http://scottmotte.com codes a lot Wed, 20 Aug 2008 06:26:05 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I had a client who had their local server setup under domain.com instead of properly under local.domain.com or something similar. It caused a bit of a headache (you could view their new site from outside their local office, but in their local office the old website was still showing.) Their local ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/311 One of my apps requires a daily task to run. It uses WWW::Mechanize (the gem) to log onto a website, insert a username and password, and save that information, come back to my app, and insert & save that into a form on my site. I'm pretty impressed I was able ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/307 This is updated from my old post on the subject. It's a process cheat sheet for me. I'm not gonna explain it too much. Here's the code. script/plugin install git://github.com/technoweenie/restful-authentication.git script/generate authenticated user sessions --include-activation #Add an observer to config/environment.rb config.active_record.observers = :user_observer #put it just before the very last 'end' on the page #Add routes to ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/297 Getting started tutorial http://scottmotte.com/archives/292 In terminal rake -T http://scottmotte.com/archives/290 open -a Firefox doc/plugins/rspec-rails/index.html http://scottmotte.com/archives/286 cd ~ mate .bashrc # or nano .bashrc # then type in export PS1='\[[~/\W]' http://scottmotte.com/archives/282 I've installed WP-Syntax on my blog. It will help brighten up my lines of code. It was an easy install and pretty easy to use. Intead, of just using the pre html tag, I know do something like this: pre lang="ruby" line="1" #put some ruby code Categories.find(:all, :conditions => ['cool_field = ?', 'awesome']) pre #put some ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/263 Detailed tutorial on nginx, mysql, php, wordpress setup. bonus: it includes setup instructions for the super cache plugin http://scottmotte.com/archives/253 Usually, when you create a model, you create a database, and then the model works with ActiveRecord. And it's ActiveRecord (as far as I currently know) that lets you use validation techniques. So how do we add validation techniques to something like a contact form on our Rails site that ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/274 Recent # Recent posts # Recent blogs http://scottmotte.com/archives/251 That's kind of fun to say out loud. Here's a recent solution from Ryan Bates for handling validations across associations in Rails. The key code is: validate :category_must_exist def category_must_exist errors.add(:category_id, "can't be blank") if category_id.blank? end If you are new to how these custom ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/245 Use change_table and its sub methods rather than remove_column and add_column Resource #example class AddCategoryIdToPosts < ActiveRecord::Migration def self.up change_table :posts do |t| t.references :category end end def self.down change_table :posts do |t| ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/241 This comes from this post on railsforum. First, make sure you can do the basic javascript. See the pastie. As you can see we are just going to use a basic toggle. Let's keep things simple to start. Now make sure you're capable of doing a basic select box with selected working. 1, "No. ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/239 Here's the inspirational link. Basically, you use capistrano to deploy_via, :copy rather than :remote_cache. And you don't have to worry about setting up gitosis or paying for github. However, I would not recommend this if you are working with another team member on the code. This is good for things ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/233 Handy cheat sheet for managing linux users http://scottmotte.com/archives/227 FINAL UPDATE: The following is a mind dump. It might be useful, but it is not longer the exact path I took. Instead I followed the scientist article, but when it came to creating the git user I followed the slicehost article for ubuntu (which I am on). --- Most all of this ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/209 Nice $#%@ in irb 12.is_a?(Integer) => true from Introduction to Ruby http://scottmotte.com/archives/207 Previously, I was using tinymce on my rails app along with the plugin. I've since moved to using the yui_editor through larslevan's plugin on github. I am currently much happier with the yui_editor and would recommend it over anything else I've been able to find out there. Plus, setup was a breeze. ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/196 This was giving me problems. This solved it. { :action => ‘update’, :id => @product.id } do |f| %> ‘form’, :locals => { :f => f } %> Save Listing http://scottmotte.com/archives/193 Nginx rewrite module Basically, it uses regular expressions so here's a good cheat sheet for regular expressions. http://scottmotte.com/archives/189 http://matthewbass.com/2008/08/08/finder_filter-gem-released/ This: class UsersController < ActionController::Base before_filter :find_user, :only => [:show, :edit] def show # do something with @user end def edit # do something with @user end def find_user @user ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/185 First, make sure your dns records are setup. (also, you could just use slicehost's article. it's the best.) Login to your slice and setup the directory structure for the site cd ~/public_html mkdir -p website.com/{public,private,log,cgi-bin,backup} cd website.com/public sudo nano index.html # put a simple message Now setup your apache config files cd /etc/apache2/sites-available sudo nano website.com # fill it with ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/173 This is useful for a contact form with ruby on rails. See Recipe 33 in Rails Recipes. def contact if request.post? Emailer::deliver_contact_email(params[:email]) flash[:notice] = "Your email was sent successfully. Thank you for your contact." ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/168 UPDATE AUGUST 6TH, 2008: Gmail's reply-to was failing with the rails action-mailer. It would show the reply-to email as the email from gmail rather than the email address entered by the user. I did the following, and it fixed the reply-to, but now the @from does not work. At least ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/159 Ryan Bates has a very nice video tutorial on installing passenger at modrails.com. It isn't slicehost specific though, so here's some help. For the part where Ryan adds the necessary passenger lines to httpd.conf (the apache config file) instead for slicehost users edit the /etc/apache2/apache2.conf file. sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf & paste at the ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/145 wp-super-cache Wordpress site wp-super-cache download http://scottmotte.com/archives/142 1. Instal postfix sudo apt-get postfix or sudo aptitude install postfix Say Yes at the prompt. 2. After it's finished installing run: sudo /etc/init.d/postfix restart http://scottmotte.com/archives/141 SuperJared has a great post on swap and how to watch it. He also notes that Apache is usually a serious culprit. vmstat 1 10 http://scottmotte.com/archives/140 1. Purchase ssl certificate at GoDaddy 2. Create temp directory and create the key and csr mkdir /home/username/temp cd /home/username/temp openssl genrsa -des3 -out myssl.key 1024 openssl req -new -key myssl.key -out myssl.csr For the csr, you will have to enter information. Try to make it match to what you put in GoDaddy's ssl form online. 3. ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/139 I run more than 10 sites on a 256mb slice on slicehost - all php, mostly wordpress sites. They are rarely visited sites with the most popular one getting about 300 hits a day. By changing the mpm_prefork_module I was able to get my slice to run much lighter on memory. # ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/138 Here's what a brand new 256 mb slice from slicehost looks like for memory on slicehost. http://scottmotte.com/archives/133 You can check your ubuntu version on slicehost with the following command in your terminal window. sudo lsb_release -a or here's another way to do it from a slicehost article cat /etc/lsb-release http://scottmotte.com/archives/131 I opted to use the googlechart gem (Google Charts) because the website was nicely designed and had numerous examples. It also seemed to currently have the most development around it. On github it had the most recent commit. This guy also decided on the googlecharts gem. gem sources -a http://gems.github.com/ sudo gem ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/130 UPDATE: I tried out thin again, but ran only one server for my two small apps, and then ran 3 thin servers for my large app - twinstang.com. Much faster. See the output difference. I'm sticking with thin, but will stay light on the amount servers from now on. Mongrel ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/127 Here's a good post on Passenger versus Thin, and here is a better benchmark that includes thin on nginx. Passenger looks to be pretty darn quick. I'm impressed. http://scottmotte.com/archives/126 In your controller file def test_email ...#content here end In your routes.rb file map.resources :flowers, :collection => { :test_email => :get} http://scottmotte.com/archives/123 Advantage to using paperclip: you don't have to create separate model for images and then create a join relationship like with attachment_fu What you'll need: - the paperclip plugin: run the following from your terminal in your rail's project root folder: script/plugin install git://github.com/thoughtbot/paperclip.git Useful tutorials: - Paperclip project page - Paperclip original tutorial - Paperclip more ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/122 "We don't celebrate 'dependence (on the government) day' July 4th, we celebrate Independence Day!" "I can't help thinking, while much of the 20th century saw the rise of the federal government, the 21st Century will be the century of the states. I have always believed that America is strongest and freest ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/120 This tutorial is awesome for automating mysql backup with amazon s3. Plus, it is from a slicehost user - eve n more awesomeness. http://scottmotte.com/archives/117 So I created a useful little ruby script on my windows machine, and wanted to turn