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Ruby Inside (10 unread)

daemon_controller: Automatic Daemon Process Management

Posted: August 27th, 2008, 4:24am MDT by Eldon Alameda

After tackling the difficult task of improving Rails deployment, Phusion - the creators of Passenger (mod_rails) recently announced the availability of daemon_controller - a library (rather than a stand-alone tool) for managing daemons. It lets you write applications that manage daemons in a robust manner (e.g. mongrel_cluster or UltraSphinx could be adapted to use this library).

The primary motivation for using daemon_controller is to make it easier to have other applications (such as Rails apps) start daemons without encountering race conditions or parallel attempts. With a little work, daemon_controller makes it possible for your app to safely launch all the daemons that its functionality relies upon (UltraSphinx, BackgrounDRb, etc.).

The library is simple to use - though it does require that you know how to start the daemon, how to contact the daemon, and you must know where it will put its PID and log files. Source code is available at [github.com]
Ruby Hoedown 2008 Videos Available

Posted: August 26th, 2008, 3:22pm MDT by Shalev NessAiver

Videos from the recent Ruby Hoedown conference are now available at the Confreaks site.

The talks this year are split between traditional talks and "Lightning Talks" - 5 minute presentations that quickly highlight a single package or aspect of Ruby. The talks cover a wide range of topics including Archaeopteryx - a Ruby MIDI/Music generator, easy phone calling with ruby, cloud computing, the usual excellent testing and design patterns talks, and a slew of other quirky and useful presentations.

If you don't want to sit through the talks at normal speed, you can download the presentations in .mp4 format and increase the playback speed in your video viewer of choice. I've found that the videos are perfectly watchable at 2x speed in Quicktime (Command-K > Playback speed.)
Mack 0.7.0: A Significant Update to A Powerful Ruby Web App Framework for Distributed Apps

Posted: August 25th, 2008, 8:28pm MDT by Peter Cooper

Enclosure: [download]

We first covered Mack in April, when I billed it as a "fast, best of the rest, Web app framework." Mack, a Ruby-based Web application framework, developed by a team led by Mark Bates, has continued to grow over the past several months and today announced a significant release, Mack 0.7.0.

Mack is a unique Ruby Web app framework due to its heavy focus on reusability across multiple applications. Mack supports distributed objects - yes, between multiple applications, distributed views and layouts, and even distributed routing (all of your Mack apps can be aware of each other's routing). Mack has a Google group for discussion purposes, and Mark has put together a great screencast demonstrating how to create a simple application with the framework.

I caught up with developer Mark Bates to ask a few questions about the framework:

Why would you recommend someone try Mack over the alternatives (Merb, Rails, Ramaze, Sinatra, etc.)?

Mark Bates: I would recommend that people try a lot of different frameworks before they decide which one to go with - that's what I did. I tried over a dozen frameworks back in January 2008 when we decided to move away from Rails. None of them were right for the problems we had to solve. If you're looking for a framework that is simple, fast, easy to use, and yet powerful, than Mack might be right for you.

Mack has a large focus on giving developers the tools to build SOA, distributed, and portal-like applications. Mack is easily extensible and easy to configure to suite your projects. The core of Mack is small and lightweight. The mack-more series of gems allows people to pull in the extras that absolutely need.

What are the new features in Mack 0.7.0?

The two biggest features in 0.7.0 would have to be Distributed Objects and Distributed Views/Layouts, which round out the three big distributed features, along with distributed routes. These features are what really set Mack aside from all the other frameworks out there right now. Using the power of Rinda we're able to have a bunch of Mack applications talking seamlessly together with almost zero configuration.

In addition to the new distributed features, we've added a ton of helpers, including a whole suite of form helpers, Transactional support for tests using Active Record, DataMapper was already supported. Great improvements to the mack-data_factory content generating system, including a ton of new content types. A whole slew of bug fixes, and general overall improvements. A bunch of new generators and enhancements to existing ones.

