All New Router

The router has been completely re-written and borrows heavily from the Merb router, but has a more developed DSL.

Regular Routes

Regular routes are more concise, but I’m not sure how I feel about the “controller#action” syntax yet…

Named Routes

Very similar to regular routes, just with an extra :as variable at the end.

Restful Routes

I think restful routes get the biggest improvement. The new syntax is MUCH easier to read than in Rails 2.

ActiveRecord and ActiveRelation

This is probably my favorite addition to Rails. The new ActiveRecord syntax is very similar to Doctrine (which we use with symfony). Instead of passing options as a hash to your find() method, they’ve created a bunch of new methods you can chain together.

The best part is that any of the query methods just return a relation instead of running the sql query. That way, you can chain more query methods on the relation later. The actual query doesn’t run until you try to access the object(s) (such as with an iterator). This makes fragment caching a lot easier, because you can keep your query call in your action. Even if the cache is hit, it will only create a relation and not actually query the database. You can also force the query to be run at any time by calling all(), first(), or last() on the relation.

I’m very excited for the final release of Rails 3 and can’t wait to actually work on a production project with it.

Well, Sensio decided to steal our thunder by suggesting Symfony 2 Conference Hubs a few days later. Hey Sensio, we still take credit for the idea. We thought of it first. And now that’s off my chest, the sales pitch:

The Symfony Live 2010 Online Conference will explore the state of Symfony 2. We encourage you to register online (for the low price of 25 dollars) and join us on June 23rd at 10:00 AM in the centresource conference room. We will watch everything on the projector, laugh, cry, and have a very emotionally rewarding experience together. The conference will run 3 hours, from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM.

A complete list of Symfony Live hubs can be found on the symfony blog. We hope to see you there!

1. Evernote: Its more than an iPad app, its a fantastic note management system. Almost like my second brain. Great for receipts, ideas, passwords, random info that’s important but has no place, etc.
2. Penultimate: Great hand-writing app for notes.
3. IM+: Great app for instant messaging across AOL, Yahoo, MSN, GTalk, Facebook, Skype, Twitter with Push Notifications
4. ToDo: Great daily planner that integrates with the site, www.Toodledo.com
5. 1000 Experiences: Neat travel-idea app from Lonely Planet
6. iWork Apps (Keynote/Pages/Numbers): Good apps to run/edit Powerpoint, Word Docs, and Spreadsheets. Keynote also outputs to VGA
7. ArtStudio: Nice if you like drawing
8. WebMD: Beautiful app to help you become a hypochondriac :)
9. Pulse: Beautiful RSS reader, but only as good as the RSS feeds you read. If you read mostly commercial feeds, then it isn’t as great because commercial places really limit the amount of data they’ll share in a feed
10. Wikipanion: Nice Free app for searching Wikipedia
11. Amazon: My fav place to shop and the iPad app makes the experience smooth as silk
12. Goodreader: Nice app that connects to your mail server and lots of other services for mobile file access. It can read PDF (but so can iBook) and many other file formats. I combine ‘Dropbox’ and Goodreader as my main method for reading lots of files/docs on my iPad.

And yes, I play games too - but mostly 2 player with my wife :) The most fun 2 player games (for me) are:

1. WTD: Awesome ‘Whats the Difference’ game
2. Harbor Master: Absolutely crazy when you’re playing with two people
3. Word Slam: Fun, but super intense. I start sweating when I play.
4. FriendSheep: At first I thought it was lame, but its actually hilarious when you actually play. Moreover, its physically exhausting :)
5. CheckersHD: Basic but fun. I like the fact that it enforces the ‘Force Jump’ rule
6. Air Hockey: The board is a little short, but definitely fun.

Enjoy!

Prerequisites

• Must have SSH access to the server you are deploying to.
• Must have Ruby and RubyGems installed on your machine (not required for deployment server)’

Installing Capistrano

sudo gem install capistrano

Setup your project to use Capistrano

cd path/to/your/app
capify .

This will create a few files for you. It will create a Capfile in the root of your project. It will also create a directory named config (if it doesn’t exist already) and place a file named deploy.rb in the config folder. That’s where you will add/change any application-specific settings for your deployment recipe.

