Interesting Things

• We’ve forked several 3rd party plugins (yes, we need to send patches) and we’re using the “3rd Party Branch Pattern” from Software Configuration Management Patterns. We’ll keep you posted as to how it’s working.
• rake db:fixtures:load does not turn off database foreign key constraints, so be careful. We’ll see if we can either fix this for our needs or make it configurable.
• CSS: We’ve found a technique claiming that overflow:hidden can dispose of the un-hip <div style="clear:both;"></div> float-clearing div. This seems to have multiple side effects, including undesirable scroll bar behavior, so be very careful if you do this.
• In FireFox for Mac, you will encounter problems if you are trying to hide a Flash components using an opaque div. There is a workaround involving a .png background image which has the desired alpha-transparency… a more detailed post will (hopefully) come in a follow-up post.
• Even More CSS: though some suggest it’s dangerous, setting an element to position:relative often saves the day if you have having layout problems.

Ask for Help

• One of our new projects is using the Darcs source code management system… has anyone used it?
  • We have a few who’ve read about it, but not used it… looks like we’ll have to RTFM.
• If anyone has experience getting rake tasks to work on both *NIX and Windows, talk to AC.
• Here’s a good sign: we’re out of chairs!

Total Stand-up Meeting Time: 24:00 minutes

Interesting Things

• An internal project has migrated to Ruby 1.86 and Mongrel 1.0.1 with no ill affects, with the bonus that this combo fixes a known memory leak in Mongrel.
• Ruby Fu: it was pointed out that Ruby method argument defaults can refer to other arguments to that same method:

<code>
def wrangle_monkey(x, y = x + 1)
  # Above, `x + 1` refers to to method argument `x`
end
</code>

• One project wrote a super-cool rake task that helps manage JSUnit servers and test runs. Talk to A.C. if you are interested.
• Rails Helpers and template’s use of erb is…weird. Details are blurry and the developers who discovered the issues should post the heavy stuff on this blog, but suffice to say don’t be surprised if you have trouble working with the erb output stream in your helpers.

Ask for Help

• The Men’s room key is missing, and one team needs CSS help… hopefully these are not related.

Total Stand-up Meeting Time: 16:00 minutes

Interesting Things

• Markaby: while Rails helpers are available when using Markaby to generate HTML, some of those Rails helpers do not return strings of HTML, but instead add content directly to the ERB output stream, which won’t help you. You can capture this ERB output by using the Rails helper capture().
• The appable_plugins folks fixed the Class non-reloading issue we talked about earlier. Thanks guys for fixing Bug 7!
• Adobe just released their Apollo framework, which allows web applications access to a computer’s local file system, amongst may other features.

Ask for Help

• Please save us from… PS2 keyboards! We’re flooded with them. Perhaps we can use them in an art project.

Total Stand-up Meeting Time: 14:00 minutes

Interesting Things

• Selenium: one team is experimenting with running multiple Selenium tests at the same time and getting major performance boosts without any database collisions. They’ll keep us posted and roll this out to the rest of us if it’s successful.
• cc.rb – we’re still looking at it and will provide updates when we have some results.
• Markaby: +1 vote. More and more people seem to like Why’s HTML/XML parsing library.

Ask for Help

• Does anyone know if you can use URL sub-domain information in Rails’ routes.rb?
  • We don’t think so. Most teams launch multiple instances of their application and use this information in their routes.rb to dictate routings, or Apache URL rewriting or redirects.

Total Stand-up Meeting Time: 15:00 minutes

Interesting Things

• Note that the Rails testing framework might be the only place that performs a require for classes and libraries that are needed by your application. End result: your tests pass, but your application doesn’t work. For all the testing frameworks and methodologies, nothing beats the ol’ “click through” for peace of mind.

• Flexmock: When using Flexmock, you are must specify that the mock is called at least once, or your assertions might erroneously pass. Example:

<code>
    # Will pass even if :monkey is never called!
    my_flex_mock.should_receive(:monkey!)

    # Will fail if :monkey is not called once
    my_flex_mock.should_receive(:monkey!).once
</code>

• Rspec syntax: old vs. new — the new style for should assertions is a “multi word” style rather than “under_score_word”. Example:

<code>
    # Old style: underscored word
    monkey.should_be_nil

    # New style: multi word, multi method
    monkey.should be_nil
</code>

• has_many gotcha: Many already know this, but for a has_many relationship, the append method (<<) performs a save if the subject exists in the database already. In a test, you might need to perform a monkey_wrangler.reload to pick up all of the changes after a monkey_wrangler.monkeys << baboon
• We are developing a Rails + AJAX wizard framework. Stay tuned!

Ask for Help

• Any concerns or issues regarding performing many AJAX requests over HTTPS?
  • The main concern shared by the group was performance. Any other issues that people know of?

ctrl+z

• It turns out that the has_many :through order dependency issue we described was our fault.

Total Stand-up Meeting Time: 23:00 minutes

Interesting Things

• Another IE6 issue: CSS selectors. A div can have multiple classes, such as <div class="grey box"></div>, and there are multiple CSS selectors for this, only one of which works with IE6:

<code>
/* Works fine with IE6 */
.grey .box {
    border: 1px solid black;
}

/* DOES NOT WORK with IE6 */
.grey.box { /* Note the lack of space! */
    border: 1px solid black;
}
</code>

• In Rails, It is possible to declare a “white list” and a “black list” of attributes that can be mass-assigned in an ActiveRecord model: Note that these cannot both be used in the same class!
  • attr_accessible (white list) – only attributes in this list can be mass-assigned.
  • attr_protected (black list) – as long as an attribute is not in this list, it can be mass-assigned.
• Rspec redirect assertions now work! Use this in your controller specs:

<code>
response.should redirect_to(:controller => "my_controller", :action => :an_action)
</code>

• alias_method_chain is an extremely handy new method in Rails, which encapulates a common pattern. Much of Rails and appable_plugins is built on this.
• And most importantly: Taqueria Cancun now has carnitas!!!.

Ask for Help

• Has anyone had problems with IE6 failing to send Ajax requests?

Total Stand-up Meeting Time: 18:00 minutes

Interesting Things

• svn:keywords: if you want to use svn:keywords in files checked-in to SVN, you have to do more than just put those keywords in your file — you have to explicitly list the keywords in a property, such as:

<code>
$ svn propset svn:keywords "LastChangedDate" weather.txt
property 'svn:keywords' set on 'weather.txt'
$
</code>

Then, weather.txt can display the date with the following: can have the following:

The weather on $LastChangedDate$ was good!

Total Stand-up Meeting Time: 10:00 minutes