During this period, we have identified some best practices that we prefer to follow while deploying rails application to production server.

Below is the checklist of these practices:

1. Ensure that NS records and MX records are changed if they need to be changed

Changing nameservers will point the domain to the hosting server, and changing MX records will redirect incoming mails to the mail server. As a very first step, we should make sure that name servers of the domain are set to be the correct one. Changing MX record is a must if our application is parsing incoming mails or we wants to use other mail services for e-mail exchange, for example Gmail.

2. Ensure some backup mechanism in place for both data as well as user uploaded content like images/documents etc.

Since production data is very critical, we must setup backup mechanism. It could be some type of scheduled task that takes periodic backup of all critical data, Or it could be some type of backup service provided by hosting company. When we talk about critical production data, it includes production DB, content generated by application users like images, documents, etc.

3. Ensure database indexes

We might have done development without having proper database indexes, but we should avoid going to production without them. Adding indexes might slow down insert queries a bit but it increases the performance of read queries. It applies when application in production has percentage of read operations much more than write operations.

4. Enable your slow query log

This is specific to MySQL. Enabling slow query log allows MySQL to log slow running queries to a file. And this log can be used to find queries that take a long time to execute and are therefore candidates for optimization.

5. Ensure exception capturing is in place

We might want to be notified when something bad happens to our application. There are several hosted services available who receive and track exceptions, for example Hoptoadapp.com, GetExceptional.com etc… Either we can choose one from these hosted services or we can use “exception notifier” plugin.

6. Ensure adding entries for cron/scheduled jobs

Most of the applications have some functionality/jobs that need to be run periodically, for example generating invoices, sending newsletters etc. In most cases these jobs are done by a rake task. We should make sure that we have added such jobs to cron or similar program.

7. Monitoring important processes

To ensure that our site is up 24×7 we need to ensure that all processes that our application needs are up. There can be many processes like MySQL, Mongrel, Apache etc.. These processes are very important as our application directly depends on them. For example if MySQL process get killed accidentally, our application would not be able to connect to MySQL and will start throwing exceptions.

We can choose any of the available monitoring tools like God, Monit, 24×7 etc…

8. Ensure confidential data filtering

We would never like to leak/share confidential information of our application users. We should make sure that none of the user’s confidential data like SSN, Credit card info, password are being written to log files. We might not have paid much attention on this while developing the application.

9. Rotate log files

Once our site is up and running, every single request write some text in log file. And hence size of the log file keeps on increasing. Larger log files can put us in trouble if we get it beyond certain size. Its difficult to manage these log files, as larger files need more memory to open and need more time to download. In one of the rescue project we did , the log file size was 3GB.

We would recommend having logrotate setup for the application.

10. Setup Asset Host

Setting up asset hosts can reduce loading time by 50% or more. We must setup asset hosts for our application. Once asset hosts are all set, our static files will be delivered via asset hosts for example asset1.hostname.com, asset2.hostname.com

11. Clearing up stale sessions

We should make sure we should not left any stale session on the server. If our application is using DB or file system as session store, we must add a schedule task to delete stale sessions.

These are some of the points we have identified from our past experience and we might be missing some. Feel free to always add them as comments, and I’ll keep this post updated.

Akhil is a senior software engineer working with Vinsol for last 5 years. He is an inhouse deployment ninja.

We also provide affordable rails deployment services.

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10 little known ways to find a ruby on rails team for your next project

kapil — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:48:47 +0000

Everytime we talk to our clients, we find that they are not aware of lot of options through which they can find a good rails developer. Usually clients go to odesk and other freelance websites to find rails developers. Following are 10 more ways to find rails company/developer for your next dream project :

Post your requirements on twitter with hashtag #ruby #ror #rails
Go to Railsdevelopment.com - its a directory of rails companies. You can search for specific services with your budget ranges.
Working with Rails – Again a directory of rails developers and companies. You can browse through specific industry categories.
Local Ruby Meetups – The most passionate guys are always there in local meetups. For eg: we have delhi ruby meetups and you can find all local meetups in australia here
RubyJobs – Post a job on rubyjobs or rubyinside job board. There are some country specific ruby job boards.
RubyonRails wiki – There is a wiki of ruby on rails companies.
Open Source Contributions – Sites like http://agilewebdevelopment.com/ gives you a directory of rails plugins. Open Source contributions such as releasing a Rails plugin, or fixing bugs on projects , or Rails itself, demonstrates exposure to other Rails code bases and quality of a developer. Search for developer name in github.
Conferences – Conferences are good way to find quality rails developer or team.
Facebook – Few people post jobs on facebook.

Few tips :

Don’t hire someone that doesn’t know Rails at all. Yes, we have seen some people doing it.
Ask for references of previous clients if possible in your country.
Look for someone who values the money you are paying them and will make your investment in them provide a valuable return.
A personal Rails blog is a good indicator of developer’s interests , experience and resume.