What have you learned / discovered in the process of developing Mack?

One of the biggest things that I've learned since I've started developing Mack is that I truly believe in the KISS philosophy, Keep It Simple Stupid, and that it is the only way to code. One of big frustrations I've had with other frameworks, and one in particular, has been that if you crack open the source code to try and track down a bug it's nearly impossible. There are just thousands of lines of code, and eight levels of redirection before you find the things you're looking for. When I talk to people who want to commit that's the first thing I tell them, keep it simple. I want people to be able to open the source and be able to very quickly follow it through. Keeping things simple also has other side effects, apart from readability. It helps keep things fast, and helps keeps the bugs to a minimum.

Is deploying Mack applications as easy as Rails or Merb apps?

Since Mack is a Rack application at heart, it deploys with Phusion Passenger with just a simple config.ru file that Passenger requires. If you're using Thin, there's a Mack adapter built in, so it's very easy to deploy with a Thin cluster. Mackwiki.com (a new Mack-based wiki) is hosted using a cluster of 3 Thin servers behind Nginx. Again, KISS, is evident here. I want Mack apps to be easy to deploy. I've fought through some tough deployments with other frameworks, and I don't want other people to have to go through that.
What’s Hot on GitHub - August 2008

Posted: August 25th, 2008, 9:40am MDT by Zach Inglis
Github is a great resource for finding new projects within the Ruby community. It has become an extremely popular place for Ruby and Rails developers to congregate lately, so I wanted to list some of the new projects, and some of the updated ones, that I have found interesting and that are too small for their own blog post. Let us know if you like this as we might turn it into a regular series on Ruby Inside!

This month's picks:
- Uppercut - A simple DSL for creating Jabber agents within Ruby. Seems quite young but full of potential.
- AintABlog - Open-source tumblog application. Imagine your own tumblr account, but really customizable.
- factory_girl_on_rails - If you use factory_girl (like I do) then this will provide you with automatic inclusion of test/factories/* and also new generators for creating factories.
- object_daddy - A nice alternative to factory_girl. It helps you kill rails fixtures, keep your code DRY and reduce the complexity of your tests.
- Chris Wanstrath's Ruby Hoedown Keynote - An unusual entry for Github, but as Chris runs GitHub, this makes sense. It's a transcript of Chris's great keynote presentation at the recent Ruby Hoedown conference.
- Backchat - a one-file Merb application that allows you to quickly add commenting (think disqus) functionality on to any site.
- HomeMarks - a Rails application that provides "start page" type functionality. A great example of Rails code using unobtrusive JavaScript. Very slick.
- Inline File Editing - Not a project, but a new Github feature. You can now edit files in your repositories within the browser and Github deals with the housekeeping. Perfect for the most minor tweaks.
- Adhearsion - A popular VoIP framework (a bit like a "Rails for telephony") that has just migrated over to using GitHub.
NeverBlock: Fast, Non-Blocking IO In Ruby Without Changing Program Flow

Posted: August 25th, 2008, 5:30am MDT by Peter Cooper

NeverBlock is a Ruby (1.9) library developed by eSpace - an Egyptian Web 2.0 development team - that could make your life a whole lot easier if you have to deal with blocking IO operations that hold up all your Ruby threads.

NeverBlock makes it easy to get the benefits of non-blocking IO (IO operations that aren't held up by mutexes) in your Ruby apps without having to take the usual route of redesigning your app to be event-based. You get all the benefits of event-based code (lower CPU overhead, lower memory use, less hangups) but with the benefit of a normal program flow model.

The catch? It's Ruby 1.9 only - relying heavily on fibers - and the documentation isn't particularly strong yet so it'll take a bit of work to figure out. It could be worth it, though, as in benchmarks on the NeverBlock-based Postgres library, throughput is shown as significantly increased where a percentage of queries are complex and slow (and would usually block up the client).

