Our Blog

Rails deployment is so easy these days

22 November 2008 12:04, Posted by Colin

I have been meaning to blog about Phusion Passenger for a while as about 3-4 months ago we migrated Stubmatic from using Apache / Mongrel Cluster to Phusion Passenger A.K.A. mod_rails.
Read more…

Excellent OS X SQLite 3 Management & Query App

20 November 2008 20:11, Posted by Colin

iPhone and Adobe Air developers (as well as any others that use SQLite 3) Menial has just released an excellent little app for creating, managing and running queries against SQLite 3 databases called Bases.

The application is simple to use, very user friendly and has worked well from the testing I have done. It costs just £10 and there is a free trial available so you can try before you buy.

Find out more and download here

Ruby on Rails, PayPal Express Recurring Payments using Active Merchant

8 September 2008 09:31, Posted by Colin

I recently needed to setup recurring payments through PayPal’s express checkout for a subscription based site I have writen using Ruby on Rails. There is already an excellent framework for interacting with most payment gateways, including PayPal, for Ruby called Active Merchant. Unfortunately recurring payments support in Active Merchant for PayPal Express Checkout is limited to a script pasted into their lighthous bug tracking system. The trouble is that this script only covers creating subscription profiles and also later getting details of that profile, but I needed to be able to suspend and cancel subscriptions profiles as well as make changes to the subscription from my site.

Apple Leopard to be released 26th October

17 October 2007 18:15, Posted by Jon

For all you Apple Mac fans out there, Mac OS X 10.5\’92s release has been announced for the 26th October 2007 (As promised).

I have already pre-ordered my copy and looking forward to the 300 new features.

In particular:

Ruby on Rails – “Work in a developer’s dreamland. Leopard is the perfect platform for Ruby on Rails development, with Rails, Mongrel, and Capistrano built in”

For more information, scoot over to Apple’s Website

Creating a Mephisto Theme using Liquid

10 October 2007 20:51, Posted by Jon

Mephisto is an excellent blogging platform written in Ruby on Rails by Rick Olsen and Justin Palmer both of whom are behind the excellent Lighthouse Issue Tracking Software . This article / tutorial takes you step by step through the process of creating a custom theme / templates.

To an extent I am going to assume you are already familiar with Ruby and the Rails Web Development Framework, but where possible I hope to keep things as simple as possible.

First of all one of the best ways to go about learning how to create a custom template / theme is to download one of the existing themes you like from the Mephisto Themes Gallery and look inside the .zip file and see how these template authors have gone about implementing their themes.

Tip: Running command line / shell commands in Ruby using %x

7 October 2007 08:08, Posted by Jon

I thought I would post a very quick tip on how to execute a command line / shell command with Ruby. There are several ways to run command lines / shell commands in Ruby as discussed by Jay Fields however by far the most useful of these is the %x command, as follows:

@whois = %x[whois www.gotripod.com]

And what is important and not mentioned by Jay is the fact that you can pass parameters into %x[] as follows:

dom = ‘www.gotripod.com‘
@whois = %x[whois #\{dom\}]

Live Validation – Cross Platform, Rails style validation on the client.

6 September 2007 19:00, Posted by Jon

I came across a great new validation library the other day which I wanted to share with you all. Live Validation by Alec Hill is a cross-platform client-side JavaScript validation framework which provides real-time feedback to the user as they type.

val2

val1

LiveValidation in action

Tktit.com – Running on Ruby on Rails

5 September 2007 08:24, Posted by Jon

TktIt.com is a self service ticketing solution for the social networking generation. It allows bands, clubs, companies etc to sell tickets, places to any event or activity they may run, for example gigs, training events, sports activities, festivals, exhibitions etc. Tickets can be sold directly from the users websites and payment is made directly to PayPal, in addition users can track their ticket sales directly from TktIt.

Tktit.com – The self service ticketing site.

This was my first full development outing into the realms of Ruby on Rails which has been an inspirational and educating experience and I will be posting several articles in the near future on some of the techniques I used such as using script.aculo.us to produce a similar color selector to the one I did in .Net/JQuery.