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Integrating Yahoo! BOSS with your ruby on rails application

amit — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:08:05 +0000

What is Yahoo! BOSS? Yahoo developer website cites it as:

“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:

Parameters	Values/Description
`:filter`	Filter out adult or hate content Syntax: `:filter => "-hate, -porn"`
`:type`	Specifies document formats (pdf, msoffice,etc)
:view	Syntax: `:view => "view1,view2"`, etc `:view => "keyterms"` will retrieve related words and phrases for each search result. `:view => "searchmonkey_feed"` will retrieve structured data markup, if available, for the search result in dataRSS format. `:view => "searchmonkey_rdf"` will retrieve structured data markup, if available, for the search result in rdf format. `:view => "delicious_toptags"` will retrieve the top public delicious tags for a document and the counts associated with each tag `:view => "delicious_saves"` will retrieve the number of times a document was saved in delicious `:view => "language"` identifies the language of the document
:abstract	`:abstract => "long"` will retrieve and display an abstract of a web document up to 300 characters. This expanded abstract provides the requestor with a larger piece of information to work from in a web search query. The default for abstract is an abbreviated description.

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

Fields	Details
`count`	Indicates how many results to show per page. The value shown in results is the smaller of the default or explicit “count” request argument value or the actual number of results in the response. The result set will include the requested “count” unless there are fewer than that number of matching documents.
`totalhits`	A result count that reflects no duplicates. The totalhits value is an approximation, and its value may change depending on the requested “start” and “count” values, because the approximation is adjusted as more exact result URLs are processed. A normal use for totalhits is to determine how many pages of results to offer in search result navigation. Since totalhits is an approximation, and the value may change as “start” increases on successive result pages, the result page navigation may need to be adjusted as a user browses result pages.
`deephits`	It returns an approximate count that reflects duplicate documents and all documents from a host. deephits, therefore, is invariably equal to or larger than TotalHits. The deephits value is normally used as an information display on a search result page, reporting how many total documents matched the search terms.
`abstract`	Abstract with keywords highlighted with HTML tags. abstract=long will retrieve and display an abstract of a web document up to 300 characters. This expanded abstract provides the requester with a larger piece of information to work from in a web search query.
`title`	Title with keywords highlighted with HTML tags
`url`	URL of result
`clickurl`	Returns a navigation URL that leads to the target URL for each result. A clickurl might lead through a redirect server, which provides Yahoo! with important usage data from search result sets.
`dispurl`	Returns the URLs of documents matching the query result. Use this field only for display purposes on result pages. To direct search users to the target document, use the clickurl value
`size`	Returns the document’s size in bytes
`date`	Returns date in YYYY/MM/DD format
`keyterms`	When `:view => "keyterms"` is used in query string the keyterms section is included in the response. This includes a list of related words and phrases with the `term` subheadings.
`searchmonkey_feed`	Using this field will retrieve structured data markup, if available, for the search result in dataRSS format.
`searchmonkey_rdf`	Using this field will retrieve structured data markup, if available, for the search result in RDF format.
`delicious_toptags`	Retrieves the top public delicious tags for a document and the counts associated with each tag.
`delicious_saves`	The number of times a document was saved in delicious.
`language`	The language of the document.

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.

Parameters	Values	Description
`:filter`	`yes` (default) or `no`	Whether or not to activate the Offensive Content Reduction filter. If set to yes, content marked as offensive is omitted from results.
`:dimensions`	`all` (default), `small`, `medium`, `large`, `wallpaper`, `widewallpaper`	Small images are generally thumbnail or icon sized. Medium sized images are average sized; usually not exceeding an average screen size. Large images are screen size or larger. Size pairs other than those listed are ignored.
`:refererurl`	URL, no default	Search for this URL. Depending on other query restrictions, returns all image objects with this referring URL. Example: http://www.foo.com/~foo/images.htm
`:url`	URL, no default	Search for this URL. Returns this exact image result. Example: http://www.foo.com/~foo/images/mydog.gif

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

Field Name	Description
`totalhits, deephits`	Number of listings that match the query parameters.
`abstract`	Description of image
`clickurl`	URL to click to view image
`filename`	Filename of image
`size`	Size of image file
`format`	Format of image
`height`	Height of full-size image
`date`	Last modification date of image YYYY/MM/DD
`mimetype`	MIME type of image
`refererclickurl`	Clickable link to page in which image was found
`refererurl`	Original link to page in which image was found
`title`	Title of image (usually the filename)
`url`	URL of image itself
`width`	Width of full-size image
`thumbnail_url`	Thumbnail image
`thumbnail_height`	Thumbnail height
`thumbnail_width`	Thumbnail width

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.

Parameters	Values	Description
`:age`	`7d`	Use age= to retrieve documents by age: `:age => "[value]d"` NOTE: Maximum [value] cannot be greater than 1000. The default is 30 days, and valid values are `[1-30]d`. (News Search maintains a 30-day index.) The following example searches the full index: `:age => "7d"` Age can be specified using a string made an integer and one of the letters “`s`“, “`m`“, “`h`“, “`d`” and “`w`” representing seconds, minutes, hours, days and weeks. No spaces are allowed in the string. Some examples: `:age => "30d"` `:age => "1w"` `:age => "12h"` To specify an age range two values can be concatenated with a dash/hyphen for example: `:age => "5d-10d"` Between 5 and 10 days old `:age => "2w-30d"` Between 2 weeks and 30 days old Multiple ranges or more than one age parameter is not supported.
`:orderby`	relevance	To order by date add `:orderby => "date"` to the query string. Results will be returned with the most recent first.

