Here’s a function to turn any given string into a CamelCase “WikiWord” in Ruby:
def wikify(phrase)
phrase.gsub!(/^[a-z]|s+[a-z]/) { |a| a.upcase }
phrase.gsub!(/s/, '')
return phrase
end
Voila. This turns “my dog has fleas” into “MyDogHasFleas”.
Note: I’m sure there’s a way to fix this so that it’s just one regular expression? Feel free to chime in!
Here’s the situation: You have two SELECT elements on a form. When the user chooses an item out of the first SELECT element, the contents of the second SELECT element need to change and show different values based on the initial selection.
This used to take quite a bit of JavaScript wizardry. But it’s pretty straightforward in Rails using a bit of Ajax. Here’s how:
First, make sure you’re including the Ajax libraries (Prototype, script.aculo.us, etc.) in your layout like so:
<html>
<head>
<%= javascript_include_tag :defaults %>
</head>
<body>
...
Next, create a form with your initial SELECT, and empty second SELECT, and set up field observer. Here’s a really simple example:
<form>
<select id="states" name="states">
<option value="0"></option>
<option value="1">Colorado</option>
<option value="2">Illinois</option>
<option value="3">Wyoming</option>
</select>
<%= observe_field "states", :update => "cities",
:with => "city_id", :url => { :controller => "test",
:action => "get_cities" } %>
<br />
<select id="cities" name="cities">
<option></option>
</select>
</form>
Finally, you’ll need to set up a method to handle the call from the observer and a corresponding view page to generate the HTML content that will replace everything betwen the SELECT tags in the second SELECT. Here’s an example "get_cities" controller:
def get_cities
@cities = City.find_by_state(:all)
end
And an example "get_cities.rhtml" file:
<% for city in @cities %>
<option value="<%= city.id %>"><%= city.name %></option>
<% end %>
And there you go. This much should dynamically update the "cities" SELECT element with new content every time the "onchange" event is fired on the initial "states" SELECT form element.
We’re just starting to get into Ruby on Rails at my work, and we’re close to deploying our first application to a production server with Capistrano.
Capistrano makes it easy for developers to deploy code to the production server from their own workstations. But we quickly ran into two problems:
Well, it turns out that Capistrano is better than all that. With a little bit of conditional logic and the ability for Cap to read environment variables, the problem is solved like this in the “deploy.rb” file:
if ENV["USER"] == "robert"
set :user, "bob"
elsif ENV["USER"] == "elizabeth"
set :user, "beth"
end
Voila.
Courtesy of Lifehacker (a site I’m really starting to love):
“Interested in learning Ruby, the open-source, object-oriented programming language? Start with Mr. Neighborly’s Humble Little Ruby Book, a new e-book that teaches the basics and then some.”
In addition to Mr. Neighborly’s slim volume, my growing Ruby library now includes:
Most programming gurus recommend learning at least one new programming language per year. Looks like in 2007 it’s going to be Ruby for me assuming I find time to do something I only rarely managed to do in grad school: Actually read the books I buy.