Teens on Rails - Home

Life Updates From Lake

2007-02-26T06:49:00Z

Well Well, Looks like I’m finally back. I feel bad; To be honest, I sorta forgot about my old trusty blog. Things have been pretty crazy lately. I’m in the midst of creating a record label, a monthly rails publication, a final project for school, my music, homework, and figuring out the odds and ends of Ruby on Rails.

I’ve been working on rebuilding a Client’s site in Ruby on Rails. I initially just used Joomla! for the CMS. Well, to be honest, Joomla! runs pretty slow, has crappy support for sexy urls, and is really way too much of an application. I figure all I need is an admin background and about five pages overall to get this app running.

In other news, I’m putting in my job application at the local AutoSpa. Yep, that’s right, A freaking car wash. Well, what can I do? Gotta make money somehow and it isn’t by freelancing. I have this goal of saving the money I earn, so I won’t be broke again in the future. Right now, I’m very very hesitant to even drive places because I know I’ll just end up borrowing money from someone for gas. I seriously wish they created sidewalks around here. I would ride my bike everywhere.

Even More News: For this Week (Monday-Monday) I am on a Bread and Water diet. I decided that I really want to cleanse my body of some of the junky stuff I put in there. I was simply going to fast for seven days, but a bread and water diet sounds a little nicer on me. I only weight about 125.

This week marks the 2nd month Anniversary of “Movies @ the Lake” This is a monthly event where I have all my friends come over and watch a movie. Last month we watched “City of God.” It was a little too intense for the crowd and I felt sort of bad after showing all the girls. If you have seen it, you would know exactly what I mean. This week, however, we are lightening it up a bit and are going to watch the fantastic documentary style film: “Jesus Camp” If you haven’t seen it, Download it, Rent it, Get it. It’s very interesting.

And Finally, my final project for my AP Government class is complete. Follow the link to watch it, I hope you truly enjoy. Boy Scouts of America VS James Dale

My introduction

2007-01-26T22:16:00Z

Hey all,

I’m making my introduction at Teens on Rails. My name is Daniel Fischer, and I love Ruby! I tried to do web-application programming over the years, but that was with php. Honestly, I hated it. It just wasn’t fun, the syntax hurt my eyes and my thoughts just could not be translated into the code. One day I came upon Ruby on Rails and it seems like I found what I’ve always been looking for; something to program my ideas into, then become famous from my apps (yea right?).

It’s really hard trying to learn your first programming language, because it’s just like any new language. You really have to adjust your mind to learn how to think in a different way. I’m slowly reaching that point and I can feel the sensations of understanding appearing in my mind. So all of those who are getting frustrated, just stick with it!

Anyway, I’ve been studying Ruby for a couple months now, and only got serious with it the past couple weeks. I seriously recommend diving into Ruby first rather than Rails. Why? Because you’ll understand a helluva lot more of the language, and take advantage of Rails in a easier manner. Besides that, Rails is Ruby, so it only makes sense.

I’m a noob, so along my journey of becoming an expert, I’ll post snippets and thoughts from time to time.

DreamHost, SubDomains, and Disney World

2007-01-19T02:51:00Z

In approximately 9 hours, I will be on a flight to Florida. My parents decided to surprise us with a trip to Disney World, as I have never been. I got an express pass to get my picture with Mickey Mouse! I am living out my childhood dream, that way I won’t have to live it through my own children. I’m looking forward to the 5 day vacation and taking a break from school and the everyday routine.

Last night, I decided to go ahead and do what I have needed to for the past week. I host the forums over at ContrastandCompare.com. I just deployed my rails app with Capistrano. As with most things, an error occured. I previously had my forums directory setup at ContrastandCompare.com/forums. Well, I had to change my path to “/current/public”. So, the forums directory was not getting indexed because it was not in the “/current/public” folder. Well, I decided to just make a subdomain Forums.ContrastandCompare.com. Well, for some reason it didn’t work. It sometimes rendered on my computer but not others? I still think some people aren’t getting access. It’s strange, but it finally worked out mostly.

