Friday, February 08, 2008

acts_as_conference - day 1

I attended the acts_as_conference conference on Ruby on Rails. It was put on by Rails for All whose founder, Robert Dempsey had previously given a free class on Ruby on Rails in Tampa, where I live, for free which was my first real exposure to RoR, and how I learned about this conference.

The conference was attended by around 150 people. There were some technical glitches, particularly with WiFi access for everyone, but overall it ran smoothly.

Here are the topics covered with a brief summary of each:

Advanced DSLs in Ruby - Neal Ford

A DSL is a domain specific languages. Basically this is about building fluent (readable) interfaces and improve abstraction by eliminating noise.

So you can type:

recipe = "Spicy Bread"
recipe.add 200.grams.of Flour
recipe.add Nutmeg

instead of something like:

recipe ="Spicy Bread")
flour = new Ingredient("Flour")
nutmeg = new Ingredient("Nutmeg")

This works by using a few techniques. First extending the Numeric class to allow the numbers to converted based on the measurement type to a common measurement in grams, and add an of function to build a new Ingredient object

class Numeric
def gram
alias_method :grams, :gram

def pound
self * 453.59237
alias_method :lb, :pound
alias_method :lbs, :pound
alias_method :pounds, :pound

def of ingredient
if ingredient.kind_of String?
ingredient = new Ingredient(ingredient)
ingredient.quantity = self

The reason you can create the Ingredient without surrounding the Ingredient name with quotes is by type transmogrification which uses of the const_missing construct:

class Object
def self.const_missing(sym)
eval ""

Neal added some additional techniques like using bubble method in order to build a nutrition profile for the recipe as you build the recipe.
Overall, the presentation was very interesting to see how you can manipulate Ruby to make ever more readable code. However, in general I don't think it's worth the effort or the confusion for new developers trying to figure out how the code even works.

Working with others: Best Practices for Rails Teams - Luke Francl

Luke discussed some of the issues that can arise in a team environment, specifically for Rails. He had a nice handout which unfortunately isn't available in softcopy form. Here are the bullet points.

  • Migrations - Migrations have a tendency to stop working (what he calls migration decay). So, use the schema.rb as the authoritative source for your database schema. When creating the database on another system run rake db:schema:load instead of running the migrations.
  • Seed Data - Loading seed data in your migrations can break as the models change and fixtures are for test data. Luke recommends using db-populate to populate seed data along with ActiveRecord::Base.create_or_update

    def self.create_or_update(options = {})
    id = options.delete(:id)
    record = find_by_id(id) || new = id
    record.attributes = options!

  • 3rd party code - vendor everything using gemsonrails
  • Security - HTML escape everything in your views with h. There are several XSS plugins that can be used as well. Mass assignments (ex.[:line_item])) can be dangerous, be sure to protect your attributes with:

    • :attr_protected - attributes you can't write to (via mass parameter assignment)

    • :attr_accessible - attributes you can write to

  • Source control - The source code is the life of your project. Be sure to use source control management (SCM). Commit atomic changes, not batches of changes with informative messages.

  • Bug tracking - Use a bug tracker that has some workflow for various states of completion as well as email integration to inform interested parties and SCM integration to link code fixes to bugs.

  • Continuous integration - Tis ties everything together. Verifies that new code doesn't break anything else right away, ensures all libraries and code packages are available, etc.

Rails on AIR - Peter Armstrong

This was mostly about using Flex and using Flex Builder (Eclipse). Flex is way to build Flash applications without knowing Flash and AIR allows your Flash application to run as a stand alone desktop applications. Frankly, I wasn't too interested in this. It seems like a lot of work for not much gain. Yes, Flash is installed in like 99% of browsers, however there are drawbacks to using it in web apps. For example, you site with not be indexable be search engines which can reduce the traffic to your site, and I've been able to accomplish most everything I would need to use Flash for with HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

Keynote - Dan Benjamin

Dan provided some tips for developing good software development and interface design:

  • As Simple As Possible, But No Simpler
  • Focus on Creating a Great User Experience
  • Anticipate User Actions
  • Think Like your Users
  • You're Probably Not as Good of a Designer as you Think
  • Develop for One Scenario, Not for Ten
  • Good Code Does Not Impress Users
  • Don't Release a Beta
  • Apologize (for any problem)
  • Just Ship It
"simplicity is the key to happiness in the modern world"

That's all for day 1. Watch for day two which has these topics:
  • JRuby - Charles Nutter
  • Shining a Light on the Dark Magic of ActiveRecord - Anthony Eden
  • Smarticus University: BDD With RSpec - Bryan Liles
  • Adding Media to Your Rails Application - Dave Naffis and Josh Owens
  • Lessons from the Trenches – Learning from the Rails Bootcamp - Charles Brian Quinn
  • Keynote - Obie Fernandez

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