The
Palm
Civet

i’ve been very persuaded by john nunemaker’s passionate writing that mongo db might be the next new thing i have to try. sure, sql databases are the norm, but mongo’s document-based database format rings truer to me the more of a rubyist i become.

gridfs is mongo’s way of storing file uploads within the database and with the release of its new ruby driver, using grid FS is faster and easier. check the simplicity in this example code =>

db = Mongo::Connection.new.db('testing')
grid = Mongo::Grid.new(db)

# returns object id
id = grid.put(File.read('mr_t.jpg'), 'mr_t.jpg')

# get the file using object id
file = grid.get(id)

# read the file from grid fs
puts file.read

# delete the file
grid.delete(id)

the active development of john’s mongomapper gem for rails models and grip plugin for gridfs should definitely be on anyone’s radar who is exploring nosql options.

more rails development means more time in the script/console and irb, but it can quickly become a headache with doing ugly things like returning activerecord objects. for that, hirb’s table view is a lifesaver. check out this example output =>

irb>> Tag.last
+-----+-------------------------+---------------+-----------+-----------+-------+
| id  | created_at              | name          | namespace | predicate | value |
+-----+-------------------------+---------------+-----------+-----------+-------+
| 907 | 2009-03-06 21:10:41 UTC | gem:tags=yaml | gem       | tags      | yaml  |
+-----+-------------------------+---------------+-----------+-----------+-------+
  1 row in set
  =>true

if you want to get more snazzy, you can define your own views for a more custom output. git it at hirb’s github page.

to enable hirb by default in any local rails application, add this to your ~/.irbrc file =>

if ENV['RAILS_ENV']
  require 'rubygems'
  require 'hirb'
  Hirb.enable
end

as a heavy jquery w/ plugins user, it is easy to end up with quite a few javascript files included in the header. in an attempt to cut down on the load time, i’ve been giving sprockets a whirl. sprockets is a javascript organization and compressor library written in ruby.

what turned me onto trying sprockets was the success i have had with less, the dynamic css library, which allows me easy management over grid, font, color, and classes stylesheets that get compiled down to one css file.

the one thing i was bummed to not see in the sprockets documentation was the ability to run a rake script that would watch for file changes and keep the master js file constantly updated, like you can with less.

luckily ‘the google’ revealed a simple rake file gist (which i’ve forked) for just that. given a directory structure of js/src (for your source files) and js/o/scripts.js as your master work file, save this file as a rakefile.rb in js/ and just run in the command line =>

rake watch

now, changes to your work file will be detected and updated js/scripts.js and js/scripts-min.js will be compiled.

another excellent option in using the font of your choice in your designs. textorize is a ruby script that creates png’s of text in any font for osx users. its ‘shining star’ feature is that it takes advantage of osx’s sub-pixel anti-aliasing when creating png’s. that’s something photoshop still can’t even do! it does have its shortcomings though: it needs a background color and there are the implied accessibility issues of turning text into images. that said, it is still an excellent option in certain situations.

auto_html is a time-saving rails plugin i stumbled upon for turning a link into a desired chunk of code. for example, i’m using it on cotmf.com to take a link to a youtube or vimeo video and turn it into the <object>/<embed> code i need at a specified size.

say you have an attribute of :video for a model of Post. add a column of video_html to the ‘posts’ table in your database, and include the following in your model =>

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
    auto_html_for :video do
      youtube :width => 400, :height => 250
      vimeo :width => 400, :height => 250
    end
end

then, you just need to call <%= @post.video_html %> in your view file.

auto_html comes with a handful of built-in filters for links, images, and video, and you can also roll your own.

lou zell’s ruby gem for parsing the date, time, and message out of something written in plain english. this is a brilliant way for users to naturally input information about events into web applications.

for example:

n = Nickel.query "calling your mom to see what's up every wednesday at 5pm"
n.message                       # => calling your mom to see what's up
n.occurrences[0].type           # => weekly
n.occurrences[0].day_of_week    # => wed
n.occurrences[0].interval       # => 1
n.occurrences[0].start_time     # => 17:00:00

to try it out, check it out at golark.com’s event submission form or install it for yourself with the terminal command:

sudo gem install lzell-nickel