Rails Style Params in Python and Flask
Ruby on Rails does a great job of parsing arrays in form data and populating a params hash, for quick and easy access in your controllers. For instance Gives you params[:item] # => ["item 1", "item 2"] Flask doesn't do this work f...
Written by Sean Behan on 11/04/2018
How to Extract all Images from a Webpage with Ruby
Here is a little ruby snippet that will download all pictures from a webpage. Rather than using XPath, we are going to first reduce the source code to capture everything inside of quotes. Some websites use JSON w/in a script tag to lazy load images an...
Written by Sean Behan on 08/01/2018
Generate a Gravatar URL with Ruby
To get a Gravatar you need to hash an email address with the MD5 algorithm. MD5 is a part of the Ruby standard library. Rails loads it by default, but otherwise you will have to require it yourself. This is a simple implementation. Gravatar su...
Written by Sean Behan on 04/11/2014
A Ruby Regex for Removing Links and Images from Text
r = /https?:\/\/[\S]+/i you_string.gsub(r, '') Here's the rubular regex to play around with yourself http://rubular.com/r/SRKkYrW4IJ
Written by Sean Behan on 11/14/2013
How To Fix ActiveRecord::ConnectionTimeoutError with Sinatra
If you get this error message ActiveRecord::ConnectionTimeoutError could not obtain a database connection within 5.000 seconds (waited 5.001 seconds) Try closing the connection after each request using "after" in Sintara. # app.rb after { A...
Written by Sean Behan on 11/09/2013
Roll Your Own Session Based Flash Messaging w/ Sinatra
Session based flash messages are fairly common in web apps. They work well when you have a temporary status to report back to the user, such as successfully saving a form. If you use Rails it comes with the Framework. If you are using Sinatra there ar...
Written by Sean Behan on 11/01/2013
Change the Default Controller Name in Rails Functional Tests
Rails will infer the controller you want to test from the class name of the test case. For example... class PeopleControllerTest < ActionController::TestCase end will test the app/controllers/people_controller.rb. To change this is trivial. Us...
Written by Sean Behan on 10/23/2013
How to Use RVM and POW with Ruby 2.0.0
In your project's root directory add a .ruby-version file and add the ruby version to the file ruby-2.0.0-p247 Next source RVM in the .powrc file, also in your project's root directory. source "$rvm_path/scripts/rvm" rvm use `cat .ruby-versio...
Written by Sean Behan on 10/19/2013
A Couple of Usefule Snippets When Working with Textmate
Here is the snippet f path/to/directory 'search string' | open_in_mate This snippet (technically 2 snippets) will recursively scan the contents of files in a directory and then open all the files it finds in Textmate. It's useful on large projec...
Written by Sean Behan on 10/18/2013
How To Pipe To A Ruby Command Line Application
You need to read from STDIN rather than parse command line arguments. while $stdin.gets puts $_ end
Written by Sean Behan on 10/17/2013
How To Write Your Own Time Comparison Function in Ruby Like time_ago_in_words Without Rails
# time_ago_in_words(Time.now, 1.day.ago) # => 1 day # time_ago_in_words(Time.now, 1.hour.ago) # => 1 hour def time_ago_in_words(t1, t2) s = t1.to_i - t2.to_i # distance between t1 and t2 in seconds resolution = if s > 29030400 # seco...
Written by Sean Behan on 10/17/2013
How to Boot Up Multiple Sinatra Applications at the Same Time with Foreman
Foreman is a process management gem for ruby applications. It is used in combination with a Procfile for configuration instructions. A typical Procfile looks something like this [name] : [script to execute] Example Rack application Procfile ...
Written by Sean Behan on 10/15/2013
How to Render Partials with an Underscore in Sinatra
Sinatra doesn't have a method for rendering partials. It defers to the template language of your choice. For instance, if you're using ERB, it's as simple as erb :'path/to/partial' Rails has a nice convention of using an underscore to mark file...
Written by Sean Behan on 10/13/2013
How To Enable IFrame Support on Heroku with Ruby on Rails and Sinatra
This actually has more to do with Rails and/or Sinatra than it does with Heroku. You have to enable IFrame support in your headers explicitly. With Rails you can add this to your config/application.rb file config.action_dispatch.default_headers = ...
Written by Sean Behan on 08/25/2013
A Regular Expression to Generate Dash Separated Slugs AKA Pretty URLs
This regular expression matches non alphanumeric characters in a string. r = /[^a-z0-9]{1,}/i You can use it to create URL friendly slugs. slug = "hello world!".gsub(/[^a-z0-9]{1,}/i, '-').downcase # => hello-world In combination wit...
Written by Sean Behan on 08/22/2013
JSON::GeneratorError: only generation of JSON objects or arrays allowed
If you run into this error message try switching to an earlier version of ExecJs. JSON::GeneratorError: only generation of JSON objects or arrays allowed # Gemfile gem 'execjs', '~> 1.4' gem 'coffee-script' gem 'sass' ...
Written by Sean Behan on 08/22/2013
How to Extract the Title From an HTML Page with Ruby
This snippet will make a request to this page and extract the title from the title tag. require 'open-uri' html = open('http://www.seanbehan.com/how-to-extract-the-title-from-an-html-page-with-ruby').read title = html.match(/(.*)/) { $1 } pu...
Written by Sean Behan on 08/22/2013
How to Add Additional Sub Directories to the Default Rails Test:Unit File Structure
# Edit Rakefile in project root # # Add a new rake test task... E.g., rake test:lib, below everything else in that file... # Alternatively, add a task in lib/tasks/ directory and plop in the same code namespace :test do desc "Test lib source" ...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Transform Matching Text with Gsub in Ruby and Regular Expression
Here is a gist that demonstrates how easy it is to transform text using #gsub and a block with Ruby. "Scs Epc Score".gsub (/scs|epc/i) { |i| i.upcase } # => SCS EPC Score For more helpful string extensions in Ruby check out our Ruby Gem on GitHub...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Color Output with Test:Unit, AutoTest and Ruby 1.9
If you are testing using Test:Unit (rather than RSpec) and you're using Ruby 1.9.* colorized output of your tests using Autotest will not be immediately available. Since, 1.9 comes with mini test the test/unit/ui/console/testrunner.rb script is not loaded...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
How to Merge a YAML File Into a Single Hash in Ruby
require 'yaml' # Nested YAML structure from something-nested.yml # # nested: # key: value # key_two: value_two # Procedural Approach to building a single Hash from nested YAML data structure. @yaml = YAML.load_file("something-nested...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Email Regex
Regular Expression that Matches Email Addresses: /\b[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}\b/
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
How to Upgrade RVM on Mac OS X
I had an old version of rvm installed and wanted to upgrade. So old in fact that the resource for upgrading no longer existed. rvm update just returned a 301, redirect. Luckily, the following worked # checks out from repo rvm update --head # will re...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Ruby Reload! Method in Non Rails IRB Sessions
I love the Rails reload! function when in the console. I need it in Irb. To get it back this is what I did. If you don't already have an .irbrc file in your home directory, just create it. vim ~/.irbrc or textmate if you prefer mate ~/.irbrc Add this...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
My First Ruby Gem: Hashed_Attributes
I just wrote and released my first Ruby Gem, Hashed Attributes https://rubygems.org/gems/hashed_attributes. It is a very simple ActiveRecord extension for saving variables through a serialized hash. The Gem will let you declare getter and setter methods t...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Ruby Rand Range
I assumed that rand would take a range as an argument. Something like rand(10..20), generating a random number between 10 and 20. Seems like you'd do this fairly often when working with random numbers and therefore, included. However, it doesn't work. But...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Installing Ruby on Rails 3, MySQL, Git, Ruby Enterprise Edition, Passenger (Mod_Rails) on Ubuntu with Rackspace Cloud.
Short and sweet. Here all the commands I run in this order to set up a brand new box. It usually takes about 10 - 15 minutes on a 256 MB RAM instance. Compiling Ruby Enterprise Edition, which is super easy, will take the most amount of time. It will seem ...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Ruby Enterprise Edition and Passenger ./script/console production fails and instead returns Loading production environment (Rails 2.3.5) Rails requires RubyGems >= 1.3.2. Please install RubyGems and try again: http://rubygems.rubyforge.org
After installing Ruby Enterprise Edition, REE, and Passenger on Ubuntu you may see this error message when you run script/console for the first time ./script/console production # => Loading production environment (Rails 2.3.5) Rails requires RubyGems >=...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Installing and Using Rvm on Mac OS X, Creating Gemsets and Reverting to Original Environment
What is RVM and why should you use it? RVM is a Ruby interpreter, version management tool. In short, it enables you to switch between different versions and releases of Ruby (for instance, version 1.8.6, 1.8.7, jruby 1.9.2, ruby enterprise edition) on the...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Using Formtastic to Cleanly Create Nice Looking Forms in Rails
Forms can easily get cluttered when you're dealing with a lot of form fields... er, ERB tags. I've written about extending Rails form builders, which certainly goes along way to shrinking your views where forms are used. The plugin Formtastic is even bett...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Load All ActiveRecord::Base Model Classes in Rails Application
Here is a simple rake task which will instantiate all of your Active Record models, provided that they are located in the RAILS_ROOT/app/models directory. Interestingly, all plugin models are instantiated by default when you run the task, for instance, if...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
How Beautiful is Ruby?
