Rails 2 i18n: Globalize2 plugin for Rails

A while ago i posted a post about a Globalize plugin bug in Rails 2.x. Eventually i found a solution but i was still waiting for a real solution for Rails 2.x to supersede my monkey patching.

Well, it's here.


note for the Hebrew natives: check out the examples :)



Globalize2 is the successor of Globalize for Rails.

It is compatible with and builds on the new I18n api in Ruby on Rails. and adds model translations as well as a bunch of other useful features, such as Locale fallbacks (RFC4647 compliant) and automatic loading of Locale data from defined directory/file locations.

Globalize2 is much more lightweight and modular than its predecessor was. Content translations in Globalize2 use default ActiveRecord features and do not limit any functionality any more.

All features and tools in Globalize2 are implemented in the most unobstrusive and loosely-coupled way possible, so you can pick whatever features or tools you need for your application and combine them with other tools from other libraries or plugins.


Get it from joshmh Github Repo

Rails Migrations - Running a Single Migration

We all know the good old

rake db:migrate

And we all know the Rails 2.x

rake db:migrate:rollback

to go back in time and fix what we did.
Now, in Rails 2.x you can specify a single migration by specifing one of the each

rake db:migrate:up VERSION=<migration_timestamp> # Runs the self.up
rake db:migrate:down VERSION=<migration_timestamp> # Runs the self.down

Note that migrations are meant to be concurrent and that's the most basic purpose in which they are there for, executing an out of line migration may cause you problems in the future, so try to stay as clean as possible when dealing with migrations

Rails date Range

Holy Shmoly! Sometimes Rails and ruby just blows me away,

Let’s assume you are trying to find a bunch of records between a time frame.

  class Call < ActiveRecord::Base
    named_scope :by_month, lambda { |d| { :conditions  => { :date  => d.beginning_of_month..d.end_of_month } } }
  end

simply specify a range

and running (the named_scope )

  this_months_calls = Call.by_month Date.today

And Rails will return all the calls that were recorded during the current month. Love it.

Common RJS mistake/error on Ruby on Rails

When you use some of your ajax helpers, such as link_to_remote, with the :update parameter in order to update a specific DOM element AND you specify page.replace_html or any other RJS syntax that handles other DOM ID, it will return the result expected, nothing will be updated on the :update pointer DOM ID.

Simply choose one, if you use :update, return an html or render a partial in your action instead of rendering RJS.
If you require multiple changes, use RJS and no :update parameter.

Ruby on Rails and Oracle on Mac Os Leopard

Overview

The nightmare is over.
Just until the latest Oracle libraries update (finally released a X86 library pack for mac) it was nesecerry to use 2 versions of ruby, a universal and a ppc version. Sadly, when running PPC, the benchmarking were terrible and it had some very annoying freezes and other stuff that would simple make you want to jump off the roof.
BUT! (:) ) times had changed, Oracle (as mentioned) released an X86 Intel compatible library pack for MacOs users and therefore ended my misery,
Woohoo! That makes the entire process of connection Ruby on Rails and oracle on Leopard about as 100 times less complicated than before, so I’ve posted it here to let everyone enjoy.
I assumes that you’re using Rails 2.0 or greater (Why not really?).

IMPORTART!!!

If you already connected Oracle and Ruby on Rails using the old way, please preform the "Cleanup" step first.

Oracle Libraries

The new Intel Mac versions are available from the Oracle downloads site. Install them in /Library/Oracle/.
You can do side-by-side installations in folders with whatever names you want, since apps find them by using the $ORACLE_HOME environment variable (and it’s friends). I’ve got mine in /Library/Oracle/instantclient_10_2.
Also make sure that you’ve got the files required to run sqlplus and the sdk along with the basic. You can drop those in the same directory.

Symlink the libraries

In the directory where you’ve installed the instant client, run this:

ln -s libclntsh.dylib.10.1 libclntsh.dylib

Set the environment variables correctly

You’ll probably want to put these lines in your /etc/profile , but they also must be run from the command line to take effect (you can also "source /etc/profile"):

export ORACLE_HOME=/Library/Oracle/instantclient_10_2 <= Change to your library!
export TNS_ADMIN=$ORACLE_HOME
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME
export PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME

Oracle! giddie up!

First you'll need to install the Active Record Oracle adapter,

sudo gem install activerecord-oracle-adapter --source http://gems.rubyonrails.org

which is how ActiveRecord deals with Oracle.
It doesn’t, however, install the Ruby oci8 driver, which is how Ruby talks to Oracle (yeah, annoying).

Important!!!

Have you installed the Oracle Instant Client SDK ?
good.


Get the lastest the oci8 library. Download it and unpack the file in the finder: it should unzip into ~/Downloads/ruby-oci8-x.x.x.

Now we can finish configuring the environment before we compile the library.

cd ~/Downloads/ruby-oci8-x.x.x
export SQLPATH=$ORACLE_HOME
export RC_ARCHS=i386
ruby setup.rb config
make
sudo make install

oh joy, scrolling lines of doom will pass in front of you and hopefully you'll see no errors and burst into tears.

Show me!

