Mobile LIRR schedule application
I've hated the Long Island Rail Road site for a really long time. The worst part of using the site is that half the time you have to do it from your phone. Even with an iPhone, it's just really terrible. So, I set out to solve this problem. My main goal for the initial version was to tackle the ease of use on a mobile device issue... keep reading
Validators run before before_create
Apparently, validators like validate_uniqueness_of run before a before_create method. before_validation_on_create did wonders for me...
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Web Based Scheduling Application - In 1.5 Weeks
I received an email about a week ago from a friend of mine about how he was in a bind. His place needed to put together a web based scheduling application in about a week and a half's time. He asked if I could put something together for them in this timeline with a limit of about 30 hours... keep reading
Ruby date range to SQL
While working on a scheduling application tonight, I found a neat Ruby code snippet that lets you easily convert a Ruby date range to SQL... keep reading
Rails, Foreign Keys, NULL values and CSV Fixtures
Ran into this issue today where basically Rails was trying to push an empty string in for a foreign key field with no value rather than a null while using CSV fixtures... keep reading
Briefly: Contextual Permission Management
In conjunction with designing an authentication and permission system recently, I just implemented the facility to manage permissions. The idea is that administrators can contextually manage permissions. If they need to give someone access to the Customers module, they go to the Customers module and.. keep reading
Designing a More Powerful Permission System in Rails
Most of the demos or plugins for rails that I've seen, talk about authorization like it's dead simple. You're logged in or you're not. That may work in a lot of cases, but in a system with a larger overall breadth, where users fill specific roles rather than all using the system in the same way, tha.. keep reading
Briefly: Inline Searches
I've been spending a little time recently, developing some neat inline searching techniques with the help of Ruby on Rails' AJAX functionality. Click the image to see a 30 second demonstration of an inline, find as you type search on a table with almost 35k records: .. keep reading
has_many :through
Apparently has_many :X, :through = :Y depends on you having an existing has_many :Y defined in the model. You get this error when you call find if you haven't declared that the model has_many :Y. Who knew? source.. keep reading
Gotham Ruby Conference?
I went to a ruby user group last night in the city with Lorgio and they mentioned a conference. Figured they meant the Rails conference in Oregon. Found out this morning they meant the Gotham Ruby Conference, being held at Google. What the heck? How about emailing the real rails mailing list about t.. keep reading
Interesting Freelance Project
I was recently commissioned to write a document management site for staples digital copy services (www.staplesdcs.com). They already had a site, written in php, but it was really old and broken. I was to write a document management application and wrap it with their existing website... keep reading
Seymore r30
I just committed a pretty decent update to [Seymore](http://slicedsoftware.com/software/seymore/)'s subversion trunk. Most notably, I implemented a simple authorization system that will be flexible enough to be used with plugins in the future (when there is a plugin architecture). With this authoriz.. keep reading
Concerning Seymore Updates
I removed the 'Release' download links from Seymore's project page. I also plan on just using the revision number from subversion rather than version numbers from here on out. So, for now, to get the latest Seymore source, just grab it from the subversion repository... keep reading
Seymore 0.1.1 - MySQL Support
A bug that affected Seymore running with a MySQL database was pointed out to me this afternoon soon I just updated the released package to 0.1.1 to address the issue. I also added a license file and a changelog file to the project... keep reading
Where Seymore Is Headed
In its current state, Seymore does a decent job at portraying my vision of the simple CMS. But where is the code base really headed? Well, things need to be shuffled around. A clean API must be developed (it's pretty clean right now, but things can alway.. keep reading
Introducing Seymore
Seymore is not only my first publicly available Rails application, it is my solution for easy content management. My vision of Seymore is that rather than having a separate administration section for managing content, content management functions should be available throughout the site so users are able to contextually and comfortably manage their content... keep reading
