Fortytwo.gr - Blog

Acts_as_tree_on_steroids plugin

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:08:12 +0200

We’ve been using a home-made extension of acts_as_tree on our production site for quite some time. We finally found some time to release it as a plugin You can find it on github

RubyEnRails 2009 Day 1

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:58:42 +0200

If you prefer 140 character updates then watch out for Rails 3 in Q1 2010, otherwise read on, interesting info inside.

Spam, spam, and spam.

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:13:09 +0200

Last time I checked spam meant robots. Stupid little applications from brilliant people gone the wrong way. That was the last time I checked and it was a long time ago. Lately spam is generated by Oompa Loompas with enough intelligence to override captchas and all that jazz. Below is the log of my attempts to limit spam on this blog.

Static files with Nginx + Passenger

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:29:58 +0300

Normally, when you setup Nginx and Passenger to serve your rails application, all static files are served by Nginx without hitting Passenger. What really happens is that all static files that do exist are served by Nginx and the rest are passed on to mongrel.

For example http://www.mydomain.com/javascripts/prototype.js will be served by Nginx , but http://www.mydomain.com/javascripts/iamastupidrobot.js will continue to Passenger going all the way through the Rails stack. Instead of a simple 1ms nginx process , you get a full stack rails request with a route recognition error. Not good

Pragmatic Usability Testing

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:28:31 +0200

If you are working on a project long enough you’ll probably think that every link, button, image is exactly where it should be.
If you coded it or designed it, then there’s something worse: You’ll have a hard time accepting that noone saw that big, bold sign up link.

9 Essential Rails Tips

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 23:24:44 +0200

Rails is a framework about conventions. It generates a basic structure which you mold into your dream application.
Over the course of the years, we have gathered some basic, rails specific, hints and tips you might want to check before going live. They are split into sections to make it easier to scan them, and pick the ones you haven’t indulged (yet) in. Read on, have fun, and comment a lot…

Generating Sitemaps With Rails

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:42:29 +0200

Sitemaps are a cool way for describing your site’s structure to search engines.
They can be more than useful when your site’s link aren’t always that easy discoverable (like searches for example).

There are some examples for generating sitemaps on the fly using an .rxml template, but if you site contains a large number of links you’ll need more than that.

Mock testing Paypal's IPN with Rails

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 12:50:14 +0300

In the previous article Using Paypal with Rails we showed how to implement a Paypal form using some of the Rails magic.
What’s equally important to the actual form, is, well …testing it.
Transactions are about customer’s money so you can’t rely on point and click testing.

Up until the redirection of the user to the Paypal gateway, testing can be done like usual, using the build-in mechanisms Rails provides.
What you can’t test in an automated way is Paypal’s IPN call back.
And you can’t test it because Paypal’s sandbox is unreliable. It can fire the call back after 2 seconds or 2 hours or 2 years.

Using Paypal with Rails

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 12:24:50 +0300

For our latest joint venture we need to implement some kind of payment gateway.
The requirements were simple:

We need it secure
We need it simple
We need it now

The project was a complete overhaul of a job posting site : www.freshwebjobs.com

The talented folks over at Extendio had done a very nice job reskinning the site, and they wanted us to update the codebase, add RoR hype ,some new hooks and features.

FreshWebJobs.com

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:02:24 +0300

A while ago we stumbled upon a design studio in Romania, Extendio

They are the coolest guys to ever work with, and their designs are what we think the web is all about.

So long Apache and thanks for all the fish

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:20:10 +0300

Apache has been good to us, and we have been good to him.
For quite a while we’ve been using Apache and mod_proxy_balancer to distribute requests to mongrels .
But, while adding a new twin server for Skroutz we had to say goodbye.

[RAILS] Javascript inclusion

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 14:16:28 +0300

YSlow says I should move my scripts to the bottom.
It sounds somewhat reasonable since no DOM manipulations can take place, unless the DOM is fully loaded.

Moving the scripts to the bottom will allow the user to see most of the page without waiting for that 400kb of javascript to load. But…

Fortytwo on the IPhone

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 20:17:41 +0300

Thanks to HAL9000 we now have a picture of how our page looks on the IPhone.
The interface looks awesome, and the browsing experience very tempting…

mod_proxy + Gzip + rails gotcha

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 17:15:38 +0300

As I was browsing our price aggregator (Skroutz), looking for things we might need to rethink or change completely for the next version, I was trying to determine the way the page loads, and how we could improve the user experience.

A very nice tool, I am sure most webdevelopers are almost familiar with is the firefox Firebug extension. Besides allowing you to actually write to the dom tree as it is rendered by the browser and many other goodies, it shows you the HTTP requests a page load performs in the background.

Standards + love = Web 2.0

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:55:53 +0300

Web 2.0 – The buzzword of the last 2 years, now slow but steadily reaches cooperate ears, and even here in technology-ghetto Greece you can here suit wearing junior managers throw around terms like community, usability, ajax etc….

But was is Web 2.0 really? Is it Digg, reddit and newsvine? Is it myspace, youtube, or the google apps?

Rails: Power to the filters

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:37:12 +0300

Rails before_filters in controllers can help you keep your code DRY.
I have coded cases where all action functionality was included in 2-3 before_filters.

I’ll try to showcase some of the methods that work for me.

ROR - the devil is in the details...

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 19:54:52 +0300

While It has been more than a smooth ride with Rails for the last 2 years, the framework sure has some idiosyncrasies you have to get used too.

In a recent project, a small programming bug of me, caused quite a large problem.