Double Shot #871
Sometimes it feels like life is just rushing by.
- Power of graylog2 web interface - A quick look at the sort of information you can extract from this log aggregator.
- ruby HTTP client performance shootout redux - One for the benchmarking wonks, together with some useful commentary about the limits of benchmarks.
- Heroku's new, free PostgreSQL 9.1 development database - Another fine goodie for Heroku customers.
- jquery-ui-rails - The latest jquery-ui, packaged for the asset pipeline.
- Legacy Concerns in Rails - Using ActiveSupport concerns to break up fat models.
- The Definitive Guide: Sublime Text 2, a Code Editor to Love - A bit disorganized, but there are some useful tips buried in here.
- YARD 0.8.0 Released! - With more control to override times when the automatic parsing doesn't work right.
- Aquarium - AOP for Ruby, now supporting 1.9.3 and JRuby 1.6.7.
Double Shot #870
13 days in a row of Scouting events. I must be nuts.
- Secure Shell - Implemented as a Chrome extension. Just in case you have Chrome installed on a platform without a terminal emulator, I guess.
- Doppio - And while we're on the topic of things that are more marvelous than useful, here's an implementation of the Java VM on CoffeeScript.
- HTTP Monitor - The Firebug and Firefox dev-tools teams are working together on components that both can use. I was wondering about that.
- Why Postgres - A high-level overview of the things that make Postgres a good choice.
- Integrating Devise with Backbone.js - For those of you out on the cutting edge.
- Focused Controller: Bringing Real OOP to Rails Controllers - An experiment from one of the Rails core contributors that fills me with trepidation.
- How to Securely Bootstrap JSON in a Rails View - Escaping, user-supplied content, and XSS concerns when you're consuming JSON directly.
- Amon - Server monitoring, logging, and error tracking all in one package.
What's New in Edge Rails #18
Week of April 15 - April 29, 2012
Well, two weeks actually, but who's counting?
- In 41af36f5 Rails moves from the unmaintained ruby-debug19 gem to the newer debugger fork - something you ought to do in any old projects as well.
-
rake notes
gets updated in 55ceced1 to also look at your css, scss, and js files. - Rails routing gets a bit safer with 56cdc81c. This commit changes the router DSL to require an HTTP verb (or the override
:via => :all
) when using thematch
method. - 6acebb38b adds support for including multiple routes files from config/routes.
-
adff4a70
adds
Rails.queue
as a built-in queuing API that can (in the future) be hooked into by more advanced queues such as Sidekiq or Resque. This lead to a moderately large flame war in the commit comments but it looks like it's here to stay. An important follow-on commit is cd50b604, which allows applications to have multiple distinct queues. - A batch of commits merged in 7d1a42a0 upgrade to the newest SQLite adapter. This is another fix you can make in your existing projects as well (just by swapping gems).
-
76cd1ca0 lets you turn off Rails deprecation warnings entirely with
ActiveSupport::Deprecations.behavior = :silence
. - fcc534ed changes the behavior of validation errors on confirmation to render on the confirmation attribute instead of the original attribute.
- The old
button_to_function
andlink_to_function
helpers are gone as of 3acdd652.
Double Shot #869
Cleaning out the browser tabs after another busy weekend.
- Cynical Agile and Scrum Dictionary - Agile meets Ambrose Bierce to form an instant classic.
- Concerned about Code Reuse? - An introduction to ActiveSupport::Concern, an underused tool.
- SSL_connect failure when running "rails new" - There's a fun little mess right now involving Rails, RubyGems, Ubuntu 12.04, AWS, and OpenSSL. While this rubygems bug includes some workarounds, the simplest solution for most of us is to not upgrade Ubuntu until they push out this fix.
- way - So many partials that you can't find the right one to edit? This gem give you a way to see all partial paths on the current page.
- Fixing the Memory Leak - One of the coming changes in Firefox.
- Skipping Asset Compilation with Capistrano - At least, when there's nothing new to compile.
- Full Stack Node.js Part 2 - The latest from peepCode.
- ViewDNS.info - One stop with a bunch of DNS lookup and checking tools.
Double Shot #868
About to push another week into the dustbin of history.
- A sneak preview of Phusion Passenger 3.2, part 2 - Passenger is still out there, and the next release is out in pre-release. It's got notably lower memory requirements for one thing.
- TotalSpaces brings back grid Spaces to OS X Lion - A very welcome announcement indeed. Software that fixes on of Apple's stupider decisions.
- Introducing Bwoken - UIAutomation test runner for iPad/iPhone that lets you write tests in CoffeeScript.
- Multi-Tiered Storage: Drobo + SSD + The AWS Storage Gateway - I really need to find time to set something like this up.
- Rails Upgrade Guide - The original from Jeremy McAnally, now open-sourced.
- Integration Testing Engines - Tips for easier development from Ryan Bigg.
- QEDProject - Simple web project skeleton with support for Sass, CoffeeScript, asset packaging, LiveReload, and JavaScript testing.
Double Shot #867
Oh, for a 36-hour day.
