Singular resourcing was harder to grasp than I thought

The idea is actually pretty simple to understand: for example, you say you want a user to access only one resume because that’s the only one he would have. The scaffold generator adjusts the routing accordingly; well, at least it should.

It should actually be resume_path in the singular but for the URL’s to work you must have an :as parameter in the routes:

I got frustrated for realizing I had to do extra effort to understand something that should have been linear. I need to work around on this. I was thinking of normal resourcing the posts so it could be searchable later on and everything. But it doesn’t feel right, that’s not the business model. A user has its own resume, period. If he is to look at another one, then a custom route will be made up.

I’m asking for help now. If you have something to share regarding this matter, it would be absolutely great and I thank you very much.

PS: Yes, the application started from this point. I have no users yet, no static content, no nothing. Perhaps starting an application with a singleton scaffold was a bad idea. Perhaps start with the users first? After all, they are the system and the resume should belong to them.

Estou muito feliz por me poder envolver com pessoas felizes como as que encontrei no Barcamp que houve no Porto, este fim-de-semana. Obrigado à organização do Barcamp, correu muitíssimo bem e é suposto repetir-se.

Uma sugestão que me esqueci de dar: pensem maior! Sejamos ambiciosos e pensemos em engrandecer em quantidade de pessoas, energia e qualidade. Aquilo que faz destes eventos especiais é a energia que se acumula e os sorrisos que se criam e se partilham. Mais vezes!

Convite — Proposta de projeto comunitário

Estou a planear construir uma aplicação web comunitária. O objeto principal? O teu Curriculum Vitae. Quero criar um mecanismo que te permita gostar de manter um CV e usá-lo de maneiras mais criativas e funcionais. O teu contributo é importante para mim e dessa forma, convido-te a preencheres este formulário. A informação que eu conseguir juntar será preciosa para eu conseguir tomar decisões mais acertadas no início do projeto e torná-lo desejável logo no arranque!

Eu vou fazer um resumo da informação que conseguir juntar, brevemente. Quero conseguir ter 100 questionários preenchidos. Portanto, junta-te à festa e espalha a notícia! Fala com quem não tem CV, com quem tem dificuldades em fazer/manter o seu. Convida-os a participarem, vai ser genial!

Psicologia não exige curso superior

Se achas que não consegues ser psicólogo, então precisas mesmo de vir!

Um bom amigo é um psicólogo; um bom homem da web também é (leia-se “deve ser”) um psicólogo. As variáveis aqui são o prisma e a aplicação da ciência. Vou falar de como psicologia afecta as nossas decisões, bem como as dos nossos clientes e de como podemos contornar os tão afamados entraves e desatinos.

Paixão é a força motriz

Não é o dinheiro que nos motiva (pelo menos não só). A verdadeira força que nos orienta a atingir resultados e ter motivação é paixão. Os teus pais sempre te disseram: Faz aquilo que gostas. ou Quem corre por gosto, não cansa.

Ruby on Rails para concretizar

Até hoje ainda não encontrei ferramenta mais completa e linguagem mais simples do que Rails e Ruby, respectivamente. O padrão MVC aproxima o negócio do cliente ao software que quer implementar. O REST permite que os objetos de negócio sejam manipulados de forma simples e uniforme. Existem tantas outras coisas que fazem do Rails a ferramenta de elite.

Se quiserem saber mais, venham! Estou a pensar em apresentar algo mais interativo; algo como envolver a audiência de um certo modo, portanto acho que vai ser bastante engraçado!

Our conclusions

The only way I’d use <br /> would be for:

• Addresses;
• Poems;
• Multiple radio buttons / checkboxes.

There was one more thing.

Then the conversation shifted towards how to include labels, inputs and paragraphs inside each other. Levi found this about labels and inputs on the HTML5 specification:

The label represents a caption in a user interface. The caption can be associated with a specific form control, known as the label element’s labeled control, either using for attribute, or by putting the form control inside the label element itself.

The idea of including an input inside a label — <label>Label: <input /></label> — didn’t convince Paulo as he thought it felt wrong. It’s not that bad if you think of this particular example, for instance. Consider a series of checkboxes for a certain field. It would be handy if people knew they can click the text and select the checkbox too, right? Like this:

Checkbox 1
Checkbox 3
Checkbox 3

If you click the labels, the checkboxes are activated. And it’s perfectly semantic as the labels work as controls alike.