Here are the required settings (just replace with your app-specific variables):

Customize Capistrano for symfony

Now, to get capistrano to play nice with symfony, we have to override some of the built-in functions. You’ll want to add this to your deploy.rb file:

Now, you can start the deployment process! To get your server setup with the file structure that Capistrano expects, you can run

cap deploy:setup

This command will create the following folder structure on your server:

|-- deploy_to_path
  |-- current (symlink)
  |-- releases
    |-- 20100512131539
    |-- 20100509150741
    |-- 20100509145325
  |-- shared
    |-- cached-copy
    |-- log
    |-- pids
    |-- system

The folders in the releases directory will be the actual deployed code, timestamped. The pids folder in the shared directory is only used for Rails applications, so you can ignore it completely. Capistrano symlinks your log directory from your app to the log directory in the shared folder so that it doesn’t get erased when you deploy a new version of your code.

This is an important step! Before you deploy the application for the first time, it’s really a good idea to scp your databases.yml file up to your server so you can set the proper credentials for your production server and keep it out of your repository. Make sure you put the databases.yml file into the shared/system directory, because we already have a task that will symlink it when each new code version is deployed.

Now, to deploy your application for the first time, you can run:

cap deploy:cold

This will deploy your application, create the db, models, forms, filters, and run all of your migrations.

Now, whenever you need to deploy a new version of your code, you can just run:

cap deploy

If you need to deploy and run your migrations you can call:

cap deploy:migrations

We’ve also added a custom task to run your test suite on the production server. You can invoke this by calling:

cap deploy:testall

This will deploy the application, rebuild the test database, then run all of the tests.

If you want to see all of the Capistrano tasks available, you can run:

cap -T

We’ve been using this setup for a little while now, and it’s saved us a ton of time when we need to push changes for a site to the production server.

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

As both developers and consumers, CentreSource is affected by this decision in two ways.

While we’ve traditionally been a PHP shop, we have developers who are versed in JavaScript, ActionScript, Ruby, ASP .NET, Perl, and even a little Python.  When the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) was originally released two years ago, we played around with it, but the learning curve of teaching ourselves Objective C (the language required to use the SDK) ultimately led us to make the decision to explore utilizing a third party development tool called Titanium to create our iPhone apps.  Titanium is an application that allows you to write in a simpler/unified language, and then the tool recompiles the code to the Objective C required by Apple.

According to the new changes, applications like Titanium — or the about-to-be-released Adobe Flash to iPhone converter — are a no-no.  Why?  Commentators and speculators say it comes down to two main reasons:

1. Apple wants complete control.  In order to develop for the iPhone OS, you have to use Apple’s tools… On an Apple computer… With an Apple developer’s license…  Apple controls the entire development environment from the moment you start writing your code (on your Apple computer) to the point you start making money through releasing your app in the App Store.  Apple is able to dictate how, where, and when your app gets created and distributed.  While some see this as a monopolistic abuse of power, I see this as directly benefiting the fact that…

2. Apple has complete control.  By controlling the entire development environment, they are able to provide the tools and resources to allow app developers what they need to create applications that maximize the potential of the iPhone OS.  If they release a brand new set of features to their SDK (as they did last week), they are able to immediately integrate these features into their toolset for the developers to use.  When using tools like Titanium, developers are forced to wait until the 3rd party company changes their tools to be compatible with the new SDK before they can start using them.

Similarly, many argue that by “neutralizing” the tools used for creation, you’re not able to fully utilize the specific features for the end product. Think of any application that was created for a specific platform — Mac or Windows — and then think of applications that were “ported” to the other platform. No one will argue that Office on a Mac or Handbrake on Windows are anywhere close to the application on the platform it was originally written for.

From a development perspective, we’re not tremendously affected — primarily because we’re already fairly cross-versed in development languages. Adding Objective-C to our arsenal — while an inconvenience and time consuming — is by no means a deal breaker for us, especially given the benefits that Apple provides.  For most of us, we’d have to learn another language / SDK of some kind in order to develop iPhone OS apps — why not just go right to learning Objective-C.