- Laconic - Nice way to create DOM elements from JavaScript, without all that appendChild nonsense.
- Routes refactor - DHH shows a way to ease complexity by breaking routes.rb up into multiple files.
- iwanttolearnruby - A bunch of resources for the Ruby newcomer.
- Asset Pipeline for Dummies - A basic intro and a good Q&A section.
- Onion Browser - An open-source Tor-based browser for iOS.
Double Shot #866
I seem to have misplaced a day this week. That's not good.
- Postgres.app - Easy installer for PostgeSQL on OS X.
- WebPagetest - Collect an overwhelming amount of data on page loading performance from real browsers scattered around the world.
- Mini tech note: MySQL query comments in Rails - 37signals has published a gem to add application/controller/action comments to the logs. Really only needed if you're using an automated tool for log analysis.
- FactoryGirl 3.2: So awesome it needs to be released during RailsConf - More syntax and better Rails 3 integration here.
- Cubism.js - Time-series visualizer built on top of D3.
- WebStorm 4.0 Review - A look at JetBrains' IDE for JavaScript development.
- Miso - Open source toolkit for data visualization, just starting to be released.
- Roboto - Rails engine for environment-specific robots.txt files.
Double Shot #865
With a lot of folks off at RailsConf, this will probably be a quiet week on the interwebs.
- Cloak - Subscription-based VPN designed to integrate with OS X and iOS devices.
- GitHub does dotfiles - "Your unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub."
- Mainer Ipsum - Another take on generating dummy text.
- The Webkit Inspector - Everything you could want to know about using the inspector in Google Chrome.
- Squeel 1.0 Released - "write your ActiveRecord queries with fewer strings, and more Ruby, by making the ARel awesomeness that lies beneath ActiveRecord more accessible."
- freightrain - Framwork for developing desktop applications in ruby.
- Rails for API applications (rails-api) released - The trimmed down stack that was briefly in Rails master has been released as a standalone gem.
- Turnip: a tasty Cucumber alternative? - Integrate Gherkin-based tests directly with RSpec.
Double Shot #864
Slowly getting back to the tech world again.
- It's Definitely a Bubble - Dave Winer comments on the packaging of developers, not unlike the packaging of mortgages.
- hamlbars - Generate Handlebars templates with HAML, just in case there's not enough abstraction in your abstraction.
- mail_view - Plumbing to test Action Mailer templates in a browser.
Double Shot #863
First word out of NPR when I turned it on this morning was "Windows." Another sign of the apocalypse.
- Ruby 1.9.3-p194 is released - Notably including a fix for using private gem servers over https.
- mruby - Early preliminary release of a lightweight ruby implementation from matz. There's also MobiRuby, which aims to use mruby as a core to build iOS and Android apps.
- Moom - Mouse/keyboard tool for OS X window management.
- Unicode Code Converter - Convert back and forth between a bunch of different text representations.
- Architectural Katas - Practice exercises for learning to architect new systems.
- Railcar - New one-click Rails installer is moving right along.
- WikiPack - Markdown + WikiWords + Dropbox = your own private wiki accessible from anywhere.
- Generate visual Stats/Graphs from a Git repository (on OSX) - Easy instructions for getting gitstats up and running.
- Continuous Integration with Jenkins and Bitnami - This is going to make setting up Jenkins much, much easier.
Double Shot #862
No Scouting commitments today. That's becoming a rarity.
- Campfire for iChat - Just in case you use both services, now you can combine them.
- Twitter's "Innovator's Patent Agreement" - Marco Arment looks skeptically at the IPA. I couldn't have said it better myself.
- {wrap}bootstrap - "a marketplace for premium Bootstrap themes and templates." Anything can spawn an ecosystem these days.
- Rails Internals: Active Model Observers - Another trip into the Rails source code.
- A stylesheet author's guide to terminal colors - I don't think I have the spare time to invest in making my terminal sessions prettier, though grc does look like a neat tool.
- Ansible - A Simple Model-Driven Configuration Management and Command Execution Framework - An attempt to combine several classes of devops tools into one uber-tool.
- Fake S3 - Save time, money, and develop offline - A mock server for the Amazon S3 REST API.
- User Authentication with Rails and Backbone.js - Combine some of the new hotness and the old hotness.
Double Shot #861
It's easier to imagine no countries than no email.
- The 501 Developer Manifesto - The older I get, the more I agree with this.
- Semicolon - A language composed entirely of semicolons. It had to happen.
- Introducing DCell: actor-based distributed objects for Ruby - Too deep for me but I'm sure some folks will make good use of this technology.
- The 10 Most Underused ActiveRecord::Relation Methods - Lots of nice syntactic sugar waiting for you. Caution, some of this stuff hasn't shipped yet.
Double Shot #860
Not really too happy with the aging process this morning.
- Her, an ORM for REST APIs - A new alternative to Active Resource.
- Lessons Learned Upgrading Harvest to Ruby 1.9.3 - Worth a read if you haven't made the upgrade on your own apps yet.
