Zeke Sikelianos

Encouraging Users to Drop IE

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:24:30 -0800

After a few days struggling to make a recent project look right on Internet Explorer, I set about trying to find a graceful way of notifying users that they need to upgrade. I played with a shit-ton of pre-existing solutions, but in the end I decided to whip up something much more basic that I can easily integrate into any Rails app:

"If you’re not familiar with what makes a valid Rack application it basically comes down to an object..."

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:44:58 -0800

“If you’re not familiar with what makes a valid Rack application it basically comes down to an object that receives the “call” method with exactly one argument, the environment hash, and returns an array with exactly 3 elements. The status, headers and body.”

- Pancake Documentation

Mac Users: Extract Frames from Animated GIFs with Preview.app

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:58:12 -0700

Animated GIFs are kind of a relic these days, but when you need to crack one open and get at its individual frames, you might think Photoshop is that way to go. Alas, Photoshop doesn’t support animated GIFs (any more).

But! It turns out Preview.app does. You just open the GIF and drag the frames right out of it. Handy.

Testing HTTP Basic Auth in Sinatra

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:06:52 -0700

Snagged from http://www.sinatrarb.com/faq.html#test_http_auth

HTML Form Submission with button/image Combo

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:06:00 -0700

When you submit an HTML form using , the x and y coordinates of the image get passed along as GET parameters in the URL. I can never seem to remember how to avoid this, so here’s a snippet for reference:

script/console for Sinatra

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:13:00 -0700

Wishing you had a Rails-like console for your Sinatra app? Welp, zapnap has implemented a nice solution into his vanilla sinatra-template on github, based on code from barking iguana. Happy consolation!

Update: Check out racksh, a console for Rack-based ruby web applications, including Rails, Merb, Sinatra, Camping, Ramaze, or even your own framework.

Lessons learned on my first date with DataMapper

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:02:58 -0700

Today I started playing around with DataMapper, an up-and-coming ORM that’s popular among the Merb/Sinatra kids, and one that’s making its way into Rails 3 as an alternative to ActiveRecord. Here are some notes from day one:

Different Database Column Defaults: The default String size is 50 characters, unlike ActiveRecord which defaults to 255 (for MySQL, anyway)

Strategic Eager Loading: At first I was dismayed to find there’s no :include option for nesting associations in a query. Then I realized it’s not necessary! DataMapper will only issue the very bare minimums of queries to your data-store that it needs to. Read more about it here.

Serialization: DataMapper is intended to have a lean and minimalistic core, which provides the minimum necessary features for an ORM. In order to successfully convert an array of objects to JSON (or XML or CSV or YAML), you’ll need to get the dm-more gem and drop a require 'dm-serializer' in your app.

Scopes: As with eager loading, DataMapper is smart about reducing the number of queries it makes. Check this out:

So far, I’m finding DataMapper to be smart and intuitive. Here’s to day two..

Sinatra Extension: Ratpack

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:38:39 -0700

As soon as I started using Sinatra, I felt naked without those handy ActionView helpers from Rails like stylesheet_link_tag, javascript_include_tag, link_to, etc. So today I read up a little on how to write Sinatra Extensions and put together the beginnings of a gem to address the need.

Here are the methods implemented so far..

content_tag
convert_to_list_items
image_tag
javscript_include_tag
link_to
stylesheet_link_tag
tag

So if you’re a Rails developer that’s getting familiar with Sinatra, you may want to check Ratpack out: http://github.com/zeke/ratpack/

"Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the..."

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:39:09 -0700

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”

- Winston Churchill

Access the 'clicked' item within a jQuery function.

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:57:07 -0700

I always seem to forget this, but the proper syntax is $(this):

New Rails Plugin: Autoform

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:02:07 -0700

I’m currently working on a Rails project that has lots of models that all need basic CRUDability, but the forms and views don’t need to be fancy, as the app is used primarily as an XML webservice. We need the CRUD so we can tweak content here and there, but it’s not public-facing. I got tired of having to update the forms every time I wrote a migration, so I created Autoform.

Autoform is a Rails plugin that makes it easy to dynamically auto-generate a form for an ActiveRecord object. It cycles through all columns in the model and generates semantically correct form output with labels. Think of Autoform as a scaffolder that automatically keeps your forms current as you make changes to your model.

Check it out at github.com/zeke/autoform

Audio

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:48:50 -0700

A Coupla Handy Tools for working with XML

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 13:13:00 -0700

Camino
If you’re on a Mac, the Camino web browser is a good buddy. It’s great for those times when you want a fast, lean browser without the frills. One of its many perks is that it displays XML nicely (unlike Firefox and Safari), with syntax highlighting and little toggle buttons for expanding and collapsing elements.

hurl
One of the coolest things to come out of this year’s railsrumble competition is hurl. It’s a simple tool that helps you test APIs. “Choose the request method, customize headers and POST parameters, add basic authorization, and even follow redirects. Then view the nicely formatted request and response.” Check out the demo screencast for a quick rundown.

Adding non-columnar data to Rails XML and JSON feeds

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:47:47 -0700

ActiveRecord offers handy to_xml and to_json methods for converting AR objects to XML or JSON format. Today I discovered that you can easily add values from model methods to the output, like so..

See Module::ActiveRecord::Serialization for more info.

How to Suppress Adobe Debugger's Exception Alerts

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 14:18:00 -0700

If you’re a Flash developer and have the Debugger Version of Adobe Flash Player installed, you’ve probably noticed that it periodically pops up annoying alerts when you browse the web. They are the result of poor exception handling by the Actionscript/Flex programmers of the world. To disable the alerts, open up your mm.cfg and add this line:

SuppressDebuggerExceptionDialogs=1

You’ll probably need to restart your browser for the change to take effect. That’s it!

A new twist on 'link_to_unless_current'

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:54:00 -0700

I’ve been thinking it would be nice to have a smarter alternative to Rails’ link_to_unless_current view helper: rather than being relegated to plain old text, the active link should remain a link and get a CSS class of active tacked onto it, so it can be styled to stand out from its siblings. It’s more intuitive for a link to always be a link, even if it’s a link to the current page. Dig?

At first I tried to do some alias_method magic to override the link_to function, but in the end I think naming the method link is not only shorter but safer!

Request methods in Rails

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:20:29 -0700

I seem to have a hard time remembering all the request methods in Rails. For anyone else who has the same problem, you might wanna bookmark the Rails API page on Class ActionController::AbstractRequest

And here’s a handy helper method for getting your application’s base URL:

Specifying CSS Class for a Textile list

Tue, 26 May 2009 16:46:46 -0700

A nice little trick I learned today. Works for ordered lists too..

Manipulating Checkboxes with jQuery

Tue, 26 May 2009 14:28:29 -0700

When selecting elements with jQuery, you can’t simply append .checked to a checkbox element to determine whether or not its checked; you have to use the attr array or the is expression evaluator, like so..

Find more info on this at Electric Toolbox

jQuery fadeToggle() Function

Tue, 26 May 2009 12:25:27 -0700

This little function works just like jQuery’s built-in slideToggle(). It’s a nice alternative to the toggle(‘normal’) function, which expands and collapses elements by squishing/stretching them horizontally and vertically.