If you're still interested, NeverBlock is available on Github - there's also an official home page and documentation available.

This post is sponsored by AlphaSights Ltd - AlphaSights are recruiting. If you're looking for a Ruby on Rails opportunity, can work in Cambridge, UK and enjoy the buzz of a brand new well-funded startup then look no further. AlphaSights are recruiting from entry level to senior positions and offer very competitive salaries and a great working environment.
WhatLanguage: Ruby Library To Detect The Language Of A Text

Posted: August 22nd, 2008, 12:04pm MDT by Peter Cooper
WhatLanguage is a library by Peter Cooper (disclaimer: yes, that's me) that makes it quick and easy to determine what language a supplied text is written in. It's pretty accurate on anything from a short sentence up to several paragraphs in all of the languages supplied with the library (Dutch, English, Farsi, Russian, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Pinyin) and adding languages of your own choosing isn't difficult.

The library works by checking for the presence of words with bloom filters built from dictionaries based upon each source language. We've covered bloom filters on Ruby Inside before, but essentially they're probabilistic data structures based upon hashing a large set of content. They're ideal in situations where you want to check set memberships but the threat of false positives is acceptable in return for significant memory savings (and a 250KB bloom filter is a lot nicer to deal with than a 14MB+ dictionary).

WhatLanguage is available from GitHub (and can be installed as a gem from there with gem install peterc-whatlanguage) or from RubyForge with a simpler gem install whatlanguage. Once installed, usage is simple:
```
require 'whatlanguage'

"Je suis un homme".language      # => :french

# OR...

wl = WhatLanguage.new(:all)
wl.language("Je suis un homme")  # => :french
wl.process_text("this is a test of whatlanguage's great language detection features")
# => {:german=>1, :dutch=>3, :portuguese=>3, :english=>7, :russian=>1, :farsi=>1, :spanish=>3, :french=>2}
```
I wrote the library initially a year ago but have only just made it available for public use, so if there are unforeseen bugs to fix or things that really need to be added, fork it on GitHub and get playing.

This post is sponsored by AlphaSights Ltd - AlphaSights are recruiting. If you're looking for a Ruby on Rails opportunity, can work in Cambridge, UK and enjoy the buzz of a brand new well-funded startup then look no further. AlphaSights are recruiting from entry level to senior positions and offer very competitive salaries and a great working environment.
Ruby Inside Gets Redesigned; Gets Twittering; and Three New Writers Come On Board

Posted: August 21st, 2008, 3:08pm MDT by Peter Cooper

New Design
Till yesterday, Ruby Inside had been sporting the same tired design it had since launch in May 2006, but no more! Ruby Inside now has a more up to date design that focuses more on getting access to great Ruby (and some Rails) content from both Ruby Inside itself and other sites (like Ruby Flow).

If you only read Ruby Inside through the full text feed, please visit the site directly just to give it a look - pretty please? :)
Follow RubyInside on Twitter
The new design you see today is only step one of a longer-term process to make RubyInside.com more useful for all Ruby and Rails developers. Another step has been creating a RubyInside Twitter account. Now, if you prefer, you can follow Ruby Inside directly from your Twitter account or cellphone. Alternatively you can subscribe by e-mail. You'll receive one e-mail a day max and it'll feature the new posts from the current day. See the new front page for more details.
Three New Writers
As part of staying on the pulse of the latest Ruby and Rails happenings, three new writers have come on board to help both Ruby Inside and Rails Inside going forward. They are Zach Inglis of Hashrocket, Shalev NessAiver, and Eldon Alameda (known as the author of Practical Rails Projects). You'll see and hear a lot more about them soon, but please welcome them to the team. Thanks to all 18 people who applied for these positions - I was genuinely surprised by the response and touched by a lot of the nice comments.
Suggestions?
If you have any comments or suggestions regarding the new design, things you'd like to see on Ruby Inside or Rails Inside, or the like, please leave them here, or visit our new Contact page to get in touch with us. Here's to another solid two years with Ruby Inside (and if you're interested in Rails - don't forget to subscribe to Rails Inside too, as most Rails content will be over there in future!)
Apple and Ruby: The Ongoing Relationship

Posted: August 20th, 2008, 7:50pm MDT by Eldon Alameda
While it was pretty momentous last year when Mac OS X (Leopard) was released with full support for Ruby and Rails included with the OS, it seems that the Ruby train is still rolling with Apple.