- Poltergeist 0.6.0: Javascript error handling and remote debugging - New release of this PhantomJS/WebKit-based Capybara driver.
- Dash - Free documentation browser and snippet manager for coders working with Web and Apple technologies.
- Austin on Rails Community Events @ RailsConf 2012 - Resource page for out-of-towners.
- CodeMirror - JavaScript library for in-browser code editing.
What's New in Edge Rails #17
Week of April 8 - April14, 2012
Lots of tidying up in the Rails source this week. It's amazing how much even a mature codebase can be improved when lots of people are nibbling away at it.
- 1a20683f adds enough relations to NullRelation to make it chainable with database methods, so you can use Post.none anywhere you could use Post.all.
- The
FormBuilder
class gets anindex
method in 47cbfbb9. Here's the sample usage from the commit:
<%= form_for @person do |person_form| %>
...
<%= person_form.fields_for :projects do |project_fields| %>
Project #<%= project_fields.index %>
...
<% end %>
...
<% end %>
-
1bac04e85 optimizes the performance of
#delegate
. It's a mildly-breaking change, though, in that you can no longer delegate to private methods. - With ca0af822, you get an automatic index when using
references
orbelongs_to
in migrations. That's nice; it would have saved me typingadd_index
about eleventy-seven times by now.
Double Shot #859
Another busy week looms. Let's start with a few links.
- Visual Studio 11 Express for Web for Front End Development - JavaScript/HTML5/CSS3 - Every once in a while I miss IntelliSense. Not enough to use a Microsoft product, though.
- Firebug 1.10a7 - If you've been having trouble with Firebug on Firefox nightlies, this is the version that fixes things.
- Ruby Dramas - Just in case you're losing track of what we're all plunged into war over these days.
- Meteor meets NoGPL - An analysis of the licensing issues surrounding Meteor.
- no-peeping-toms - If you like to test things in complete isolation, here's a way to disable Rails' observers.
- Asset pipeline support for Capybara - Combining this tip with Guard::RailsAssets has made my life easier.
- Inspecting :Hover States in Firefox Using Firebug - One of those nice "huh, I didn't know that" tips.
- In Which I Tell You to Stop Whining About CoffeeScript - An argument that CoffeeScript is useful even if you know JavaScript well.
- jQuery File Upload - Nice looking widget with all the bells and whistles.
- migrake - Sort of like Active Record migrations for Rake.
Double Shot #858
Some days the mountain of work just looks daunting.
- The Responsinator - View your web site as it will appear on a batch of mobile devices and tiny screens.
- locache.js - Caching framework for JavaScript. Probably best combined with offline use scenarios.
- A Baseline for Front-End Developers - Things you should know to develop on the Web these days.
- Fixing These jQuery - HTML5 presentation on debugging JavaScript and jQuery issues.
Double Shot #857
Today: time to help set up the gun ranges for the spring Scouting season.
- fivemat - Test formatter that uses one row of dots per file to help you keep track of progress through your test suite.
- Amazon CloudSearch - Amazon is adding their search technology to AWS. This surprises me, though it probably shouldn't.
- Introducing Epics: They're like stories, but bigger - First major new feature from Pivotal Tracker in a long time.
- Boxroom 1.5 - Rails app to let users share files in a web browser.
- Next Generation Ruby packages for Ubuntu - The folks at Brightbox are out with new packages including Ruby 1.9.3 with performance patches.
Double Shot #856
If the price of civilization is paperwork, it's not clear we're getting a good deal.
- Meteor - Another pure-JavaScript web framework.
- Greenfield - Ruby web application skeleton that lashes together sinatra, sprockets, compass, and a few other things.
- Instant new Rails applications with the App Scrolls - New application generator that lets you mix and match things from servers to Bootstrap to Resque to deployment.
- Find your Github User ID - Just in case you're feeling in need of more meaningless bragging rights.
- How to disable logging of asset pipeline - Just in case seeing all the GET messages in the Rails log for individual images bugs you, here's how to remove them.
- Rails Internals: Mass Assignment Security - A peek at some of the Rails internals.
- git-sweep - Tool to clean up git branches that have been merged into master.
- github-trello - Manage your Trello issues through GitHub commits.
Double Shot #855
Running late today. Story of my life.
- twitter/mysql - Twitter has released their MySQL fork. I'll be amused to watch all the people who rush to use it without considering whether they have any of the problems it's designed to overcome.
- Harness - Connect notifications from ActiveSupport::Notifications to external services, currently supporting Librato.
- On Railcar: an isolated Rails environment - Status report on Jeremy McAnally's efforts to build an easy Rails installer. It's looking good and ready for contributions.
- Mosh - A more "robust and responsive" replacement for SSH. Looks interesting.
What's New in Edge Rails #16
Week of April 1 - April 7, 2012
Although there were quite a few commits this past week, nearly all of them were to the docrails project, cleaning up the Guides and related documentation. On the new features front, Rails appears to have mostly taken a week off.
-
99c08c70 cleans up some of the internals of
url_for
for faster operation - one of the hundreds of little performance and style tweaks going into the next version.
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