Client Case Study: Tktit.com

2 August 2007 00:30, Posted by Jon

Client: Tktit.com Team
Project: Design and devlopment of web site for startup tktit.com
URL: http://tktit.com

Overview

Clockwork Objects worked with the Tktit.com team to design and develop their web based service, allowing users to add event and ticketing information then sell tickets directly from their own website or blog.

Technologies

Provided Web and Graphic design for the look and feel of the site. Designed, implemented and tested site, built on Ruby on Rails framework. Makes extensive use of Javascript to provide AJAX user interface using Prototype and Script.aculo.us. Site includes facilities to add / update venues, events, tickets and then produce Javascript and/or Flash (Flex) widgets to promote events from own websites and social networking sites. Also provided tracking tools for users to monitor sales.

Click here to contact us and discuss your requirements

Ruby on Rails from the perspective of a .Net Developer

27 July 2007 19:05, Posted by Jon

My blog entries have been a little infrequent of late as I have had my nose deep in the excellent Agile Web Development with Rails (Pragmatic Programmers) (Pragmatic Programmers) and also the fantastic Ruby on Rails Essential Training (Lynda.com).

For those of you that don’t know Ruby is a dynamic open source language created by Yukihiro “matz” Matsumoto in 1995. Rails is an open source framework created by David Heinemeier Hansson in 2004 to support the development of 37 Signals suite of web applications (Basecamp, Packpack etc.)

So two months later what have I learnt ..Well enough to be a competent rails coder, but more importantly, I feel the the process has been nothing more than an awakening to a new approach in Software Development. I have to admit when I first heard about Ruby on Rails I was skeptical and it was easy to state through away comments such as rails is slow, it’s not scalable, it’s difficult to deploy, you can do the same thing on .Net blah blah blah. And to some extent these are all true, but back to that in a bit.

So have I given up on .Net well no, of course not, however there is a time and place for .Net just as there is a time and place for Ruby on Rails. Before I spent time with Rails I easily got caught up in the .Net vs Java vs PHP arguments but at the end of the day all these languages have their place and software development is an art that is transferable to any language. I really can\’92t understand why some people are so defensive about the programming languages they use, I have programmed Basic, Visual Basic, Pascal, C, C#, Java, PHP, Javascript etc in my past however Rails is different but not to the extent that it makes any skills I have learnt obsolete, it just teaches an approach that I can take back with me and use with any other language I use and made me a better software developer.

And this is why I am so excited about Rails, I have been programming since the age of 6 (24 years) and discovering Ruby on Rails has been like rediscovering programming again for the first time. It is taking a disciplined approach to development which then allows a flexibility and freedom to really allow creativity.

As I said earlier I was not convinced with Rails at first so I set myself a challenge. I had a personal project that I had been working on for just over a month, using .Net and Subsonic. So if in one month I could not only learn Ruby on Rails but get to the same point in a RoR version of my project I would be convinced.

Did I achieve this. Of course I did or I wouldn’t be raving about it now. I picked Ruby up enough to get started in two weeks (evenings and weekends) and it took me two weeks to get to the same point I had done with the .Net equivalent, not only that I had produced a better product as I had not had to implement workarounds for various technical barriers I had previously had with .Net.

So of these bad points well yes Rails is slower than compiled languages but it can still handle huge amounts of traffic, Basecamp is a good example. Hosting for Rails is patchy especially in the UK, there are one or two hosts but my advice is to have a form of dedicated or virtual host which you can configure with Apache, Mongrel (Ruby on Rails Application Server). As for scalability, there is no problem at all as sessions can be stored in a database or using Memcache and it uses mysql on the backend.

So the upshot is I really recommend all developers, not just .Net to look at Ruby on Rails. Like me I hope you will discover a flexible web framework which not only makes your life easier but more enjoyable and rewarding, but it might just make you a better developer.

For more information:

Ruby: http://www.ruby-lang.org
http://www.rubyonrails.org

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Go Tripod Ltd is a UK-based development company working with some of the most exciting software technologies around. Simon Ashley, Jon Baker and Colin Ramsay are the brains behind projects such as Stubmatic, and are developing bespoke web, mobile and desktop software for clients with household names. We believe in good service as well as good software, and we’re eager to work with people who feel the same.