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

Field Name	Description
`totalhits, deephits`	Number of listings that match the query parameters.
`abstract`	Abstract of news story.
`clickurl`	Click this link to reach story, if present.
`language`	Language of story.
`date`	Last publication date of story.
`time`	Last publication time of story.
`source`	Source publication.
`sourceurl`	URL of source publication.
`title`	Title (or Headline) of the story.
`url`	Link to story.

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

Argument	Options/Details
`:start`	Ordinal position of first result. First position is 0. Default sets start to 0.
`:count`	Total number of results to return. Maximum value is 50. Default sets count to 10.
`:format`	The data format of the response. Value can be set to either `"xml"` or `"json"`. Default sets format to `"json"`.
`:callback`	The name of the callback function to wrap the result. Parameter is valid only if format is set to `"json"`. No default value exists.
`:sites`	Restrict BOSS search results to a set of pre-defined sites. Multiple sites must be comma separated. Example: (`:sites => "abc.com,cnn.com"`). The Images service does not yet support multiple sites.
`:view`	Retrieve additional search data provided by the respective BOSS service. Please see individual chapters to see what view options are available.
`:style`	By default for web search result titles and abstracts contain bold HTML tags around the search term. Use `:style => "raw"` to remove the bold tags around the search terms in titles and abstracts.

Ruby on Rails Caching And JavaScript Techniques Cross posted from darthsid While implementing caching in a recent...

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Ruby on Rails Caching And JavaScript Techniques

sid — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 06:47:20 +0000

Cross posted from darthsid

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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How to Integrate TinyMce with Redbox in 5 steps ?

payal — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 01:53:12 +0000

TinyMCE is a platform independent web based Javascript HTML WYSIWYG editor control. It has the ability to convert HTML TEXTAREA fields or other HTML elements to editor instances.

Redbox is a library that pops a modal box over a web page, using CSS and javascript, so that you can ask the user a question, or show them something important. The box can be loaded from content already on the page (but hidden), or it can be loaded via AJAX. The contents of the box can be replaced using AJAX, for multi-page forms, and it can be closed easily using a javascript link.

Here is the process for integrating Redbox and tinymce.

Step I:
Install required plugins:

- TinyMce(http://github.com/kete/tiny_mce/tree/master)
- RedBox(http://www.craigambrose.com/projects/redbox)

Step II:
Include javascript files to layout:

  <%= include_tiny_mce_js %>
  <%= javascript_tag "initialize_editor();" %>

Now, add this javascript method which initilizes the text editor. You can specify the options you want for your text editor here.

Javascript:

function  initialize_editor(){
  tinyMCE.init({
    theme:"advanced",
    //mode:"textareas", // this is commented because we do not want to apply the editor to all the text area
     instances. Instead, we will use the class "mceEditor" to specify on which element we want to add the editor.
    theme_advanced_toolbar_location:"top",
    theme_advanced_toolbar_align:"left",
    theme_advanced_resizing:true,
    theme_advanced_resize_horizontal:false,
    paste_auto_cleanup_on_paste:true,
theme_advanced_blockformats:"p,address,pre,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6",
    theme_advanced_buttons1:"bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, | , undo, redo, link, unlink, image, | , bullist, numlist",
    theme_advanced_buttons2:"",
    theme_advanced_buttons3:"",
    dialog_type:"modal"
  });
}

Step III:

Add editor class “mceEditor” to the text area where you want the editor to be added.

<%= f.text_area :details, :id => 'ta_id', :class => 'mceEditor' %>

Now, we need to create a tinymce editor control for the text area(‘ta_id’) on loading the popup so add this “execCommand” loads the tinyMCE in the textarea.

Step IV:

When we submit our form and copy over the editor content to the text box it references. Tinymce provides a method ‘triggerSave’ that moves the contents from the editor to the form field. This method is automatically called by tinyMCE by adding a trigger on the forms submit method.

Save the content:

<%= f.submit 'Save', :class => 'primaryAction', :onclick => "tinyMCE.triggerSave(true,true);" %>

Step V:

Whenever we close our popup redbox we need to remove the tinymce editor control that we had added. Remove control on closing the redbox:

<%= link_to_close_redbox 'Close', {:onclick => "tinyMCE.execCommand('mceRemoveControl', true, 'ta_id'});"} %>

Works on: Firefox(1.5+), Safari and IE(7+)

For Internet Explorer we need to initialize the editor on loading the pop-up but for firefox we need to initalize editor on loading the main page. So we need modify our javascript

And so here we are ready to go in just five simple steps.

Refer here for more details.

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