it into a .exe script. This way I could run it under my windows system scheduler once a day. I followed this tutorial for setting up your ruby script as a .exe on windows. RubyScript2Exe docs http://scottmotte.com/archives/116 Here are some useful scripts with mechanize, hpricot, and htmldoc First, install mechanize and hpricot and htmldoc (pdfs) gem install hpricot gem install mechanize gem install htmldoc Save web page as pdf with mechanize and htmldoc require 'rubygems' require 'mechanize' require 'htmldoc' agent = WWW::Mechanize.new agent.user_agent_alias = 'Mac FireFox' agent.redirect_ok = true page = agent.get('http://scottmotte.com/archive') pdf = PDF::HTMLDoc.new pdf.set_option :outfile, "~/Desktop/outfile.pdf" pdf.set_option :bodycolor, :white pdf.set_option :links, ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/115 This is really poorly written and more of a mind dump than anything. Use it at your own risk. I eventually gave up on cygwin. It caused me some headaches. Instead, I did the following: 1. Installed ruby for windows using the one-click installer from ruby-lang.org (for some reason I had ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/114 -It will skip over tbody for xpaths. Don't include it in your xpath. # correct content '//body/table/tr/td # incorrect content '//body/table/tbody/tr/td -It will skip over font[@size=n] but not over just plain font -extractor.to_xml will output to the xml you specify within the: extractor = Scrubyt::Extractor.define do .. end -extractor.to_text i'm not sure how to work http://scottmotte.com/archives/113 I am beginning to use scrubyt gem and in my opinion the documentation and examples are pretty bad. The name isn't the greatest either. It's difficult to type so be careful in the following examples. (should have just called it scruby or scrubby or something. the t is annoying.) **However**, I ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/112 10 must have rails plugins http://scottmotte.com/archives/111 I was getting the following error after doing sudo gem install scrubyt and trying to run a scrubyt script can't activate RubyInline (= 3.6.3), already activated RubyInline-3.7.0] (Gem::Exception) I found this solution for how to fix the Scrubyt RubyInline version error, and it worked great. sudo gem uninstall RubyInline -v 3.7.0 http://scottmotte.com/archives/110 MarsEdit has been awesome. I have never posted so many solutions to ruby on rails coding problems before. The desktop editor makes it so much easier to do so that I actually quite enjoy it. If you are having trouble motivating yourself to post blog entries (especially if you're a ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/109 I needed a way to get stock quote data into my rails app. I decided to go with the yahoofinance gem. 1. install it: sudo gem install yahoofinance 2. require it in your environment file - for rails 2.1 do config.gem 'yahoofinance' 3. Use the following code to add it to your database ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/108 Sometimes I need to compare a date field in my database to todays date. Ruby doesn't have a Date class only Time with the method Time.now. To turn Time.now into a date, I now do the following thanks to Ruby convert Time to Date Date.parse(Time.now.strftime('%Y/%m/%d')) Also, here's the Ruby Time class http://scottmotte.com/archives/107 I am using the restful_authentication plugin, and I wanted to add some roles. To do so, I did the following: 1. Installed role_requirement also at github role_requirement 2. script/generate roles Role User 3. rake db:migrate 4. Created some views to manage the roles role_requirement views layouts 5. Added the roles to my user create ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/106 I was looking at the option of using something like acts_as_sluggable or salty_slugs, but with the new rails this is much easier. Just put the following in your model. to_param has replaced acts_as_sluggable class Page < ActiveRecord::Base def to_param id.to_s+'-'+title.downcase.gsub(' ', '-') end end And if you want to ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/104 I needed to create random banner images for a project and have never been quite knowledgeable on the best way to do this. I now have the following thanks to Agile Productions blog post on getting random data from the database with rails module BannersHelper def random_banner ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/102 Self-Assigned ssl certificates are basically ssl certificates you create yourself on your own server. They will through a mean looking error at the user, but if you are the only user they are a great way to secure your data over the internet. Once you add an exception to the ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/101 Make sure that within your database migration file you specify the following for any decimal column type. t.decimal :total_assets, :default => 0, :precision => 8, :scale => 2 source: Decimal support in rails Otherwise, the default schema is precision => 10, :scale => 0. If you are trying to do money, then you ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/100 module UsersHelper # Rails cookbook p 190 def url_for_gravatar(email) gravatar_id = Digest::MD5.hexdigest( email ) "http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=#{ gravatar_id }" end end http://scottmotte.com/archives/99 Port 80: The port your computer listens on to do http (hyper text transfer protocol). thanks Daemon: A computer program that runs in the background, rather than under the direct control of a user. It also creates a pid number. wikipedia PID: process id of a unique process wikipedia vmstat 4 10 free -m http://scottmotte.com/archives/98 To watch over your server, use the free command. free -m http://scottmotte.com/archives/97 This is how to use CocoaMySQL and SSH tunneling to manage your databases more easily than the mysql command line Note that if your ssh port is different than the standard 22, your tunnel line will look like this: If 2020 is my port I created for ssh. ssh -fNg -L 2020:127.0.0.1:3306 username@123.45.67.89 ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/95 UPDATE July 13, 2008: see the very bottom for deploy.rb file that includes cron job and namespaces some of the deploy tasks. -- This article assumes you already have git nginx, and thin setup properly on your slicehost. To get those going I recommend reading their articles at articles.slicehost.com, and browse their ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/94 I couldn't get just mysql to work on my slicehost, but if I typed the following i was in: mysql -u username -p # this will then prompt you for the password Then I typed help for a list of commands mysql> help Then I used some of the commands from my ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/93 UPDATE: I actually ended up using this solution because the one below was throwing a javascript error on the page. # helpers/remote_link_renderer.rb # from http://weblog.redlinesoftware.com/2008/1/30/willpaginate-and-remote-links class RemoteLinkRenderer < WillPaginate::LinkRenderer def page_link_or_span(page, span_class = 'current', text = nil) text ||= page.to_s if page and page != current_page ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/92 I always forget these: %a - The abbreviated weekday name (``Sun'') %A - The full weekday name (``Sunday'') %b - The abbreviated month name (``Jan'') %B - The full month name (``January'') %c - The preferred local date and time representation ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/91 Just came across Geektool. It's pretty cool, and a great way to customize your desktop to your super power user needs. http://scottmotte.com/archives/90 server { listen 80; server_name localhost; location / { root html; index index.html index.htm; } error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html; location = /50x.html { root html; } } http://scottmotte.com/archives/88 I used this forum post and this article http://scottmotte.com/archives/87 Usually the standard port for ssh is 22 on your server, but if you choose to change this to help stop dirty scripts then you have to ssh in with the following command For example, if your port # was changed to 8888 ssh -p 8888 yourusername@youriporwebsite.com http://scottmotte.com/archives/86 1. Sign up for an account at slicehost 2. Use the Deploying Rails Applications Book Chapter 4. Starting at p. 74. (Simultaneously, read the Slicehost Wiki to make sure you aren't missing something specific to slicehost (I actually mostly followed the wiki) a. Once it got to the point ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/85 Vim editing can be a pain in the arse, but you pretty much need to know it to do anything on the server properly. (I know, there are alternatives like nano, but pretty much all the examples use vim) Go for a cheatsheet. Old, tried, and true. By the way, nano ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/84 There comes a time when you don't need all your releases of your gitified app on your server. It just takes up way too much space. In this event, you can issue the following command for your capistrano deploy This, of course, assumes you've already setup Capistrano to work with Git ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/83 I've created a freely available content management system. It is rails based and easy to install. It includes wysiwyg editing using tinymce, image insertion, page management, sub pages, page re-ordering using ajax, and user management. motte_cms - project page motte_cms - github http://scottmotte.com/archives/82 I am starting to using sqlite in my rails apps for experimentation sake, and to keep up with the community. However, no one seems to have any advice on what sql manager to use. For MySQL, previously, I was using CocoaMySQL. It was free and worked pretty well. So far, for ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/80 class CreatePages < ActiveRecord::Migration def self.up create_table :pages do |t| t.integer :parent_id, :default => 0, :null => false t.string :title t.text :body ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/79 Are you getting the following error: syntax error, unexpected '\n', expecting tCOLON2 or '[' or '.' I was too, and it was a stupid mistake. I had my migrations' lines mixed up and containing a comma where there should not have been one. Incorrect format: class CreatePages < ActiveRecord::Migration def self.up ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/78 Two steps: 1. Install sqlite3 on your mac 2. Install the