This blog has moved to rails.webintellix.com

Dear Subscribers,
Thanks for reading my posts and providing valuable feedback via emails and comments. Please be advised that I have moved this blog to a different location at http://rails.webintellix.com. Please update your bookmarks and re-subscribe to my blog. If you wish to post any comments, please do so on the new blog. All the posts from this blog have been moved to the new blog. This blog will be shut down on August 2009. I apologize for the inconvenience. Hope you see you at my new blog.

Thanks,
Rupak Ganguly
Founder | Webintellix
Web: www.webintellix.com
Blogs: rails.webintellix.com | blog.webintellix.com
Twitter: rupakg

Issue with starting Aptana RadRails in debug mode

Recently, Tom Henner emailed me and seeked help with issues with Aptana Radrails. The issue was when a Mongrel based server was started in debug enabled, the following error thrown:

An internal error occurred during: "Starting server"

and error stack in Aptana log file:

 

Aptana releases RadRails 1.0

I had in a previous post talked about different IDEs for Rails development and covered RadRails, a plug-in for the Aptana editor. Recently, the RadRails plug-in saw a very welcome update which includes new features for Ruby, more support for refactoring and profiling (only in PRO edition) and Rails Shell. See a screencast about Rails Shell.

So RadRails 1.0 can profile Ruby code and show a call graph in a GUI and the profiler is a wrap around the ruby-prof gem. The Refactoring feature includes Rename, Convert Local Variable to field, Encapsulate Field, Extract Method, Extract Constant, Inline Class, Inline Local, Variable, Inline Method, Merge Class Parts (internal to file and external), Move Field, Move Method, Push Down Method, Pull Up Method, Split Local Variable.

I am glad I picked Aptana RadRails as my IDE for my RoR development.

Technorati Tags: editor,profiler,refactor

Installing gems behind proxy servers

It is well documented as part of gem help that using the following common options:

-p, –[no-]http-proxy [URL]      Use HTTP proxy for remote operations

will allow gem to use the proxy server for remote operations. While this has worked for me before, but recently for some reason I have been getting errors. So, the other alternative that works for me is to set the environment variable HTTP_PROXY as such:

set HTTP_PROXY=http://[proxy url]:[port]

Actually this option is convenient. I have set the above environment variable permanently for the machines that I use at work which are behind proxy servers.

Technorati Tags: gem,proxy,installation

Attachment_fu size parameter on Windows

Well, long story short, I have been going crazy trying to make attachment_fu upload a image file greater than 10KB in size on Windows. It keeps showing an error message “Size is not in the list”. Turns out that the size parameter needs to explicitly set to the following:

has_attachment  :content_type => :image, :size => 0.kilobytes..1.gigabytes

The important part is that you have to specify the minimum limit as 0.kilobytes or it will not work.

Checkout some of the other attachment_fu gotchas.

Technorati Tags: plugins,attachment_fu,windows,issues

Rails IDE on Windows

I have used the command-line and notepad when I started in 2002, but soon my addiction to IDEs like Visual Studio, made me crave for an IDE for Rails development. Soon. I somehow never used the SciTE editor that was installed by default with Rails. I soon discovered RadRails and Ruby in Steel for Windows. Now, a slew of other IDEs have cropped up namely, Aptana RadRails, NetBeans, jEdit (alongwith RubyPlugin) and Idea. See comparison at The Nameless One blog.

I have been using RadRails 0.7.2 (the standalone version) for a long time now, but decided to give Aptana RadRails a try due to the integrated debugger support it provides over the standalone version.

Book Review: Build your own Ruby on Rails Web Applications Book by Patrick Lenz

Sitepoint has an offer to download the PDF version of Patrick Lenz’s book. I downloaded the book last week and have already read 351 of 464 pages. I am on Chapter 11 of 12.  finished reading it now. It is a nicely written book and covers a lot of ground. It is very easy to understand & follow and I would recommend it to any newbie on Ruby on Rails. It is also a nice midway book between Agile Web Development with RoR 1st Edition and the recently released 2nd Edition.

Resource: New Ruby on Rails Wiki

I have created a new Ruby on Rails Wiki named Rails Cheatsheets to put all resources and knowledge sources under one roof. I found it very difficult to keep track of all these via browser bookmarks, del.icio.us, downloads, shared drive etc. So, I created this wiki. Since it is a wiki, anyone is welcome to contribute to it. If you like the idea, please come by and contribute. We can together make it a valuable resource for Ruby on Rails. Please feel free to leave comments or feedback.

Welcome and all aboard…

It is always exciting to write the first post. But, this time it is a little different. Although, I already blog at Developer’s Shelf, but it is still exciting. The main reason for starting this blog was to focus on Ruby on Rails. I have been playing with Rails for a long time but never got out and wrote anything. Well, the other reason is that I usually straddle between Microsoft technologies and Ruby on Rails, hence the challenge to distribute time.

Well, I have decided to write about my experiences in Ruby on Rails. I will start a Learning Rails series of some sort. I want to talk about new plug-ins, generators, code snippets, templates or just about anything interesting.

So, subscribe to my blog and let me know what you want to read.