If you previously followed my article, Installing Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL on OS X, second edition and are now upgrading to OS X Leopard, you’ll want to make a few adjustments to your setup.
First of all, it’s great that Apple has decided to provide Ruby on Rails out of the box.
If you upgraded to OS X Leopard and are running MySQL from the MySQL.com installer[^1^](#fn1){#fnref1 .footnote-ref role=”doc-noteref”}, you might be having some problems with starting it from the GUI interface. There isn’t a fix from MySQL yet, so to get around that… you can run it from the command-line.
cd /usr/local/mysql; ./bin/mysqld_safe &
This should get MySQL up and running for you. If someone wants to share a tip on how to get this to start automatically on reboot, please post a comment and I’ll help get the word out.
I didn't have this problem as I [installed MySQL via
MacPorts](http://www.robbyonrails.com/articles/2007/06/19/installing-ruby-on-rails-and-postgresql-on-os-x-second-edition..).
but this came up for a few members of [PLANET
ARGON](http://planetargon.com) after they upgraded to
Leopard.[↩︎](#fnref1){.footnote-back role="doc-backlink"}
:::
If you’re using Skitch and the new Spaces in OS X Leopard, I would encourage you to set the following up.
::: thumbnail
Uploaded with
Skitch!{style=”font-family: Lucida Grande, Trebuchet, sans-serif, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #808080”}
:::
This will allow you to use Skitch on any Space without needing to move it around. Took me a few minutes to figure out that I could set it up like this.
As you can see… I’m on Leopard now… only took three tries.
Earlier, I came across a post by Garry Dolley, which he shows how to acheive colorized grep matches in bash. I recall having color matches when I used to use Linux on a daily basis as my primary work environment, but haven’t gotten around to setting this up on my MacBook, which is where I do almost all of my development work.
If you don’t already have colors, a grep in your terminal might look something like the following screenshot.
While, I have a very small output here, this gets much crazier when
you’re using egrep across an entire project. It’s hard to scan through
all of the results for the inline pattern matches.
So, taking Garry’s suggestion (for bash), I did something similar with
my favorite shell, Z shell.
Add the following to your ~/.zshrc file to begin experimenting with
the colors.
I saw this photo of the Microsoft team from 1978 on Anselm’s flickr and thought, “Hmm, that looks like Chad Fowler!”
Could this be Chad Fowler’s dirty little secret?..
Happy Saturday!
We have a client that already has some database replication going on in their deployment and needed to have most of their Ruby on Rails application pull from slave servers, but the few writes would go to the master, which would then end up in their slaves.
So, I was able to quickly extend ActiveRecord with just two methods to achieve this. Anyhow, earlier today, someone in #caboose asked if there was any solutions to this and it prompted me to finally package this up into a quick and dirty Rails plugin.
Introducing… Active Delegate!
To install, do the following:
cd vendor/plugins;
piston import http://svn.planetargon.org/rails/plugins/active_delegate
```text
Next, you'll need to create another database entry in your
`database.yml`.
```yaml
login: &login
adapter: postgresql
host: localhost
port: 5432
development:
database: rubyurl_development
<<: *login
test:
database: rubyurl_test
<<: *login
production:
database: rubyurl_servant
<<: *login
# NOTICE THE NEXT ENTRY/KEY
master_database:
database: rubyurl_master
<<: *login
````ruby
At this point, your Rails application won't talk to the
`master_database`, because nothing is being told to connect to it. So,
the current solution with Active Delegate is to create an ActiveRecord
model that will act as a connection handler.
````ruby
# app/models/master_database.rb
class MasterDatabase < ActiveRecord::Base
handles_connection_for :master_database # <-- this matches the key from our database.yml
end
```text
Now, in the model(s) that we'll want to have talk to this database,
we'll do add the following.
````ruby
# app/models/animal.rb
class Animal < ActiveRecord::Base
delegates_connection_to :master_database, :on => [:create, :save, :destroy]
end
Now, when your application performs a create, save, or destroy,
it’ll talk to the master database and your find calls will retrieve
data from your servant database.
It’s late on a Friday afternoon and I felt compelled to toss this up for everyone. I think that this could be improved quite a bit, but it’s working great for the original problem that needed to be solved.
If you have feedback and/or bugs, please send us tickets.
My blog has been fairly quiet lately because our team has been busy helping push a few big client projects out the door. We’ll be posting announcements about those launches on the PLANET ARGON Blog soon, so stay-tuned there!
We’ve been growing the design-side of our team lately, but we’re also still seeking some more Rails-talent in Portland, OR. If you’re in Portland or interested in moving here[^1^](#fn1){#fnref1 .footnote-ref role=”doc-noteref”}, you should introduce yourself to our team. We’re looking for people to work on-site in Portland, so any remote candidates will be turned away… we’re moving into a shiny and new office space in downtown and are looking for another developer to join our Design and Development team.