After my app was deployed, i kept getting the “Application Error…Rails Could Not….” also known as the “500 internal server error.” Anyways, I looked around a bit and found something that I believe is really helping, as I have yet to see a “Application Error” message.

I added this to the Dispatch.rb file located in APP/Public directory:

class RailsFCGIHandler
  private
    def frao_handler(signal)
      dispatcher_log :info, "asked to terminate immediately"
      dispatcher_log :info, "frao handler working its magic!"
      restart_handler(signal)
    end
    alias_method :exit_now_handler, :frao_handler
end

Hope this helps someone out. Until Tuesday, Happy Coding! and Thanks to: http://work.alexyoung.org/archives/102/dreamhost-and-rails-500-errors for the info.

I'm Just Not in the Mood to Program

2007-01-11T17:18:00Z

There has been a sort of a halt on the application I've been working on sometime. I am at the point where it could almost be ready for production, but I have some decisions I have to make in order to keep it going.

The first thing that has been holding me back a little bit seems pretty stupid and it actually is. I used to have my iMac setup in my room. I was on it all the time and my parents decided it would be best to move it to the basement. I didn't mind because that is where I have my guitar and piano, so I can easily record now. The problem is, the basement is unfinished. It is usually freezing down there, so much that I don't even want to do anything on the computer. I hate the cold that much. Sure, I could put on more clothes and maybe some gloves, but that is obnoxious. I'm biding my time until I can move it back up into my room.

I'm also waiting on a tutorial that at sometime should be presented by the guy over at slyturtle.com I'm not sure if it is still on, but he has a beautiful implementation of Amazon/Ruby in his app Favorite5.com. Check it out. I am looking for that same sort of thing, but my experience with the Amazon/Ruby library has been all but pleasant. Hopefully I can get that going in the next few weeks.

And finally, I'm considering trashing what I have so far and just building it again off the HOBO app for rails. I watched the screencast and was really impressed at how quickly and easily it sets things up. I was also very impressed with the automatic layout that they set you up with. I just like seeing everything in a layout as opposed to top down html, no css/design. It just gives you more to work with and maybe even some ideas for your own layout.

I'm gonna think about it a little bit more and figure out exactly what I should do. I have some other things/ideas I've been contemplating and I'd really like to start those up. I just feel like I can't ever finish anything I start because either I'm not satisfied with it fully or I just get bored of it. Seems like I should go read a little bit of LifeHacker.

Good Looking URLS and Errors That Go Along With It

2007-01-03T17:05:00Z

I wanted to write about a little topic in rails known as Named Url’s or Sexy Urls or whatever you would like to call them. Basically, instead of something default like this: http://www.yoursite.com/artist/show/1

Your site will generate a url like this: http://www.yoursite.com/artist/pink_floyd

To Do This, It’s Pretty Easy. You will be dealing with routes.rb in the config folder, so go ahead and load that up. I am assuming that you have already setup your Controller and Actions.

Step 1: In routes.rb add this line:

map.artist 'artist/:artisttitle',:controller =>'artists', :action=>'show'

Step 2: In Your Controller Add Something Like This in your Show method:

@artist = Artist.find(:first, :conditions => ['title_copy = ?',params[:artisttitle]])

Step 3: In your Controllers View in the Index, add:

<%for artist in @artists%>
<%=link_to artist.title, artist_url(:artisttitle => artist.title)%>
<%end%>

This should work out and generate the title of the artist in the url.

Okay, well that looks great and works in most cases. However, what if you come across an artist like: M.Ward Or A blog post that ends in a period? You will probably end up with some sort of a routes error.

So, What do you do? I added a sanitize title method to make sure that any periods were omitted on save.

In my model file (artist.rb), I added this:

before_save :sanitized_title
def sanitized_title
    self.title_copy = title.downcase.gsub(/[\W.]+/, '-')
end

In my database, I added a new row called title_copy. The originally inputted title of the artist is still in the database, I just call the title_copy for urls.