Thank you, Paulo and Levi!

It’s not just another MVC framework. It’s a set of PHP classes (one of them actually enables MVC and makes it work stand-alone) that allows you to focus a little more on your application logic rather than spending time on fixing technical bugs.

Is it any good compared to other frameworks?

Considering I have Ruby on Rails and CodeIgniter background, I should point out that all three are different, although Rails and CI have similar approaches to what they try to reach. Zend FW aims to be more generic and reach as much as it can pursue. Since it doesn’t have an exact folder structure and conventions take very little into consideration, it’s kinda farfecthed to say it’s better or worse than the other two.

What I DO know is…

• Rails’ conventions and ease of implementation are gold to me. You can just think of an application architecture and just start building it!
• Its ActiveRecord is major.
• CodeIgniter’s naming convention and learning curve is simpler than Zend’s.
• Zend’s flexibility lets you do whatever you want (as long as you don’t see any advantage on ORM).
• Zend’s form design pattern is concise and pretty solid.
• Zend lets you use any template systems you want (Rails and CI are not that flexible I believe).
• Zend has direct Web services, PDF, email and authentication/ACL support, amongst others.

As you are probably guessing, I’m definitely biased towards Rails. It’s just easier for me to get things done. Simple, clean and fast. However, my job is to embrace Zend FW and to explore its potential. I would love to hear from you guys. What do you think about the framework?

No episódio de hoje, mostro como gerar XML, RSS e JSON para a nossa lista de alunos. Deixo também algumas referências sobre como gerar PDF. Se tiverem dúvidas não hesitem em apontá-las em baixo, terei o maior gosto em ajudar!

Para a semana não há episódio

Infelizmente na próxima semana não vou conseguir gravar o próximo episódio dado que vou estar a concentrar o meu esforço em lançar o novo design do Weebiz. Até lá, sugiro que continuem a estudar o que foi feito até agora e inclusivamente mandem sugestões do que gostariam de ouvir num futuro episódio.

Neste episódio constrói-se uma relação entre dois modelos: Aluno com Disciplina através de um novo modelo: Nota. Foi um bocado difícil por tudo a funcionar mas espero que consigam assimilar o conceito de relações, dado o contexto. Existem outras situações com certeza e terão a sua ocasião de serem abordadas.

Se por alguma razão não conseguirem compreender o procedimento, comentem em baixo ou mandem-me um email com a vossa dúvida, terei o maior gosto em explicar.

Código

script/generate scaffold disciplina nome:string creditos:integer
script/generate model nota valor:integer aluno_id:integer disciplina_id:integer

class Nota < ActiveRecord::Base
	belongs_to :aluno
	belongs_to :disciplina
end

class Disciplina < ActiveRecord::Base
	has_many :alunos, :through => :notas
	has_many :notas
end

class Aluno < ActiveRecord::Base
	has_many :disciplinas, :through => :notas
	has_many :notas
end

# atribuir_disciplinas.html.erb

<% form_for @aluno do |f| %>
	<% for disciplina in Disciplina.all do %>
	<p>
		<%= label_tag "", disciplina.nome %>
		<%= check_box_tag "aluno[disciplina_ids][]", disciplina.id, @aluno.disciplinas.include?(disciplina) %>
	</p>
	<% end %>
	<%= f.submit "Atribuir" %>
<% end %>

# alunos/show.html.erb

<ul>
	<% for aluno in @disciplina.alunos do%>
		<li><%= aluno.primeironome %> <%= aluno.ultimonome %></li>
	<% end %>
</ul>

No seguimento da aplicação educacional que iniciámos no primeiro episódio, este segundo aborda validações. Com apenas duas instruções, conseguimos dizer ao sistema que queremos que o sistema verifique a presença de vários campos, bem como a numericalidade de outro campo. Existem muitas mais validações que podem ser consultadas na API do Rails.

class Aluno < ActiveRecord::Base
	validates_presence_of :primeironome, :ultimonome, :email, :sexo
	validates_numericality_of :telefone
end

Já sabem, podem contribuir com os vossos comentários e dúvidas.

