How come? Well, REST was the word of the day, it is now deep inside our brains, right? But have you ever seen an example test of the XML output of Rails? Surely not. Every guide, tutorial and example shows only how to test for the default output, which is HTML. 

So what? That ought to be easy, right? Just add :format after the get, post, put or delete function and you will be fine, you must think. Well, I have been working on a project and had to test if the Atom Feed would work ok. I must say it was one of the most frustrating tests I have ever written. 

Turns out that, even though you can do something like this:

formatted_posts_url(:format => :atom)

you CAN’T do that on testes:

get :index, :format => :atom

You know why? Because, even though you CAN use symbols (:atom) on your code, you CAN’T use on tests FOR THE FORMAT. Let’s rephrase it: You can use symbols on tests when specifying the action, the parameters and everything else BUT NOT THE FORMAT of the request. So the code above will give you a mysterious HTTP 406 Error Code.

So, to prevent you from loosing a full day where you felt productive, like I did, the following code will work:

get :index, :format => "atom"

Best!

Factory.define :user do |user|
  user.name "My Name"
  user.groups {|groups| [groups.association(:group)]}
end

This will ensure that user.groups is not overriden by a single Group object, but by an array with a Group inside.

Autotest.add_hook :run do |at|
  at.exceptions = /^(?:\.\/)?(?:db|index|doc|log|public|script|tmp|filestore|vendor\/rails)|\.svn|(?:.*_flymake\.rb$)/
end

If it does not work, try running autotest with “-v” option, to see which files have changed on autotest concern, and include the relevant directory on the list above.

Hope this helps you!

 script/plugin install http://ar-code.svn.engineyard.com/plugins/relative_time_helpers/

Then, you can do things like

<%= relative_time(Time.now) %>
# today

<%= relative_time(1.day.ago) %><
# yesterday

<%= relative_time(1.day.from_now) %>
# tomorrow

<%= relative_time_span([Time.now, 5.days.from_now]) %># May 17th - 22nd

This tip was taken from Active Reload Blog!

BTW, I’ll stay with Netbeans Development Edition. Even being unstable (I believe it’s not even Alpha yet) it’s quite usable, and I’m doing most of my work on it. Just missing a few test features. But that should come on the next milestones!

Thanks Sébastien, for the great job!

1) First, include UNIVERSE on your sources.list. It is located on /etc/apt/sources.list. If you are unsure, take a look at this web-site. It may help you out. Remember to sudo, or be root to do everything

2) Then update your package list and upgrade your machine.

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade


3) Install the build-essential package. It has the most-used tools to compile programs from source.

apt-get install build-essential


4) Install ruby and everything it needs.

apt-get install ruby1.8 ruby1.8-dev irb1.8 rdoc1.8 libyaml-ruby libzlib-ruby libopenssl-ruby


5) Create simbolic links for ruby. The installation made before create binaries with unfriendly names (e.g. ruby1.8). So, we create links to be able to use “ruby” and “irb” from the console:

ln -s /usr/bin/ruby1.8 /usr/bin/ruby
ln -s /usr/bin/irb1.8 /usr/bin/irb


6) Download and install RubyGems

cd ~
mkdir ruby_install/ruby_gems
cd ruby_install/ruby_gems
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/11289/rubygems-0.9.0.tgz
tar xvzf rubygems-0.9.0.tgz
cd rubygems-0.9.0
ruby setup.rb


7) Install Rails with RubyGems

gem install rails --include-dependencies

PS: Sometimes, on machines behind network proxies, the above command will not work. On this case, you can manually install each of Rails components. They can be downloaded from rubyforge.org and must be installed on this order:

• Rake
• ActiveSupport
• ActiveRecord
• ActionPack
• ActionMailer
• ActionWebService
• Rails

8 ) Install RedCloth if you plan on using textilize.

gem install redcloth


9) Now, it’s time to install FastCGI

apt-get install libfcgi libfcgi-dev libfcgi-ruby1.8
gem install fcgi


10) Install MySQL client libraries (if you are using MySQL)

apt-get install libmysqlclient15-dev libmysql-ruby1.8
gem install mysql

PS: When gem install asks you whitch version of mysql to install, just choose the greater version number for your system.

11) Install lighttdp

apt-get install lighttpd


12) Save a backup copy of your /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

13) Use this lighttpd.conf. Remember to change var.railsdir
server.modules = ( “mod_rewrite”, “mod_accesslog”, “mod_fastcgi”, “mod_compress”, “mod_expire” )

server.pid-file = “/var/run/lighttpd.pid”

var.railsdir = “/home/web/test”

server.error-handler-404 = “/dispatch.fcgi”
server.document-root = var.railsdir + “/public/”

server.errorlog = var.railsdir + “/log/lighttpd.error.log”
accesslog.filename = var.railsdir + “/log/lighttpd.access.log”

url.rewrite = ( “^/$” => “index.html”, “^([^.]+)$” => “$1.html” )

compress.filetype = ( “text/plain”, “text/html”, “text/css”, “text/javascript” )
compress.cache-dir = var.railsdir + “/tmp/cache”

expire.url = ( “/favicon.ico” => “access 3 days”,
“/images/” => “access 3 days”,
“/stylesheets/” => “access 3 days”,
“/javascripts/” => “access 3 days” )

# Change *-procs to 2 if you need to use Upload Progress or other tasks that
# *need* to execute a second request while the first is still pending.
fastcgi.server = ( “.fcgi” => ( “localhost” => (
“min-procs” => 4,
“max-procs” => 4,
“socket” => var.railsdir + “/tmp/sockets/fcgi.socket”,
“bin-path” => var.railsdir + “/public/dispatch.fcgi”,
“bin-environment” => ( “RAILS_ENV” => “production” )
) ) )

mimetype.assign = (
“.css” => “text/css”,
“.gif” => “image/gif”,
“.htm” => “text/html”,
“.html” => “text/html”,
“.jpeg” => “image/jpeg”,
“.jpg” => “image/jpeg”,
“.js” => “text/javascript”,
“.png” => “image/png”,
“.swf” => “application/x-shockwave-flash”,
“.txt” => “text/plain”
)

# Making sure file uploads above 64k always work when using IE or Safari
# For more information, see http://trac.lighttpd.net/trac/ticket/360
$HTTP["useragent"] =~ “^(.*MSIE.*)|(.*AppleWebKit.*)$” {
server.max-keep-alive-requests = 0
}

14) Set adequate permissions on your application’s folders:

chmod -R 775 log/
chmod -R 775 public/
chmod -R 775 tmp/


15) You’re done.

There’s a small catch on this stuff: You won’t be able to /etc/init.d/services/lighttpd stop or restart. For some reason, lighttpd loose it’s connection with init.d, and you can only stop it sending TERM signals from the command line:

$ sudo ps -A | grep lighttpd
1234 lighttpd
$ sudo kill -9 1234


Using  server.pid-file = “/var/run/lighttpd.pid” will take care of the job! Config example updated. Thanks, raul.
That’s it. I hope it helped you.
Best

You can download it from the Netbeans CVS, the standard module. This post from Tor shows how to get and compile it. It took me long 36 hours to checkout the whole source. Don’t know if it was my Internet connection (yes, Telemar, it’s your fault, not mine, DSL provider from hell), or a busy server, but it was long, and I had to restart the process lot’s of times (around 7 times. But you don’t loose your job, it continues from where it stopped).

Give it a try! And, Tor, thank you very much for the great job!

Best!

Rails is full of those one-liners to help our life. Mix them together and you have a one-liner for these boxes. It’s a plugin, and it’s called Redbox. Take a look at it!