So Now, This Erroneous Url: http://www.yoursite.com/artist/M.Ward

will successfully run as: http://www.yoursite.com/artist/m-ward

YAY!

Music Review Coming Along

2006-12-27T03:26:00Z

I’ve been working for a while on my music review/cd shop app. It still needs some work, but I am making some good headway especially in the last few days. If you would like to check it out go here:

http://www.main.contrastandcompare.com

I still need to fully expand some things like the blog. Also, does anybody know where I can get a rails based mp3 player? that would be sexy. I want it

Also, Over at the Rabbit Feed, furui has updated his Rounded Corners in Rails. So please check it out.

http://furui.org/blog/2006/12/25/rounded-corners-in-rails-updated/

Merry Day after Christmas.

Finally

2006-12-26T03:11:00Z

Finally I got my dev machine up and running. I managed to get a box before the Christmas holidays from my school, I spent some time tinkering with the computer over the weekend, and today I managed to get it working. The computer itself is not very fast, as it has a 500mhz processor, 64 mb's of ram and a 7gb hard drive, I added two more sticks of ram (two more 64's) and a 20gb hard drive. My OS of choice was Ubuntu Dapper Drake and I choose the basic LAMP setup from the menu, and have all the bells and whistles to run/develop Ruby on Rails. Now, I'm off to enjoy my presents.

Happy Holidays,
-Norman

Merry Christmas

2006-12-25T08:16:00Z

I have been pretty busy working on another app that I wanted to have deployed by the end of the year. So yea, I am sort of behind and crunching. Anyways. Have a nice holiday.

peace.

RoundUp Of Good Info

2006-12-19T17:07:00Z

http://furui.org/blog/2006/12/18/rounded-corners-in-rails/

^^ Sexy Rounded Corners in Rails

http://boxroom.rubyforge.org/

^^ Image Uploads In Rails

woopedy freakin’ doo.

Acts_as_Authenticated

2006-12-15T05:03:00Z

I just grabbed the Act_as_Authenticated plugin to implement an login system with out app. I’ve stumbled upon a few small problems with it, which I’ll have to look at tomorrow. Also, I’m interested in figuring out how to add a screen scraper into another application I’m working on. I’m pretty sure I’ll try to find some documentation on it tomorrow in class, we will see. I just wanted to put a little something up here today. Progress is soon on it’s way.

lake.

I Did It!

2006-12-14T07:59:00Z

Categories are good to go for now. I was in a really nice mood and decided to go ahead and get those things set up. Basically, Every blog has a set of categories. You can add new ones. And then, The posts can be put into those categories. Obviously, it isn’t a genius idea. However, it makes me feel good. It’s about 3:00am right now. I am waking up in four hours to go to school. Oh! What the heck! My developer test website is filtered as “SEX” at my school. Considering there is nothing even on it, I’m not even sure why it is blocked. It upsets me, either way. I’m going to sleep…maybe. I’m in a super mood right now. The night time does that to me.

lake.

School Computers Used For My Work!

2006-12-13T17:26:00Z

So, our school is loaded up with IBM Netvista POSs! They all are running about about 256megs of ram which is nothing. Processors aren’t that bad, but still, you need ram. Anyways, I’ve been trying for a while to install Ruby on Rails on my machine here. I have admin privelages and can pretty much install whatever I want. Today I successfully got RadRails, Sqlite3, and Webrick all running together nicely. Although it is slow, It works OK! I can actually use the computer for something other than reading articles on Digg and sending little emails. Norman is still trying to setup his Dev Box and right now, I’m sort of at a stand still. I still need to implement categories into the app. I’ll try to do that tomorrow. Until then.

lake.