From a consumer perspective, I believe this is great news. Imagine the scenario that Louis Gerbarg of /dev/why!?! presents:

Imagine if 10% of the apps on iPhone came from Flash. If that was the case, then ensuring Flash didn’t break release to release would be a big deal, much bigger than any other compatibility issues. Since Apple doesn’t have access to Flash CS5’s runtime library code or compiler frontend, they might be put in a position where they would need to coordinate with Adobe to resolve those issues. Shipping a new release where Apple breaks any specific application, even a top seller, is not an issue if the release is compelling, most apps work, and Apple has the option of working with the vendor to help them fix their app. Shipping a release where they break a large percentage of apps is not generally an option. Letting any of these secondary runtimes develop a significant base of applications in the store risks putting Apple in a position where the company that controls that runtime can cause delays in Apple’s release schedule, or worse, demand specific engineering decisions from Apple, under the threat of withholding the information necessary to keep their runtime working.

Clearly this is not an ideal scenario for Apple or for their consumers. Apple’s imposing restrictions are a protective move for themselves and their consumer — ensuring the high level of user experience that Apple has come to be known for, and not letting 3rd party vendors effect their reputation.

Is this bad news for Adobe? Youbetcha. They are increasingly grasping at straws to stay relevant in a marketplace that is leaning more towards HTML5, and turning “Flash” into a bad word. I agree with some of my colleagues that Flash still has an appropriate place on the web, and heavens knows how many ActionScript developers are bummed about this decision that effectively eliminates them from developing on a platform that accounts for 45% of mobile browsing.

At the end of the day, when the dust of iPhone OS 4.0 finally settles, there will still be a plethora of apps (good and bad) in the iTunes App Store. This decision will be long forgotten by all those involved (well, except maybe Adobe), and the consumers will remain happy and buying phones.

As for CentreSource? Bring on Objective-C!

** Note: my opinions may be a bit biased… This whole post was written on my Apple iPad — which is awesome by the way… But that will be a saved for a separate blog post!

Earlier this week we launched a redesigned site for Civic Bank & Trust, a Nashville-based bank that we have been working with since 2007. The new look and feel is very different than the the prior version, originally designed to match their printed materials. The site features a dynamic slideshow to promote their financial products and services, an area to highlight team members, and an overall better organization of the site’s content so that is easy for a visitor find the information they need.

As with any update, the back end content management system was given an overhaul as well, updating to the latest version of Drupal. The team at Civic Bank remarked how much Drupal has improved since the initial launch, and how they can update more of the site quickly and hassle-free. The design brings the most important information for prospective and current customers forward, making it easier to navigate and providing a better user experience.

Check out the site at http://www.civicbanktn.com/.

The site is entirely built on the Drupal content management system, integrating a number of custom enhancements for organizing trips and allowing the visitor to refine their search based on location and price. The site gives the project leaders — the Mission Discovery staff in charge of the trips — a platform to share their stories and experiences through blog posts and video logs.

Check out the site at missiondiscovery.org.

The site connects to a proprietary inventory management platform, but most of the heavy lifting for the catalog and content pages are built on the Symfony PHP framework. It also integrates with the content management system provided by Nashville-based SiteMason.

Check out the site at NashvilleOfficeFurniture.com.

Devastation. Tragedy. Hopeless. Those were the words used to describe the recent earthquakes that struck the island of Haiti on January 12 near Port-au-Prince. To a nation that that was already struggling with poverty and trying to meet the basic needs of its people, the earthquake magnified the crisis for the world to see. Like many companies in Nashville, CentreSource matched its employees’ donations to give $500 to the UNICEF organization to help with relief efforts.

Late last year, we were approached by Trinity/HOPE, a feeding program aimed at providing meals for school children and teachers so that they may be agents of positive change in their communities and help lift up a nation. Their existing Web site did not effectively tell of the mission trips, year-round campaigns and coordinated efforts of partnering organizations to sponsor schools across the island. The new site builds upon Trinity/HOPE’s reputation as a spirit-lead organization that makes a difference in the lives of Haiti’s children, one bowl of rice and beans at a time.

Visit their site at trinityhope.org.

With all of that information, managing the taxonomy terms and categories could easily get out of hand. Working with his staff, we created a Symfony module dubbed “HyperWords” (the name is a work in progress) that scans the page content and recommends the appropriate taxonomy. Now, when a new page is created, it suggests to the author relevant categories and tags.

The new site is easy for prospective clients to navigate thanks to a clear strategy and professional design. The site is also easy for Dr. Biesman’s staff to manage thanks to innovations like HyperWords. We call that more than just a facelift.

Visit the site at http://www.drbiesman.com.