Archive for August, 2006

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Flash Remoting for Ruby on Rails

I have never written an app with Ruby. I am a cf’er all the way. That being said, if a client came to me and said we really want to build this website and we wont pay for the license of Adobe ColdFusion, I would probalby build my firt RoR app.

I really like Flex! and I am amazed by how simple it is to use ColdFusion as the back end for my applications. But I am also very happy to know that were I to have a reason to build a RoR, I would not be out of luck if I wanted to connect to it from Flex.

Today WebORB annouced another addition to their product line up, WebORB for Ruby on Rails.

From the WebORB blog:

Much anticipated release of WebORB for Ruby on Rails is here and it is beautiful! The product is free and open-source and does really wonderful things for integrating Flex and/or Flash Remoting applications with Rails. We implemented both AMF0 and AMF3 protocols as well as added support for service deployment via standard Flex configuration file (remoting-config.xml).

So apparently this solution will also be free and open source which I am always a fan of. So if you are a flex or Ruby Developers I encourage you to check out this software to help you connect your projects.

Personal

The Jetsons On iTunes!

I have often talked among my friends that the only cartoon I really miss was the jetsons. I enjoyed it as a youth and have not seen it around much on the cartoon networks.

So you can imagine my excitement to find this press release over on apples site.

All 24 episodes of the orignal season are available now. Click here to see the The Jetsons Season 1.

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Note to self: Mind the keywords

We are all pretty familiar with the concept of keywords in programming. These are words we shouldnt use as variables because they are reserved for special use by the compiler.

Where I often forget about them is in frameworks. I was working on an admin for a site today where users can rsvp for events. Sounds easy enough right? Although I dont think event itself is a keyword in Reactor, it turns out that because I was using it in Model-Glue Unity I got myself in a pinch.

Everything was working just fine until I submitted the rsvp form in the admin. Then it errored that the event supplied to my rsvp.setEvent() method was not of the right type. Well I turned off development mode of reactor so it wouldn’t overwrite my file, and I change the setEvent() function to take type any. I then added a cfdump of the arguments scope and cfaborted.

What did I see in my dump output? “rsvp.commit” Thats right. I was using event as the the eventValue in my configuration. Meaning its the variable in my url that decides what actions should be done. Making it a keyword of sorts.

So to fix this I had a couple options. I figure I could change the eventValue for the url. However since “events” are a key peice of Model-Glue and can be used in Reactor, I decided I would be better to change my db. I didnt really want to change the name of my table in the database, so Reactor table aliases to the rescue. My Reactor config used to look like this(-ish ):








But now it looks like this:








Now my rsvp record has a setMeeting() function and doesnt have to know about events and I dont have to worry about keyword conficts. See, it all works out in the end.

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Community Project Sites Updated

If you are a regular reader of my blog you will notice that I stress ( shovel on at times) the importance of source control when developing. Along with source control I always advocate the use of Subversion and as a bi-product Trac.

I feel these things are important enough that I volunteered (threatened bodily harm against project leaders) to host the svn and trac sites for several of our community projects. The ones that took me up on that offer have had mixed emotions over the process. I think in general they have been pretty happy with the setup and not having to manage it, but we were over run with spam.

Yes Trac spam folks. On some days I was deleting as many as 30 spams tickets from the Fusebox 5, Model-Glue and Reactor Trac sites.

Well I have been testing out the new version of trac (0.10dev) and have been successful in installing several plugins that I feel will eliminate the problems we have had. The most noteworthy of these is an account registration plugin. So now in order to log bugs and edit the wiki for these projects you need to create an account. Thats it. You can still read the wiki and browse tickets anonymously but if you want to edit the site you need an account.

We moved the Model-Glue and Reactor Projects to the new server last night. It appears all is well so far (meaning no spam in 24hours) So I am hopeful that this will be a positive and permanent solution to our problem. We are waiting on some dns changes to move the fusebox project, but it will go soon.

In addition to these cf framework sites, I am also taking over the hosting of for CFEclipse. Well the repository and ticket system that is. We are still working on getting marks changes checked into the new version but soon we will have a new project site for the development of CFEclipse. Which really means we can starting making plans towards creating a regular release cycle where bugs and enhancments are get planned into releases :)

At any rate, I am very happy with the new version of trac, and even though it is still a dev release I have found it to be very stable. Its made my life easier all over again.

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]omg, You There?

So I cant believe how long its been since I posted. I have a list of about 10 things I want to write about, but just havnt had a break. I am making time for blogging and thought this light-hearted.

When I am checking to see if someone on my IM list is available I usually ping them. Typically when they get a second they respond and we begin our conversation.

Today through a very convienient type (right hand off by one) ping ~= [omg. Which doesnt really mean anything, but when peope see omg they think OMG. Which as my 12 year old neihbor starts any converstion “OMG did you see how [x so and so] parked their car?” or in closer terms “OMG I just deleted all the tickets from the bug tracker”. OMG seems to elicit a much peppier response from people.

Its kinda fun. Its friday, give it a try. Message a buddy with ]omg and see if you can stir them up :)