{width=”333”
height=”500”}
[you’ll fit in really well if you’re into outdoor activities…
;-)]{.small}
We’re seeking mid-level Ruby on Rails developers that can pick things up quickly. Having some experience with RSpec will go along way with us. Ideal candidates would have great communication skills and be able to work in a fast-paced environment that places a huge emphasis on collaboration between designers and developers (let’s not forget to mention our clients). Bring what you already know and learn the rest with us.
[While everyone might have Wii’s in the office, we’ve taken it to the
next level with Speed Stacking! :-p]{.small}
To apply, send an email to <af22+8509@c1.catchthebest.com>,
Side note: We’re giving Catch the Best a whirl to review job candidates. If you’re hiring people, you might consider giving it a try.
Everybody is moving to Portland... ;-)[↩︎](#fnref1){.footnote-back
role="doc-backlink"}
:::
This question, “where can I find documentation for Edge Rails?” still comes up quite often on mailing lists, IRC, and other places. I just wanted to point out a few resources for you.
In March 2006, our team announced that we’d be updating a RDOC site a few times a day as the Rails project gets commits.
You can still access the PLANET ARGON Edge Rails documentation here:
Caboose also has some Edge Rails documentation here:
If you’re aware of any other online resources for Edge Rails documentation, please let me know.
As I mentioned in my last review, I wouldn’t be updating on a weekly basis, which is a shame because there are so many fascinating discussions going on that might benefit you if you’re running a business that uses and/or relies on the Ruby on Rails framework. I’d like to highlight some of the discussions that have been taking place over the past month or so.
First off… wow! As of this morning, there are *650 members!
Johan Pretorius started a discussion with the following…
“I’ve been lurking on the group for a while now, the time has come to participate … What strategy would you recommend for somebody that wants to break into the Ruby (on Rails) market?”
On a related topic, Jose Hurtado started a discussion asking for tips on how to get a reputation in the Ruby on Rails community for you business.
Some of the responses included:
Read the entire thread and please share any other ideas that you have on this topic with Johan, Jose, and rest of the list. :-)
Oren writes, “I got a full-time job offer as employee (and not on as a contractor). My current client might need some help on the weekends in the next month, so I might still do contract work. Can I keep my corporation (corp S) while working full time?”
Starting your own business might sound like an amazing thing to do, but it often comes with a lot of consequences and struggles, which I’m definitely not been immune to.
Michael M. writes, “…added to having to create a company, perform customer support, continue to grow the features, marketing, and the loads of other things I haven’t thought of yet…is there any hope that one person can pull this off while still working at my current job ( with hopes of going it alone when I’m sure it can fly ), and giving time to my family, with very little up front costs. I’ve been reading quite a bit about bootstrapping lately, but to really make the time has been very difficult.”
There were several thoughtful responses where well-known members of the Ruby on Rails community, such as Joe O’Brien Ben Curtis shared through personal experiences.
Joe O’Brien wrote, “I wanted to mainly chime in on the family part.
Something that has taken a year for me to figure out how to balance. I
would not have been able to do any of it, had it not been for my wife’s
full support. I have three kids, all of whom I love spending time with,
so figuring out a way to balance it all has been very tricky. Up front
though, my wife and I knew this would not be your typical job. It helped
that I used to travel and now do not, but it has still been an
adjustment.”
If you’ve been running your own Rails business, please consider responding to this thread and sharing your experience.
As mentioned, this is just a small sample of some of the great discussions taking place on the Rails Business mailing list. If you’re an aspiring Rails freelancer or business owner, be sure to join the community and share your experiences and learn from other members of the community that are willing to share theirs.
As always, have fun!
We’ve been quietly rolling out our new Rails hosting solution over the past month, each week… inviting more people to ask questions and place orders. Initially, we invited some of our business hosting customers, and then sent out invites to those who signed up on the Rails Boxcar announcement list. We’ve been taking orders for the past few weeks and have had sites running on Boxcar for over a month now.
You’ll also notice that we’ve begun to phase out all of our older shared hosting solutions for new customers and are focusing solely on our Business and Boxcar accounts (aside from custom managed/dedicated solutions that we’ve been offering upon request).
To learn more about Rails Boxcar, read the announcement on the PLANET ARGON blog.
In other news, Daniel Johnson, our Lead Systems Administrator broke his arm while riding his bike while participating in Zoo Bomb (and cracked his helmet in the process). He’s at home today on pain medicine and we hope that he has a swift recovery.
If you’re using the bookmarklet for RubyURL, you will want to update it with the latest version as there was apparently a bug in the JavaScript and some URLs would fail to redirect properly. Thanks to the help of Jerome, this is now fixed.
So, head over to RubyURL and update your bookmarket. Not sure what I’m talking about? Watch the video.
When you’re running a Rails application in development mode, you might notice that it takes a little longer for requests to get processed and this is somewhat intentional as the framework is was designed to allow you to run the application and make live changes to it. This way you can do some basic functional tests from your web browser, work on HTML/CSS changes, or anything else that might need to be done in development mode.
Anyhow, this can be slow from time to time and if you’ve done much Ajax work, you might be familiar with how slow this can feel when performing some basic tasks. Well, thanks to Josh Goebel, we can speed up things with a new plugin he just released.
To install via piston: