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So you want to write some tests for your hot new Rails plugin that extends the behaviour of a ActiveRecord model? The thing is – for it to be decent tests it needs to be functional outside of the context of you Rails application, so you need to create a temporary testing environment. I think there is a few ways to this but the following is what I did.
Continue reading “Unit testing your Ruby on Rails plugin”

Popularity: 16% [?]

The new release of dradis is going to use the ExtJS library for the web interface. ExtJS provides lots of JavaScript widgets useful to create complex GUI for web applications.

This is the first of a series of posts with small tips and tricks of ExtJS that will also address its integration with Ruby on Rails.

In this release we are going to create a ComboBox that loads its items from a remote location (potentially a rails REST endpoint).

Continue reading “extjs ComboBox remote XML”

Popularity: 41% [?]

I attended Rails Conf 2008 in Berlin on the 3rd and 4th of September 2008. Following is a quick summary of the talks that I attended. There are loads interesting things going on in the Rails community. My opinion is very biased but I believe the Ruby on Rails community is setting the bar on future web development. And I think this both the case for the techniques and approaches that is practised by these developers and equally the Ruby on Rails framework that is the result of this.
Continue reading “Rails Conf 2008″

Popularity: 11% [?]

Please note that I have written an updated version of this post that can be found here

Intro

On a recent project I was challenged with the task to create a Windows installer for Dradis, an application that I have been contributing to. After a bit of research it seemed like our answer was in using NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) to assist us in this task.

NSIS in an open source platform for creating Windows installers. It has its own scripting language that you program all your installer logic in and then compiles to a Windows installer executable.

In this series of articles I will introduce you to:

• HM NIS IDE and it’s wizard (Part 1)
• Customising the wizard code (Part 2)
• Challenges with installing to user accounts without administrator rights (Part 3)

Continue reading “Ruby installer using NSIS (Part 1)”

Popularity: 11% [?]

Picking it up were we left it on restful_authentication howto, step-by-step (part 1) the second article of this series is a hands on example on how to use the restful_authentication plugin.

Things that will be covered include:

• remove the need of a login
• the use of an activation email, the application will require it’s users to activate their accounts upong sign up.
• howto get rid of the remember me functionality (just in case you don’t need it).
• howto strengthen a bit the default security of the framework.

Continue reading “restful_authentication howto, step-by-step (part 2)”

Popularity: 55% [?]

There are more than a hundred thousand different ways of implementing authentication in ruby on rails. Authentication in the rails world is definetly not for the faint hearted. After some random reading through the rails wiki it seemed quite clear that there is one winner: acts_as_authenticated. However, after including this plugin in one of my secret projects to take over the world, it seems that is lacking some functionality, what I need out of the authentication framework is:

• A no non-sense authentication: just email and password. No bells, no wistles.
• The system should send an activation email after the user signs up.

Let’s explore the alternatives
Continue reading “restful_authentication howto, step-by-step (part 1)”

Popularity: 70% [?]

In this article I want to discuss a way of storing and retrieving the configuration settings of a ruby application. The first thing you need to decide is whether you want to store your settings in a database, a XML file, a YAML,…

Since this is not an easy choice we can mitigate the impact of making the decision upfront by doing some interface based design.

Continue reading “ruby application configuration settings”

Popularity: 10% [?]

I have created a small Ruby on Rails application to keep track of my personal “ToDo” list of tasks. The idea is to split your different tasks into categories (i.e. important & urgent, no important & urgent, etc.) and have a web front end in which you can get a nice view of your pending tasks.
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Popularity: 12% [?]

As a side result of my work with dradis during the last months, I’ve been working on some technical sessions that will be grouped in what could be called a “ruby workshop”. The first of this sessions is on ruby + Qt programming and is available now.

• Slides can be found here.
• Source and examples: here.

Popularity: 22% [?]

The aim of Net::DHCP (hosted at RubyForge) is to provide a set of classes to low level handle the specifics of DHCP (rfc2131, rfc2132, etc.) in ruby.

With Net::DHCP you will be able to craft custom DHCP packages and have access to all the fields defined for the protocol.
Continue reading “Net::DHCP”

Popularity: 17% [?]