Edit: A pedido de alguns assíduos colegas, segue abaixo a lista de todas as validações possíveis:

1. validates_acceptance_of
2. validates_associated
3. validates_confirmation_of
4. validates_each
5. validates_exclusion_of
6. validates_format_of
7. validates_inclusion_of
8. validates_length_of
9. validates_numericality_of
10. validates_presence_of
11. validates_size_of
12. validates_uniqueness_of

Depois de muitos dias à espera, finalmente vos apresento: Rails à moda do Porto, o novo screencast de Ruby on Rails, em Português! O episódio de hoje é mesmo um cheirinho muito introdutório ao Rails, na tentativa de deixar um gostinho aos meninos mais curiosos.

Este é o primeiro episódio, é natural que tenha MUITA coisa a apontar. Os comentários incentivam-se, contribuam para um melhor screencast!

O propósito de iniciar um screencast, além do sentido de contribuição do meu conhecimento é dar a conhecer a beleza de programar Ruby e o imenso poder do Rails para construir aplicações web bem pensadas, bem desenhadas e sólidas.

Tu gostavas de conhecer Ruby e Rails? Gostavas de ter um conjunto de vídeos em Português que te mostrassem como fazer aplicações web em Rails? Gostavas inclusivamente de sugerir um workshop de 8 ou 16 horas sobre o assunto? Fico à espera de feedback.

Case study: a school

The example I am going to show my attendees resembles a typical school situation. In a nutsheel:

• Students have Subjects.
• Subjects have Students.
• Students have Grades to Subjects.

Rails relationships — student

The Models

Student

class Student < ActiveRecord::Base
   has_many :grades
   has_many :subjects, :through => :grades, :uniq => true
   accepts_nested_attributes_for :grades, :allow_destroy => true
end

Subject

class Subject < ActiveRecord::Base
  validates_uniqueness_of :shortname
  has_many :grades
  has_many :students, :through => :grades, :uniq => true
end

Grade

class Grade < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :subject
  belongs_to :student
  validates_presence_of :value
end

And the magic trick!

Through accepts_nested_attributes_for, the student's form_for can now accept nested fields through fields_for for setting Grades' data.

Everytime a student is created, subjects are not directly associated to him. You need to create a form in which you allow to assign a student the subjects you want.

[image missing]

This tells you that a student can have an array of subject id's. You even get to see what subjects are already assigned and dissociate them just like that! When the associations are done, a new Grade record is created to associate the first two modules. Unfortunately, when the associations are dismantled, the Grade association is gone too.

If you know Railscasts, the Complex Forms series explain this task for Rails < 2.3. But now it has become easier and easier to associate models and worrying less about your structure.

Backup & Migrate is a Drupal module that, once installed, allows you to easily backup your entire database into one single file. It also has the ability to:

• Restore that backup in any Drupal installation.
• Schedule backup generation.
• Generate backups under gzip, bzip or zip format.
• Select only the tables you want to backup and even the table structure (no content).

The only thing I found missing is file backup, such as images, themes and other modules. I honestly hope it knows what modules were installed so the only thing I need to do is paste the entire sites folder, install this module, import the database and wham!, the site is up and running. Oh and by the way, Drupal core version is something to consider, since it depends heavily on the database configurations. Just make sure the version you currently use is the same to the one you’re importing the database to.

If you know Drupal, you know portability is a serious issue of his. Well, at least you know how to back it up and even set boundaries between your development and production environments!

This post is taking place after a conversation I had with a friend of mine in college about building a website from scratch, in order to learn PHP. Guess what I told her

So what if you just wanted to build a website to start a business right away and never worry about if it works? Is building a website / web application the best solution if you wanna start off successful and harmlessly?

Know what you want

First of all, you need to focus on pointing out what you want. What is it?

• A static information website, with a couple forms?
• A blog?
• If you are a photographer, a photo gallery to use as a portfolio?
• A CRM application?
• …

With great power comes great responsability.

Whatever you are trying to do, it’s important you know if you can do it or go for already existing applications for your needs. If it’s a blog or a photo gallery, I’d suggest using a CMS like Drupal or Wordpress. As for CRM platforms, there are lots of them, like XLSuite or SugarCRM are in the list.

