Luca Guidi - Home

Ruby Time marshaling bug in pre-1.9

2008-08-29T09:37:00Z

Ruby's Time has a bug: when try to serialize an timezoned time, then unserialize it back, the result will use the server local time, instead of use the original time zone.

>> utc = Time.now.utc => Fri Aug 29 09:07:37 UTC 2008 >> marshaled = Marshal.dump utc => "\004\bu:\tTime\r\251\037\e\200\344\254T\036" >> Marshal.load marshaled => Fri Aug 29 11:07:37 +0200 2008

This bug doesn't affects Ruby 1.9, but we still don't use that version for production purpose. If you use 1.8.x with Rails 2.1.0, your cached timestamps (including ActiveRecord objects), are probably wrong.

>> comment = Comment.first => #<Comment id: 865423346, post_id: 1, text: "Nice post.", created_at: "2008-08-29 09:27:48", updated_at: "2008-08-29 09:27:48"> >> Rails.cache.write('comment', comment) => true >> Rails.cache.read('comment') => #<Comment id: 865423346, post_id: 1, text: "Nice post.", created_at: "2008-08-29 09:27:48", updated_at: "2008-08-29 09:27:48"> >> comment.update_attributes :text => "Nice post!" => true >> Rails.cache.write('comment', comment) => true >> Rails.cache.read('comment') => #<Comment id: 865423346, post_id: 1, text: "Nice post!", created_at: "2008-08-29 09:27:48", updated_at: "2008-08-29 11:28:42">

Look at the last updated_at attribute, it uses local time instead of UTC time zone.
The first time everything goes right, because #updated_at wasn't invoked and casted to a Time instance. It's a string, and the marshaling is ok.
But, when I update the object, ActiveRecord changes the value of that timestamp, but before, it cast it to a Time, and everything goes wrong.

I submitted a patch for this bug, it was committed, and will be available in the upcoming Rails 2.2. You are strongly encouraged to update your Rails version.

Twitter Is Down

2008-08-08T19:53:00Z

Less Is Not Laziness

2008-08-06T23:53:00Z

Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is NOT laziness. This is hard for most to accept, because our culture tends to reward personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity.
--Timothy Ferris

Click To Globalize: Ready for Rails 2.1!

2008-07-21T09:59:00Z

Click to Globalize is ready for Rails 2.1!

I spent a lot of time to make this release the best of ever! I know that a lot of time has passed since the latest Rails major release, and I apologize for this.
The official Globalize it seems dead, but the great work of Nate Clark (aka heythisisnate) has made it compatible with Rails 2.1. Thanks Nate!
The Rails Edge now includes a basic support for i18n!

What's Changed?

The first big change is about the configuration, past versions has cluttered a bit your ApplicationController, I know, but now Click uses a YAML file configuration file for locales.

As you can see, it's more readable than put an Hash inside your main controller, and it also take the advantage to separate configuration from logic.

The second change regards the default language, you can use the above file to declare it, or use the Globalize syntax (Globalize::Locale.set_base_language('en-US')), but you have to choose a locale before the app starts.
This because Click needs a secure fallback mechanism, if no active Locale was set, it's always guarantees your application to work.

The third feature is about formatting: you can always choose between textile and markdown without editing ApplicationController, but using the same configuration file.

I removed the deprecated class method ApplicationController#globalize? in favor of the instance one. This means you can use it to turn on/off Click to Globalize, just returning a boolean value:

This version also includes tiny fixes, refactoring and cleanup.

You may wish to learn a bit about Click to Globalize, so I encourage you to visit the official page.
I hope you enjoy your i18n on Rails!

What's New In Rails Edge: i18n

2008-07-18T09:24:00Z

Ruby on Rails has just integrated a basic support for i18n.

ActiveSupport

ActiveSupport now includes the i18n gem which provides the API and the settings for the default locale: en-US.
The gem abstracts the repository where the translations are stored, so all the plugin authors could write their own mechanism. The bundled repository is called Simple and stores all the settings in memory.