sqlite gem Step 1: On Mac OS X Leopard - no worries. It's already installed and working great! On Mac OS X Tiger - be careful. It is technically already installed, but you might have problems with migrations still. If you are having problems, you ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/77 To create a simple search form see Ryan's Episode 37. # in your model def self.search(search) if search find(:all, :conditions => ["first_name LIKE ? or middle_name LIKE ? or last_name LIKE ? or body LIKE ?", "%#{search}%", "%#{search}%", "%#{search}%", "%#{search}%"], :order => 'service_date ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/76 To join first_name and last_name into a virtual attribute full_name using Ruby on Rails check out Ryan's Episode 16. # This is your model class User < ActiveRecord::Base def full_name [first_name, last_name].join(' ') end def full_name=(name) split = name.split(' ', 2) ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/75 The exception_notification plugin is a great tool to debug your deployed application. You get an email when an error occurs. To download (it is now on get): http://github.com/rails/exception_notification/tree/master/README script/plugin install git://github.com/rails/exception_notification.git Some tutorials to help out: - http://internetducttape.com/2008/02/06/rails-guide-exception-notifier-plugin/ - http://soakedandsoaped.com/articles/read/exception-notifier-ruby-on-rails-plugin http://scottmotte.com/archives/74 To change your rails delete button into an ajax one. Do the following (this example is for images, but would apply to anything else with some tweaking): The action # DELETE /images/1 # DELETE /images/1.xml def destroy @image = Image.find(params[:id]) @image.destroy ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/73 To fix the NULL value problem in rails, you actually need to fix your mysql. It's a mysql issue. For your migration, do something like this (making sure to include :null => false) class AddParentIdToPages < ActiveRecord::Migration def self.up add_column :pages, :parent_id, :integer, :default => 0, :null => ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/72 Put this in your model before_validation :normalize def normalize symbol.upcase! #other modifications here end Normalizing data in the model http://scottmotte.com/archives/71 To create a Page parent drop down box similar to the one on wordpress.com in order to create subpages and subpages of subpages the following should help you out. (Go to #2 for the goods) 1. First the basics, a select list (just so you know what is basically going on): : ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/70 I gave Blogo a shot and liked it for a while, but then I tried MarsEdit. I prefer MarsEdit's interface - more whitespace. Though I would like the ability to auto-resize images on upload. That would be very helpful. http://scottmotte.com/archives/69 While Ajax commenting worked great in my last post, it did not apply to ajax image uploading. This is apparently because there is a security restriction with javascript preventing access to the file system. I was getting the following error in my development server (using attachment_fu to process the images). Processing ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/67 1. Take a look at Ryan's Episode 432. Make sure to change create.rjs to create.js.rjs for rails 2.0 (this was helpful) http://scottmotte.com/archives/66 UPDATE: the yui_editor from yahoo might be a better option. especially larsklevan's yui_editor plugin for rails. it worked the first time, was way easier to setup and tinymce, and is still working great. see new post on how to setup yui_editor 1. Install the plugin (instructions available on the rails wiki) ruby script/plugin ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/65 You can always use RapidSSL for your ssl needs when testing ssl. And then later you can upgrade and/or purchase one from a provider. http://scottmotte.com/archives/63 I am trying out Blogo on my mac for use with this blog (it's a wordpress based blog). So far, it is a great tool. I really like it, and could forsee myself actually using it. It is much easier to work with than the wordpress interface (even with the ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/64 Cpanel offers a great little tool to backup your entire site to your computer or to another ftp location (like another host). To use it: go to Backups -> Download or Generate a new backup and enter the appropriate information (usually the port will be 21) http://scottmotte.com/archives/60 I was having trouble getting the Map location field extension in symphony 2 to show a marker in the center. The following is what I did. see the pastie http://scottmotte.com/archives/59 To create a cool slide in effect with mootools you can use mootools Fx.Slide function. This slide in effect is great for navigation bars. I wanted this effect to work as soon as the page loaded though, and I came across this forum post. Here's the code in pastie http://scottmotte.com/archives/58 http://scottmotte.com/archives/57 It looks like the rails session only stores 4k of data. If you have a large form, it might not work. Looks like I?ll probably have to change to the database session this guy has a solution then you need to do this he changed to database session helpful forum answer link http://scottmotte.com/archives/40 To generate pdfs: Ryan?s Bates solutions, episode 79 (this works well, but is a little difficult to learn how to code in) http://rubyreports.org/ This looks promising for the future, but not much conversation going on about it. HTMLDoc This looks really GREAT. I?m used to html so the new level of coding to ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/39 To style dates in rails use strftime function. For example: <%= comment.created_at.strftime(?