Choosing a framework or not

Again, if you’re going the hard way, you will most likely discard the option of using a framework such as the Zend framework or CodeIgniter, since these spare you the application code management such as URL aliases and filter, database abstraction / configuration and templating, amongst other things.

You have two choices:

1. Not use a framework and learn everything you need from top to bottom. This is particularly good choice if you’re inexperienced but want to learn how to write and manage an application’s architecture over programming logic.
2. Choose a framework and focus only on the programming logic, leaving architecture details to the framework. This is a good choice if you have acquired some knowledge over time and so you feel confident you will be using such a framework more often, dedicating more time to the application itself and not just its skeleton.

What resources you have

I only advise PHP’s official website. It contains all the reference regarding the language and packages included such as database operations, XML, Web services, everything. There’s always Twitter, IRC and Google to help you out. Hey, it did for me, why not you?

End of story

PHP is just so freaking easy. The hard part is organizing your thought. If you need any help, drop by this website and reach me, I’d be glad to help. If you have any resources or suggestions you’d like to mention, please do!

Well, the good thing is I can actually play some old games like Empire Earth and Counter-Strike with the cousins to have some fun. The bad news is my Apache server settings screwed up. Two things happened. Number one: http://localhost/~user was thrown a 403 Forbidden access. This problem is the result of the user configurations for the server whilst the reinstallation / upgrade of the system, they don’t exist now. What you have to do is very simple. Go to /private/etc/apache2/users and create a file yourshortusername.conf and type this:

Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all

Restart your server and you’re ready to go!

Number two: My virtual hosts blew away. I should have kept a record on how to do this in case I had to a reinstallation, I guess I can kick myself now. (I’m solving this as I write this post ) Three steps:

1. Go to /private/etc/hosts and say you want to assign 127.0.0.1 to your alias, like this: 127.0.0.1 youralias
2. Go to /private/etc/apache2 and uncomment the line that includes the virtual hosts configuration file. If you want to use PHP, you might want to uncomment the line that includes it as well.
3. Finally, go to /private/etc/apache2/extra and edit the httpd-vhosts.conf mentioned on 2. and add this chunk of code:

DocumentRoot "/path/to/your/site/"
ServerAlias yoursitename
ServerName yoursitename

Restart your server and virtual hosts are up and running.

Roger Byrne asked me to check a plugin and help him in a submission form. Roger said to me that the Javascript inside the wordpress instalation he already had was obtrusive and he needed to render the form with CSS only. So I did it; delivered. He asked me why the form wasn’t submitting. I didn’t know because I didn’t make the plugin. In either way, the plugin was kind of a mess. Between lack of standards and lack of a plugin workflow, me and Roger didn’t figure out what was happening.

So what do I mean with all of this? Again, collaboration is not considered when developing. Developers assume their code is flawless and it will work. However, they don’t take a look at crucial guidelines of development: (Note: I’m thinking of plugins as I write this, but any situation is perfectly suitable.)

Logical separation

Logic, content, generated content (different than just content), presentation and behaviour all set apart. Logic goes to one PHP file, content goes to one markup file, presentation in a CSS file, special behaviour in a JS file. Generated content can be either part of the CSS or the JS, depends on what’s its purpose.

Concerning classes…

Concerning markup, please don’t drown it in classes! Keep it with an all-around div with an id, most likely you won’t need more, you’ll most likely style the children elements from that single id. Also, don’t flood it with unnecessary div’s, it hardens its understanding and … it really might be just clutter. Are they for IE? Use a script instead. The client doesn’t have Javascript? Get Firefox. If neither, then you don’t need any div’s at all.

Meta-information for each feature and a short glance at the top; easy to read and above all, summarize every major feature, so a thrown in developer knows what a certain code does.

Comments,

In the right place. Don’t just write a comment line before every single line. Only some guidelines. One practice I really like is split the logic of a function into blocks like this:
<?php # Semantic block 1 {
Code for block one goes here...
# }
# Semantic block 2 {
Code for block two goes here..
# }
?>
Some text editors like Textmate have the ability to fold these kinds of blocks, which is a great visual aid in developing and first-hand comprehension.

End of story

Use web standards, separate each component, take advantage of semantics in comments and talk it easy. Better than a developer is one that knows how to explain what he’s done. I’m sure Roger will appreciate it as well as me.