At this point, we’re almost done. Let's see it working.

irb
require 'oci8'
==> true

or

irb
require 'rubygems'
==> []
require 'oci8'
==> true

Configure your database.yml

In your database.yml, use the following to make it work:

development:
adapter: oracle
database: your_instance_name
username: your_user_name
password: your_password

The database name = > comes straight out of your tnsnames.ora file. You don’t need to specify any other connection information in database.yml, since the tnsnames.ora file has everything you need.

if you are using the oracle Express edition, it should look something like that.

development:
  adapter: oci
  host: //db_hostname:db_port/xe <== Oracle port is usually 1521
  username: username
  password: password
  cursor_sharing: similar
  prefetch_rows: 100

note: last 2 lines are some tweaking for a better Oracle performance.

Cleanup: Fix the ruby_fat and ruby_ppc setup

if you have installed Oracle libraries using the old way, you'll be happy to remove the mess it made out of your ruby installation and happily, it’s quite simple.
Just remove the ruby_ppc files, and the symlinks to them (called ruby, and rename ruby_fat as ruby:

cd /usr/bin <== or wherever you put them.
sudo rm ruby
sudo rm ruby_ppc
sudo mv ruby_fat ruby

and

cd /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin
sudo rm ruby
sudo rm ruby_ppc
sudo mv ruby_fat ruby

Then, you should also remove the 2 management scripts:

sudo rm /usr/bin/ppc_ruby.sh
sudo rm /usr/bin/fat_ruby.sh

And that’s enough for the cleanup.

Update: Rails 2.1 globalize plugin - Fix

I am using globalize since ever, I always prefered it over gettext or what ever taylor made i18n solution out there.
It seems to be that there is a problem with the action method of date_select, or if to be more specific, the month_select helper produces a "wrong number of arguments" exception... I droped the usage of the globalize plugin for meantime... But I am really looking forward for a real solution... Anyone?

Update
i found a post a about a Rails 2.1 compliant Globalize plugin release. it is currently working for me with no special problems.

Installation:


script/plugin install git://github.com/heythisisnate/globalize.git


Ruby on Rails 2.2 Release Notes

Rails 2.2 delivers a number of new and improved features. This list
covers the major upgrades, but doesn't include every little bug fix
and change. If you want to see everything, check out the list of
commits in the main Rails repository on GitHub.

Along with Rails, 2.2 marks the launch of the Ruby on Rails Guides,
the first results of the ongoing Rails Guides hackfest. This site will
deliver high-quality documentation of the major features of Rails.

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/2_2_release_notes.html

Lighting Fast Ruby On Rails security checklist

Ruby on Rails Security checklist for models:

1. Use attr_accessible (or attr_protected if you must) to explicitly identify attributes that are accessible by .create and .update_attributes. Just because you don't expose an attribute on an edit form doesn't mean that someone won't try to post a value to it. I prefer attr_accessible over attr_protected as it fails on the side of safety when new fields are added to a model - you have to explicitly expose new fields.
2. Make sure queries are using the Rails bind variable facility for parameters, not string concatenation or the handy Ruby's #{...} syntax.
3. Use validations to prevent bad input.

Ruby on Rails Security checklist for controllers:

1. Make non-action controller methods private (if possible).
2. If non-action controller methods must be public, identify them with hide_action to prevent unwanted execution.
3. Make sure before_filters are in place if necessary for your authorization infrastructure.
4. Move queries from your controller to your model, and see the model checklist above.
5. Check for params[:id] usage - are you sure you can trust it? Check for proper ownership of the record.
6. Check for usage of hidden fields - a user can send anything to you through them, so treat them with suspicious just as params[:id] should be suspect.
7. Use filter_parameter_logging to prevent entry of sensitive unencrypted data (passwords, SSN's, credit card numbers, etc.) in your server logs.
8. Forget about your view code for a minute, and think about how to protect your controller from posts a malicious user could make to any of your exposed methods. All parameters (whether or not exposed on a form, and whether or not invisible) are suspect to length overruns, bypassing of any browser based validation, attacks with malformed data, etc.

Ruby on Rails Security checklist for views:

1. Make sure all data displayed is escaped with the helper method h(string).
2. Eliminate comments in your views that you don't wish the entire world to see.

ERROR: While executing gem … (ArgumentError)

After a recent upgrade to a newer rails version the gem package manager seems to be broken. Everytime you try to use gem install gem_name, you get the following error:

ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::GemNotFoundException)

Deleting the cached files as suggested in other posts results in the error:

ERROR:  While executing gem ... (ArgumentError)

Solution
As suggested, you need to do:

gem install rubygems-update
update_rubygems

which should be updating the gem version to the latest one, ie 1.3.0

Dynamically adding a text field, with autocomplete

We all love auto complete. It makes our lives a little less complicated and classy. I decided to (as a complimantry to my new JS beloved framework) to use the JQuery autocomplete plugin, problems began when I needed to use dynamically added text fields with autocomplete. Since the plugin assumes that you use a single and unique DOM ID, was unable to setup the autocomplete feature to newly dynamic fields.
One solution was to add the fields by javascript and Dom manipulation, but I prefered to use a partial in order to keep the code simple and Rubish. The other solution was to add a javascript script tag in the end of the partial which traverses the DOM and adds a unique and random id, and of course setting the auto complete feature for each one of them.
Bottom line, it is working and even working well, but I would like to hear new ideas if anyone has.
Over and out.