%Y?) %> Though, this might technically be ruby code not rails. http://scottmotte.com/archives/38 UPDATE: Here is updated code Definitely, use fastercsv The best way to explain this is with code. Here it is. Copy and paste. Copy and paste. http://scottmotte.com/archives/37 Ryan Bates is the man and so is Rick Olson who created the plugin. Actually Mr. Olson is even more the man. http://scottmotte.com/archives/36 UPDATE: I made some code changes that seemed to work better for my needs. Plus, it places everything in the respond_to .csv block. Check the pastie Recipe 35 of rails recipes does not seem to work any longer on rails 2.0. I believe you have to now strictly use FasterCSV - ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/35 Here is how to do it: Date range to SQL clause (6.months.ago.to_date..1.year.ago.to_date).to_s(:db) => ?BETWEEN ?2005-07-27? AND ?2005-01-22?? taken from here http://scottmotte.com/archives/34 The following are some good resource for how to use Gruff graphs: gruff docs dynamic graphs tutorial complete with how to do keys The last one was HUGELY helpful: def stats g = Gruff::Line.new(?580x210?) g.theme = { :colors => [?#ff6600?, ?#3bb000?, ?#1e90ff?, ?#efba00?, ?#0aaafd?], :marker_color => ?#aaa?, :background_colors => [?#eaeaea?, ?#fff?] } g.hide_title = true g.font ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/33 Here is how to sort by date thanks to Ryan Bates Also see episode 70 http://scottmotte.com/archives/32 How to do a rewrite rule in rails .htaccess to disallow rails in certain subfolders (for example, you might want to run a php forum software under /public/forum) Mainly, you can just edit the .htaccess file in your rails app under public/.htaccess. Inside there is a short explanation and example of ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/31 CSS stylesheet & viewport meta tag Basically, you want the following in your header tag - this will give you a css stylesheet just for the iphone, and make the scale to 1. 'only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)' %> http://scottmotte.com/archives/30 If you are a ruby on rails web developer like me, use a mac, and would prefer to test your rails creations in internet explorer without having to upload your app every time you make a change and then testing on a windows computer, here is how you can develop ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/29 Here?s a great plugin for doing navigation in rails I didn?t like that too much. A simpler yet elegant solution is here: simple & elegant There is also this And actually, what I usually do is just use the following code and then css it appropriately. ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/28 How to create a symbolic link: ln -s [TARGET DIRECTORY OR FILE] ./[SHORTCUT] example: ln -s /usr/local/apache/logs ./logs or ln -s #{current_path}/public /home/#{user}/public_html or ln -s apps/appname/public /home/username/public_html or ln -s ~/forums/vanilla /home/twinsta/public_html/forum (this last one, make sure to put it in your Capfile in order to keep the forum working when you update your app) http://scottmotte.com/archives/27 Here is a great cheat sheet for all those mysql command line commands in terminal cheat sheet http://scottmotte.com/archives/26 How to remove .svn files find ./ -name ?.svn? | xargs rm -Rf http://scottmotte.com/archives/25 http://scottmotte.com/archives/50 Get your git all setup and your project gitified. Freeze your gems and freeze to edge your project and git push that to the server (rake rails:freeze:gems and rake rails:freeze:edge or rake rails:freeze:edge TAG=rel_2-0-2 see here ) (script/about to see what version your rails is already on. maybe ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/24 It?s a good idea to freeze your project before deploying. To do this run the command: rake rails:freeze:gems And it?s a good idea to freeze your rails version to by doing: rake rails:freeze:edge Here?s a tutorial http://scottmotte.com/archives/23 To access data that has related data using has_many and belongs_to, first make sure you?ve set up your related ids. For example for the two models posts and attachments, the attachments table should have a field called post_id so that the attachment can be association to the post. Then make sure ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/22 Install the restful_authentication plugin run script/generate authentication user sessions ?include-activation rake db:migrate see this link on the part where you create the mail.rb config/initializer use this link instead, pasting that code in the place of the code recommended by avnetlabs.com?s tutorial create a new file called smtp_tls.rb in your lib folder and paste this code ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/21 