Mucho Progresso Today-o

2006-12-11T23:43:00Z

Have you ever gotten to the point where you have no idea how you coded something? You are just in this like daze, but your body keeps chugging along. All your senses have somehow dropped. Even your eyes are slow to move. That happens from being on the computer from 8:30 in the morning until 7:00 at night. I’m young. I have time to do stuff like that. :)

I made some really good progress today. You really have to move slow, pay attention to details, make sure you know exactly what is going on, all the time. Instead of jumping forward on new stuff, we decided to just do the blog module right now. I added a bunch of goodies like: validations, relationship enhancements, corrected links, and flashes. I’m sure I’m leaving something out. I basically had like 21 revisions today.

Ryanb from the railsforum gave me some interesting advice on updating an object’s parent id in the controller.

Say we are creating a Post:

in the post controller we would have something like this:

def new @post = Post.new @blog = Blog.find(params[:id]) end

def create @blog = Blog.find(params[:id]) @post = @blog.posts.build(@params[:post]) if @post.save flash[:notice] = “Post was created.” redirect_to :controller => ‘blogs’, :action => ‘show’, :id => @blog else render :action => ‘new’ end end

That automatically saves the blog_id to the post. Just something interesting.

I guess I’m going to try to setup categories tonight. With a few more cokes, I should be fine! I do have to take some time to call my girly! woooooh!

Capistrano, Dreamhost, Sqlite3, Oh My!

2006-12-11T19:12:00Z

Well, It looks like i'm having a bit of trouble getting this app deployed to my dreamhost server. Let me firts say, I love issuing the "rake deploy" command. I have Cap and Dreamhost setup beautifully together. They are working extremely well together. Cap and Dreamhost are sort of like lovers. Now, I've usually used mysql with all my other apps. We felt like sqlite3 would be the way to go on this one. So, maybe my knowledge of how to setup my database.yml is not sufficient. However, i'm not setting it up any other way than what I have seen in the examples. Well, It looks like i'm having a bit of trouble getting this app deployed to my dreamhost server. Let me firts say, I love issuing the "rake deploy" command. I have Cap and Dreamhost setup beautifully together. They are working extremely well together. Cap and Dreamhost are sort of like lovers. Now, I've usually used mysql with all my other apps. We felt like sqlite3 would be the way to go on this one. So, maybe my knowledge of how to setup my database.yml is not sufficient. However, i'm not setting it up any other way than what I have seen in the examples.
Something that I'm not sure about is how I'm supposed to link the file. For instance:

In my Database.yml file I have this:

development:
adapter: sqlite3
dbfile: db/dev.sqlite3
production:
adapter: sqlite3
dbfile: db/dev.sqlite3

Should It be this instead:
development:
adapter: sqlite3
dbfile: db/dev.sqlite3
production:
adapter: sqlite3
dbfile: home/lakedenman/dev.ldenman.com/current/db/dev.sqlite3

I'm deploying it right now with the latter settings.
aannnd
Application Error(Rails).

Okay, so I know that way just won't work. I'm gonna go ahead and go to the previous setting of just db/dev.sqlite3 I've just deployed my app and let's see what happens.
Annnnd
Works!!! Ok, so what happens when I start playing around with my "New Post" feature. Well, it breaks my app. I think this may have something to do with my Shebang that I added a bit ago. Let me check it out.

So, I navigate to my public/dispatch.fcgi file. The Shebang is currently: #!/usr/bin/ruby1.8
I read to change it on a forum somewhere. So I change it back to just #!/usr/bin/ruby
I'm gonna deploy that change.
Okay, Awesome. The page loads up fine.
Seems that my shebang in dispatch.fcgi was causing the problem. Phew!

Looks like Capistrano, Dreamhost, and Sqlite3 can all be lovers now!

lake.

good link:
http://convergentarts.com/pages/fastcgi

Rolling With Mephisto

2006-12-11T18:01:00Z

Yum. This looks very very nice. I set this up on my dreamhost server using this guide:

http://mede.us/2006/12/1/mephisto-and-dreamhost

I’m surprised it was that easy to get going. I’m going to look around the backend a little bit more and see what all i can play with.

See Ya.