Declaring a locale is quite easy:

I18n.backend.store_translations :'it-IT', {
  :support => {
    :array => {
      :sentence_connector => 'e'
    }
  },
  :date => {
    :formats => {
      :default => "%d/%m/%Y",
      :short => "%d %b",
      :long => "%d %B %Y",
    },
    :day_names => %w(Luned&igrave; Marted&igrave; Mercoled&igrave; Gioved&igrave; Venerd&igrave; Sabato Domenica),
    :abbr_day_names => %w(Lun Mar Mer Gio Ven Sab Dom),
    :month_names => %w(Gennaio Febbraio Marzo Aprile Maggio Giugno Luglio Agosto Settembre Ottobre Novembre Dicembre).unshift(nil),
    :abbr_month_names => %w(Gen Feb Mar Apr Mag Giu Lug Ago Set Ott Nov Dic).unshift(nil),
    :order => [:day, :month, :year]
  },
  :time => {
    :formats => {
      :default => "%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z",
      :short => "%d %b %H:%M",
      :long => "%B %d, %Y %H:%M",
    },
    :am => 'am',
    :pm => 'pm'
  }
}

How can I translate or localize?

I18n.locale = 'it-IT'
I18n.t :hello   # => Ciao
I18n.l Time.now # => "Ven, 18 Lug 2008 10:58:14 +0200"

I18n#t is also useful to fetch locale defaults:

I18n.t :'time.formats.short' # => %d %b %H:%M

ActiveRecord

ActiveRecord now returns localized error messages for validations.

You may wish to declare your messages:

I18n.backend.store_translations :'it-IT', {
  :active_record => {
    :error_messages => {
      :inclusion => "non &egrave; incluso nella lista"
      # ...
    }
  }
}

ActionPack

ActionView now supports translations and localization for time and currency helpers (i.e. distance_of_time_in_words, number_to_currency).

UPDATE 2008-07-19: Sven Fuchs wrote a i18n Rails manifesto and a technical post about the i18n API.

Sashimi 0.2.0!

2008-07-14T10:46:00Z

Sashimi has just hit 0.2.0!

This release has no sugar for you! No new features, just test improvements and code robustness.

Sashimi: Getting Started Tutorial

2008-06-30T09:02:00Z

Here a getting started tutorial for Sashimi

.

Released Sashimi 0.1.6

2008-06-23T13:58:00Z

I just released a new version of Sashimi, with tiny fixes and a new home! In fact the project is also hosted on RubyForge, now you can install the gem with:

$ (sudo) gem install sashimi

or with:

$ (sudo) gem install jodosha-sashimi --source=http://gems.github.com

If you wish, you can visit the project pages on GitHub and on RubyForge.

UPDATE The release 0.1.6 is broken, you are strongly encouraged to update your gem with the newest 0.1.7.

Speaker at RailsConf Europe 2008

2008-06-18T17:23:00Z

I'm proud to announce my presence as speaker at the RailsConf Europe 2008 with a speech on Click to Globalize.

Rails: Single File App

2008-06-03T16:53:00Z

I took inspiration from the Pratik Naik post, and realized a more simplistic version of its Rails single file app. My implementation has only Rails as unique dependency.

require 'rubygems'
require 'action_controller'
require 'webrick'
require 'webrick_server'

class HelloWorldController < ActionController::Base
  session :off
  def index; render :text => 'Hello World!' end
end

ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map|
  map.root :controller => "hello_world"
end

DispatchServlet.dispatch :port => 3000,
    :server_root  => File.dirname(__FILE__)

Update 2008-06-04: I just wrote another version which also uses ActiveRecord and a template.

require 'rubygems'
require 'activerecord'
require 'action_controller'
require 'webrick'
require 'webrick_server'

ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(
  :adapter  => 'sqlite3',
  :database => 'tiny_rails.sqlite3',
  :timeout  => 5000)

ActiveRecord::Schema.define do
  create_table :people, :force => true do |t|
    t.string :first_name
  end
end
class Person < ActiveRecord::Base; end
Person.create :first_name => 'Luca'

File.open('index.html.erb', 'w') do |f|
  f << "Hello, my name is <%=h @person.first_name %>!\n"
end

class HelloWorldController < ActionController::Base
  session :off
  def index
    @person = Person.find :first
    render :file => 'index.html.erb'
  end
end

ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map|
  map.root :controller => "hello_world"
end

DispatchServlet.dispatch :port => 3000,
    :server_root  => File.dirname(__FILE__)

Just start the script and point your browser at http://localhost:3000!

Ruby: Class Methods Proxy

2008-05-29T15:12:00Z

Did you ever used class methods inside your instance methods? If yes, you probably noticed how frustrating can be to use the self.class.my_class_method syntax. A solution could be to create a private method which encapsulates the class one.

class Repository
  def self.path
    @@path
  end
  
  def print_path
    puts path
  end
  
  private
    def path
      self.class.path
    end
end

In the above example, #print_path can print the @@code value, without worrying about it's a class value, because we have wrapped it.