To use the rails find method with conditional dates do the following. inspiration from here Example: Record.find :all, :conditions => {:date => 20070400..20070431, :user_id => current_user.id} Or addition: Record.sum :hours, :conditions => {:date => 20070400..20070431, :user_id => ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/20 [nuby on rails article on gruff)[http://nubyonrails.com/pages/gruff] http://scottmotte.com/archives/19 The way to do autocomplete in rails 2.0 is to use a plugin. The text_field_with_auto_complete feature is deprecated. Do script/plugin install auto_complete It?s also here The plugin seemed to have some issues (as in it DID NOT work). This guy had a good fix which I copy and pasted over the standard file ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/18 This is pretty easy, but I always seem to forget (see comment): <%= @post.author.name rescue "no author" -%> http://scottmotte.com/archives/17 Give the file a name in the lib folder and then in the environment.rb file do a: require ?libfilename? simple, huh? http://scottmotte.com/archives/16 Use acts_as_ferret Here?s a good tutorial Another one and how to paginate the results with will_paginate actually this is a little more improved I had serious trouble with adding conditions to acts_as_ferret in order to query only for a certain user_id. You have to do the following with the little {} ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/15 Rails 2.0 pagination - it?s best to go ahead and use the will_paginate plugin this is the most up to date - April 4th, 2008. He moved it to a git repository or his github Ryan is also on it You can also combine it with a simple search form - see Ryan?s ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/14 To get link_to_remote to work on rails 2.0 / RESTful routes, you need to add :method => :get to link_to_remote. For example <%= link_to_remote "e", :url => edit_record_path(record), :update => 'test', :method => ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/13 To get link_to_remote to work on rails 2.0 / RESTful routes, you need to add :method => :get to link_to_remote. For example <%= link_to_remote "e", :url => edit_record_path(record), :update => 'test', :method => ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/12 rb-lightbox-plugin lightbox hellper redbox good tutorial on using redbox also see my RESTful link_to_remoate solution for help on using redbox with RESTful routes http://scottmotte.com/archives/11 The following are some links to do natural language date selection with rails. I recommend going ahead and using chronic, but take a look at Ryan Bates solution for good measure. semi-solution - date-time-text-field-helpers Ryan bates solution - this guy is the man Ruby Chronic also the screencast for chronic Short and SWEET tutorial for ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/10 HTML Ampersand & Character code more character codes http://scottmotte.com/archives/9 For a sharp looking javascript news ticker go with bartelme. Accessible JavaScript Newsticker http://scottmotte.com/archives/8 attachment_fu plugin seems the choice of file uploading. it is the rewritten version of acts_as_attachment Just follow these instructions and you should be good to go: http://clarkware.com/cgi/blosxom/2007/02/24 In most cases, you will probably want to add multiple image/files to a post/page/applicationform/etc so I would recommend following the clarkware tutorial above, and then ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/7 This is how to create a helper method. Put this in your application controller - from building a multisite helper_method :current_site private def current_site @current_site = Site.find(:first) end http://scottmotte.com/archives/6 Here's a helpful wiki git init git status touch .gitignore git add . git commit -a git add git branch <? to check available branches git branch [new_branch_name] <? to create a new branch git co [branch] git remote add origin git@github.com:scottmotte/lilruby.git git push origin master git clone git push git pull get pull origin [branch name] git fetch / git merge <? basically git pull ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/5 This is like a cheater sheet of rails 2.0 commands & reminders restful_authentication plugin - use for users & authentication script/server -p3001 rake rails:freeze:edge TAG=rel_1-2-5 script/generate controller Admin::Pages for entire controller - layout ?layouts/admin? for action render:action => ?index?, :layout => ?help? Markdown - use bluecloth gem server - to view dir for your gems gem environment gemdir - ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/4 This solution assumes you are using MAMP to develop your symphony cms site on your local machine (localhost) and then you wish to upload that site to your web hosting. After developing the site on your local machine using MAMP: Upload & install a fresh copy of symphony on your web hosting delete ... http://scottmotte.com/archives/3 http://scottmotte.com/archives/49 http://scottmotte.com/archives/48 http://scottmotte.com/archives/47 http://scottmotte.com/archives/46 http://scottmotte.com/archives/45 http://scottmotte.com/archives/44 http://scottmotte.com/archives/43 http://scottmotte.com/archives/42 http://scottmotte.com/archives/41