A recent InfoQ article highlights some ways that Apple is using Ruby that you might have missed - including:
- The iPhone Configuration Web Utility - A tool written in Ruby on Rails for allowing enterprise customers to manage iPhones.
- The SproutCore JavaScript framework - Which is designed for making desktop-like applications on the web and is used in Apple's new MobileMe applications. SproutCore is installed as a gem, uses generators written in Ruby to create resources and it utilizes Merb to generate HTML artifacts. (Update: SproutCore isn't a Ruby project / Ruby-based system per se, but it does offer some good tie-ins to the Ruby ecosystem.)
- The MacRuby project - Apple's own port of Ruby to the Objective-C runtimes - which should make it much easier to integrate with Cocoa for Desktop development.
I haven't played with the MobileMe web applications much, but I recall thinking that they looked fairly impressive. Have any other Ruby developers tried SproutCore yet? How's it working out for you?

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BOSSMan: Build Your Own Search Engine With Yahoo And Ruby

Posted: August 19th, 2008, 8:41pm MDT by Peter Cooper
Recently, Yahoo! launched BOSS - the "Build Your Own Search Service." In all but name, it appears very similar to their older Yahoo! Search API, as it allows you to query Yahoo's search index programatically. Under the surface though, Yahoo has removed the 5,000 query per day limit, you're unrestricted in how you present the data returned, you can re-order the data, and no attribution is required.

For Rubyists ready to play with BOSS, Jay Pignata has developed BOSSMan, a library for interacting with the Yahoo! BOSS Web service. Either get it with Git or install with RubyGems like so:
```
gem sources -a http://gems.github.com
gem install jpignata-bossman
```
Once you've got the library, make sure you've got an application ID from Yahoo (this is unavoidable, alas) and then you can start to play:
```
require 'rubygems'
require 'bossman'
include BOSSMan

BOSSMan.application_id = "Your Application ID here"

news = BOSSMan::Search.news("Barack Obama", 0, 3)
news.results.each do |result|
  puts "#{result.title} [from #{result.source}]"
end 
```
BOSSMan supports Web, news, and image searches out of the box. You can dump to JSON, XML, or YAML and access all of the relevant attributes through methods. Superb!

This post supported by Notifixious - Notifixious - a new notification service startup based in San
Francisco - needs a Rails expert to become its CTO! Knowledge of messaging technologies (XMPP) and REST API development is a must. You can learn more here.
Shoes - Ruby’s Cross Platform GUI App Toolkit - Grows Up

Posted: August 15th, 2008, 7:36am MDT by Peter Cooper

It was about a year ago now that Rubyist extraordinaire Why The Lucky Stiff first showed his "Shoes" Ruby cross-platform GUI application toolkit off to the world. Since then, he's not let up with the development.

Previously, we've featured the release of The Shoebox - a Shoes application repository - and Nobody Knows Shoes - a short book about Shoes, done a roundup of Shoes tutorials, and looked at how to write a drawing program with Shoes on OS X.

Now, Shoes has a new official homepage - located at [shoooes.net] (yes, that's three os). Complete with a picture of an Amstrad CPC and gloriously pixellated logo, there's now a reasonably non-technical place to go to download Shoes, get into the wiki, and get access to the book. There's also a really good illustrative tutorial that walks you through some basic Shoes examples.

Quit dallying - go check it out. It's quite possibly Why's best work yet.