Posted by Daniel Butler Fri, 27 Oct 2006 15:08:00 GMT
Wow, can discovering and installing helpful Rails plugins get any simpler than this?
All made possible by Ben Curtis' RaPT tool and the Rails Plugin Directory. Thanks, Ben!
Posted by Daniel Butler Thu, 26 Oct 2006 20:08:00 GMT
Alex Wayne has updated his FlexImage plugin for Ruby on Rails, and it now allows for all sorts of special effects such as translucent overlays, drop shadows, and borders, in addition to its existing image processing capabilities. The plugin is described as:
"FlexImage is a plugin that allows you to put image data in your database And retrieve at any size, qulaity or cropping you like. Combine this with page caching and you have a fast and easy way to manage large numbers of uploaded images that are always just the right size for your needs."
As an example, an image can be resized with an added drop shadow with the following snippet:
Thanks, Alex!
Alex's Blog Posting
FlexImage API Documentation
FlexImage at the Ruby Plugins Directory
Posted by Daniel Butler Wed, 25 Oct 2006 22:24:00 GMT
Zed Shaw, author of Mongrel, has provided a fix for the exploitable error in Ruby's cgi.rb library. The error occurs when incorrectly crafted MIME boundaries for multipart uploads causes cgi.rb to loop infinitely waiting for input.
The following servers are affected:
If you're running any of these, you may want to upgrade or patch. More information on the error can be found in Zed's post to the Ruby on Rails forum.
Posted by Daniel Butler Thu, 19 Oct 2006 01:12:00 GMT
Hal Fulton, a computer scientist from Austin, Texas, has graciously provided an updated second edition of The Ruby Way. An article at InfoQ provides a thoughtful excerpt from his new book, which abounds with quoted wisdom about design and simplicity. An example of his writing:
What Larry Wall said about Perl holds true: "When you say something in a small language, it comes out big. When you say something in a big language, it comes out small." The same is true for English. The reason that biologist Ernst Haeckel could say "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" in only three words was that he had these powerful words with highly specific meanings at his disposal. We allow inner complexity of the language because it enables us to shift the complexity away from the individual utterance.
Ruby has transformed my way of thinking about programming, now that I continually take simplicity, elegance, form and function into consideration when crafting a solution, and I am eagerly awaiting the release of this book.
Thanks, Hal!
Posted by Daniel Butler Wed, 18 Oct 2006 13:49:00 GMT
Ezra Zygmuntowicz of Yakima, Washington, has announced a new lightweight Ruby web application framework: Merb, named by combining the lightweight HTTP application server Mongrel with the templating system Erb. Using ActiveRecord, a simpler-than-rails routing system and taking full advantage of Mongrel's X-SendFile features, the "pocket framework" can server dynamic templated pages at 400 requests/second on a MacBook.
It's simple to get started:
$ sudo gem install merb
$ gem unpack merb
$ cd merb-0.0.3/examples/sample_app
# edit the conf/merb_init.rb to add your database password info.
# then add a posts table to your db with a title and body column.
$ merb start -t
Once you do that, visit http://localhost:4000/posts/new, http://localhost:4000/posts/list, or http://localhost:4000/uploads/start to see the little framework that could in action.
Thanks, Ezra!
The RubyForge Project Page
The Merb Trac Page
The Merb SVN Repository
An article on Merb at Brainspl.at
Posted by Daniel Butler Tue, 17 Oct 2006 15:03:00 GMT
DeLynn Berry from Denver, Colorado, has converted the Rails Documentation to CHM format, which is quite a bit easier to use than the online HTML format. CHM, or Microsoft Compressed HTML Help, is a proprietary format for online help files, but it can be read on other platforms like Linux and Mac with additional software. DeLynn writes of the update:
"This update has the documentation for the 1.1.6 release of Rails. This version also has a much more organized Contents section that has a folder group for each gem, which will hopefully lead to easier browsing of the entire file."
If you're on Mac, try Chamonix, which has better search features than Chmox, but both tools work. On Linux, try GnoCHM or KchmViewer.
Posted by Daniel Butler Sun, 15 Oct 2006 13:48:00 GMT
Roxen Webserver 4.5.111 (r2) has just been released by http://www.roxen.com/ of the 709-year old city of Linköping, Sweden. Roxen, named after a nearby lake, is a full-featured web application server platform, written in Pike and C, and supporting features such as dynamically-generated images and text, a XML-based macro language, a non-forking multi-threaded HTTP/HTTPS engine, proxy and relaying support, database integration. and other advanced features.
Changes since 4.5.78 include several RXML, HTTP, and database-related fixes. In the included version of Pike, they have included several "internal fixes for compiler errors, 2GB+ files, memory handling, asynchronous HTTP queries, etc." The Image module now supports "CMYK format, EPS variations, little-endian TIFF files, GhostScript timeout, and more".
We use Roxen and Apache 2/Rails/Mongrel side-by-side to be able to handle various difficult web-hosting situations. Things that are difficult in Apache are quite simple in Roxen, and some of the limitations of Roxen can be easily handled by Apache.
Roxen WebServer changes in 4.5.111 r2
Download Source or Linux, Windows, or Mac Binaries
