Help Wanted

• We’re interested in running some sort of javascript validation and syntax checking suite on one of our projects. JSLint looks reasonable for the framework and can be run from the command line with Rhino.

  If you have experience with or thoughts about the idea, please share.

Interesting Things

• An EngineYard-hosted project had an issue with monit attempting to restart
  mongrel too often. It turned out that the mongrel processes were not
  dropping pid files soon enough. The EngineYard-suggested fix:

  • Upgrade mongrel to 1.1.5.1 (patched to drop the pid file faster)
  • Upgrade to monit 5.0 beta 6
  • Update to the latest ey-monit-scripts
• FiveRuns dash is a cool, customizable metrics
  service. Pat created a plug-in
  for sending continuous integration stats there: dash-ci.

• Using Cucumber to test Capistrano deployment:

  cap --dry-run will run Capistrano without completing the actual task
  (e.g., deployment). Cucumber can then be used to write some nice,
  story-like deployment expectations that search the Capistrano output to
  document your project’s deployment process and ensure the documentation
  remains valid. Something like:

  Feature: Deployment
    In order to deploy the application
    As an administrator
    I should run Capistrano commands
  
  
    Scenario: Deploying
      Given I am working from the RAILS_ROOT directory
        And the parent directory is a Git repository
      When  I run a deployment task
      Then  'scm_user' for the deployment should be derived from the Git config for the remote origin
  
  
    Scenario: Deploying to demo
      Given I am working from the RAILS_ROOT directory
      When  I run 'cap demo deploy'
      Then  the deploy should succeed
        And the deployed code matches the latest 'web/stable' tag
        And the deployed code should be marked with a new 'web/demo' tag
  

  More on this to come.

• Using Selenium to ensure unique IDs in your DOM:

  # ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  # The examples below illustrate the technique with the Prototype and
  # jQuery libraries, respectively.  Both use Pat Nakajima's selenium
  # helper for executing javascript in the tested browser window.
  #
  # For more on that helper, see:
  # http://pivotallabs.com/users/patn/blog/articles/717-run-javascript-in-selenium-tests-easily-
  # ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  
  
  # ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  # with prototype
  # note the exception catching... prototype chokes on invalid IDs
  # e.g., "invalid_id[][]"
  # ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  def assert_unique_ids
    audit_json = run_javascript <<-JS
      audit_ids = function() {
        var results = {};
        $A($$('*[id]')).each(function(element) {
          if(element.id.replace(' ', '').length > 0) {
            try {
              if($$('#' + element.id ).length > 1) {
                if( ! results.duplicates) {
                  results.duplicates = {};
                }
                var count = results.duplicates[element.id] || 0;
                count ++;
                results.duplicates[element.id] = count;
              }
            }
            catch(err) {
              // uncomment to capture invalid IDs
              // var invalid = results.invalid || [];
              // invalid.push(element.id);
              // results.invalid = invalid;
            }
          }
        });
        return ($H(results).toJSON());
      }
      audit_ids();
    JS
    assert_equal({}, JSON.parse(audit_json)), 'Expected no duplicate IDs')
  end
  
  
  # ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  # with jQuery
  # additionally depends on the jquery-json plugin:
  # http://code.google.com/p/jquery-json/
  # ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  def assert_unique_ids
    audit_json = run_javascript <<-JS
      audit_ids = function() {
        var results = {};
        $('*[id]').each(function() {
          if(this.id.replace(' ', '').length > 0) {
            if($('*[id=' + this.id + ']').length > 1) {
              if( ! results.duplicates) {
                results.duplicates = {};
              }
              var count = results.duplicates[this.id] || 0;
              count ++;
              results.duplicates[this.id] = count;
            }
          }
        });
        return $.toJSON(results);
      }
      audit_ids();
    JS
    assert_equal({}, JSON.parse(audit_json)), 'Expected no duplicate IDs')
  end
  

Help Wanted

• One project recently moved from Rimu to EngineYard, only to find their Mongrel processes double in memory consumption. Any thoughts on why?

Interesting Things

• If you’re using ack in project for textmate, be sure to edit your .ackrc file to include any non-standard file types you’re using.

• A project had a dramatic speed up in their test suite by mocking out ActionMailer in tests. Something to consider if your tests cause a lot of email side effects.

• field_named wasn’t working for us when using Webrat to drive Selenium. Our fork with the simple fix can be found here.