Working with Ruby and in particular Rails, it's easy to take the beauty inherent in the language for granted. I mean look at this code. If you read it aloud to yourself, it reads like an english sentence that any non programmer can understand. Forum.cate...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Installing RedMine PM Software on Apache with Phusion and REE and Seeing a 404 Page Not Found Error on Installation
If you follow the instructions on how to install the Rails Redmine PM Software (available here) and are using Apache with Passenger (REE), you need to delete the .htaccess file that is kept in RAILS_ROOT/public directory. Otherwise you'll see a 404 page n...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Active Record Find Methods
Active Record find methods for selecting range from http://charlesmaxwood.com/notes-from-reading-activerecordbase/ Student.find(:all, :conditions => { :grade => 9..12 }) return a range Student.find(:all, :conditions => { :grade => [9,11,12] }) will retu...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Ruby Strftime Day Without the Leading Zero
%e # rather than %d Time.now.strftime("%e")
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Install and Serve a Rails Application from PHP Subdirectory Using Apache, Phussion Passenger and Ruby Enterprise Edition
Here is how to install a Rails application out of a subdirectory (rather than as a subdomain) with the Apache web server(Apache2). In this example I'm going to use my own blog which is a Wordpress installation and serve a Rails application from the subdir...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Hello Rack
What is Rack? Rack provides a minimal, modular and adaptable interface for developing web applications in Ruby. By wrapping HTTP requests and responses in the simplest way possible, it unifies and distills the API for web servers, web frameworks, and sof...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Reading, Writing, Removing Files and Directories in Ruby
These aren't all of them, but I think they are some of the most useful. # making a directory in another directory that doesn't yet exist... FileUtils.mkdir_p '/path/to/your/directory/that/doesnt/exist/yet' # recursively remove a directory and the conten...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Send Mail in Ruby with a Pony
Great little gem that let's you quickly and easily send out mail from your ruby scripts. gem install pony require 'rubygems' require 'pony' Pony.mail :from=>"me@example.com", :to=>"you@example.com", :subject=>"hello", :body=>"world"
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Installing Monk on Ubuntu with Ruby Gems
Installing monk like this will fail gem install monk You'll need to install the wycats-thor gem first with this command gem install wycats-thor -s http://gems.github.com
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Deploy Sintra App on Ubuntu Using Apache2 and Phusion Passenger Module
Check it out http://sinatra.seanbehan.com/ This assumes Apache2 and the Phusion Passenger module have already been installed. If not you can get up to speed w/ this resource http://seanbehan.com/ruby-on-rails/new-ubuntu-slice-apache-mysql-php-ruby-on-rail...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Gem Information with Gem List
If you want to get version information about a gem the easiest way to do it is with this command gem list For example gem list activemerchant will output the activemerchant versions I have installed. You can pass only part of the name like gem list ...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
David Heinemeier Hansson - Ruby on Rails, Startups, Culture
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb2xzeWf-PM[/youtube]
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Rails: Expiring a cached page with namespaces and sweepers
I've got some pages that are cached using their permalinks on the filesystem, such as http://example.com/about-us.html which will need to map to RAILS_ROOT/public/about-us.html ... The issue I have is that I use a namespace for the admin area and the cont...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Using Your Partials in Your Liquid Templates
I'm working on a project that requires users/designers be allowed to edit the layout of their site. I'm using Liquid, Ruby templating system developed by the folks at shopify.com. Doing a little searching I found this great post http://giantrobots.though...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012
Custom Date Formats for Your Rails Application
If you use a consistent date format often in your Rails applciation, it is worth it to add the format to your application environment. You can do this by adding  it to the bottom of the config/environment.rb file. Time::DATE_FORMATS[:my_custom_format] ...
Written by Sean Behan on 06/17/2012