When I developed Sashimi I've widely used this technique, with a bad impact on the code duplication, and in order to DRY-up my code I extended the Ruby's Class class in this way:

class Class
  def class_method_proxy(*method_names)
    method_names.each do |m|
      self.class_eval %{
        # Proxy method for <tt>#{self.class.name}##{m}</tt>
        def #{m}(*args, &block)
          self.class.#{m}(*args, &block)
        end
        private :#{m}
      }, __FILE__, __LINE__
    end
  end
end

This approach allow us to annotate our classes, choosing which class methods should be available as private methods.
Now, our example class should look like the following:

class Repository
  def self.path
    @@path
  end
  class_method_proxy :path

  def print_path
    puts path
  end
end

Of course you can pass multiple symbols to proxy many methods at the same time.

class_method_proxy :path, :another_path, :a_third_one

UPDATE 2008-07-06: I added the &block argument.

Faster JavaScript Trim

2008-05-28T16:58:00Z

I've recently discovered the very interesting Steven Levithan post about the JavaScript's trim function of the String class.

So, here my version:

More numbers, please!

I tested my function against the benchmarking page of the original post.
Note: times are expressed in MS and are the average of ten executions per browser.
Update [2008-05-29]: I re-runned all the tests and updated results, because Steven noticed that test suite was wrong (few whitespaces).

	Mac	Windows
	Safari 3.1	Firefox 2.0.0.14	Firefox 3.0b5	Opera 9.27	Opera 9.50b2	Internet Explorer 6	Internet Explorer 7	Firefox 2.0.0.14	Opera 9.27	Opera 9.50b2	Average
trim1	25	40	19	100	93	12	12	38	124	111	57
trim2	25	52	29	100	98	6	11	44	125	116	61
trim3	32	54	46	156	148	15	31	57	209	184	93
trim4	43	43	37	151	139	15	38	49	198	186	90
trim5	64	102	104	134	116	65	908	323	291	274	238
trim6	69	115	109	195	171	47	1.497	364	436	338	334
trim7	69	120	107	142	129	31	900	345	330	271	244
trim8	4	118	104	112	97	4	5	540	255	180	142
trim9	34	126	116	1.825	1.218	23	74	113	1.667	1.417	662
trim10	0	1	6	5	3	2	1	0	6	0	2
trim11	2	2	3	11	3	2	2	10	5	7	5
trim12	1	3	2	4	6	1	2	10	4	4	4
trim13	0	0	3	1	1	0	1	2	0	5	1

Please download the benchmark suite, and test against your browsers.

Sashimi: Just Received A Tasteful Update

2008-05-20T16:33:00Z

Yesterday I announced Sashimi and now it's already time of tasteful updates.

Changes

First, thanks to all the people that appreciated my work. Second, new commands and options are avaliable for Sashimi.

Update all plugins in your repository:

$ sashimi update --all

Install a plugin to your Rails app:

$ sashimi install --rails click-to-globalize

NOTE this is an alias for the add command.

Update a plugin of a Rails app:

$ sashimi update --rails click-to-globalize

NOTE If your application is versioned with Svn or Git, Sashimi will automatically schedules for add/remove the added/removed files.

How To Update

$ (sudo) gem update jodosha-sashimi --source=http://gems.github.com

I hope you enjoy those addictional options.

Sashimi: A Rails Plugins Manager Gem

2008-05-19T13:33:00Z

I have a really, really bad memory: each time I need to install a Rails plugin, I Google to find the repository, then try to download the code. Often, I remember the url, but the server is down. Damn!

All this annoying issues kill the Rails rapidity on application prototyping. But, what if all the plugins which I need are available offline on my notebook? I can forget about all that urls, and I should stop to worry about the server status.

To solve this problems, I wrote Sashimi, it's a gem that manages you favourite Rails plugins in a local repository.

How It Works?

First you need to install it with:

$ (sudo) gem install jodosha-sashimi --source=http://gems.github.com

Now you can install a plugin on your local repository:

$ sashimi install git://github.com/jodosha/click-to-globalize.git

Ta-daaaa!! Now Click to Globalize is available offline:

$ sashimi list

click-to-globalize

If you need to add it to your Rails app, just move to your app root, then type:

$ sashimi add click-to-globalize

Conclusion

I found Sashimi really useful, I hope you too.

For the complete reference, please check out at the official gem page.

Acts As Resource: Rails 2.1 ready and moved to GitHub

2008-05-14T12:21:00Z

Acts As Resource is ready for the imminent Rails 2.1!

I also moved it to GitHub, the new repo is http://github.com/jodosha/acts-as-resource/tree/master, the SVN one is deprecated.

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to recommend me on Working With Rails.