Preview Email in Rails • 07.02.13
I’ve recorded another video showing RailsMailPreview and FBDistributedNotification specifically on how to preview your email from a rails app.
I’ve recorded another video showing RailsMailPreview and FBDistributedNotification specifically on how to preview your email from a rails app.
I recently wrote an app called RailsMailPreview which will capture any emails being sent from your Rails app.
Once they are captured you can preview what they will look like to the end user.
It is available for purchase from the Mac App Store:
http://nufex.com/link/rails-mail-preview
Lately I’ve been working on updating www.skatr.us which is a site built with Rails and the new code will be ridding Rails 3, and I’ve been porting it over to use HAML as it’s way better than writing erb.
I’m also now using the new sass which I can now get rid of the css less plugin which essential did the same.
For Fixtures I started using machinist and it’s just awesome, at a project I used to work on I had to use monkey type fixtures and that was not fun, machinist makes it fun again. Try it see for yourself.
A while ago I wanted to get GAMV back online and I decided to use Cupcake the PHP Framework I wrote. If you’re looking for it go to: http://gamv.fernyb.net/
Today, I started a new project. A minimalistic bug tracker that should really work under Dreamhost. The only reason I need this to work on Dreamhost is because bills begin to add up after having a few VPS accounts and I’m trying to cut my spending and since Dreamhost gives me unlimited disk space and bandwidth I figure I will use it and yes I know I can use GitHub but that cost money for private repositories.
I installed the latest rails using sudo gem install rails –version 2.3.5 and I got Capistrano all set-up and was able to deploy. Now the only thing that took almost all day was trying to figure out why rails would not process the request. So I did “rake rails:freeze:gems” to freeze the gems. Once I did that I was having problems with Rack version 1.0 already activated and I hacked around RubyGems to see if I can deactivate it but I didn’t find anyway of doing that. I also googled a ton of searched but found nothing.
What did work was to modify the rails core, ActionController to be specific in file:
vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller.rb
I modified lines 34 and 35 and commented them out.
I then added the following:
load "#{RAILS_ROOT}/vendor/gems/rack-1.0.1/lib/rack.rb"
the end result look like this:
#gem 'rack', '~> 1.0.1' #require 'rack' load "#{RAILS_ROOT}/vendor/gems/rack-1.0.1/lib/rack.rb"
which after doing that, it ALL worked well. Now I can continue with building my app.
So, it’s been while since I last wrote something here.. Well it’s for a good reason, I’ve been busy with work but besides the work hours, I actually managed to create a PHP Framework which I call Cupcake. The reason for the name is being that I wanted a version of CakePHP without lots of the component I will never use. I initially forked CakePHP but ran into some issues with it. So I decided to write my own and implement it that way I thought it should be. That is available on Github.
Another project I’m working on is a Mac OS X Application that will be similar to my previous apps GAMV and LyFOX which were a great success, and I will attempt to release it by the end of this year 2009.
While looking into my app for deprecated methods I have found one that did not have much documentation to it. It was a delegate method from UIImagePickerControllerDelegate and this is the way I use it for when an image is ready to be posted.
- (void)imagePickerController: (UIImagePickerController *)picker didFinishPickingImage: (UIImage *)img editingInfo: (NSDictionary *)editInfo { [[picker parentViewController] dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES]; [image setImage:img]; [self confirmPhotoUpload]; }
Now the only problem with that method above is that it is now deprecated in the iPhone OS 3.0 SDK and you must now use a method called imagePickerController:didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo:
and the way I use that method is like this:
- (void)imagePickerController: (UIImagePickerController *)picker didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo: (NSDictionary *)info { [[picker parentViewController] dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES]; UIImage * img = [info objectForKey:@"UIImagePickerControllerEditedImage"]; [image setImage:img]; [self confirmPhotoUpload]; }
So if your stuck trying to figure out what method to now use, use imagePickerController:didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo: and what will have a NSDictionary with all the needed information about the image.
Today, I was working on Skatr getting it ready for the iPhone OS 3.0 and taking advantage of some of the new features and while I succeeded testing it on my device using the beta 4 version, I had trouble with beta 5. I searched around and found the following post to be very helpful to solving whatever problem was going on with the sdk.
This weekend as I wait for Apple’s response to my iPhone App being accepted or rejected. I’ve been wanted to create an Adium Plugin for a while, so now I took the initial steps and made it much easier to begin. I have created a XCode Template for creating your own Adium Plugins.
It can be downloaded over at my github reposity.Â
http://github.com/fernyb/adiumplugin/tree/master
Installation
If you do not have that directory create it and navigate to it.
If that does not exist make sure to create it.
Copy all files from git repository and place them in:
“/Library/Application Support/Developer/Shared/Xcode/Project Templates/Adium/Plugin”
It’s been a little over 4 months of development for my iPhone app. This does not mean just coding for the iPhone app but also working on the back-end server side, creating an API for Skatr to use, and later  become a public API for others to consume.
Things I did for the 4 months of development.
First month, Start from scratch to rewrite www.skatr.us from PHP over to Ruby using the Merb Framework. Although that went short after the announcement of Merb & Rails merge. I figured I needed to port things over to Rails now because eventually Merb will be less supported and the other reason was I already know Rails and Merb was sometimes challenging because I did not know it.
Second Month, Write lots of code to port it form Merb over to Rails and Begin writing the API that will be consumed by Skatr. Also go shopping for a Web Host to host the Web App. I started to re-read books I had on Objective-C and Cocoa and bought a few books and screencasts on iPhone development and paid $99 to Apple to be part of the iPhone Developer program. Started writing code for Skatr.
Third Month, Write Ruby Code and Objective-C code for Skatr Web and Skatr iPhone, Also make a ton of google searches to learn how things are done in iPhone land.
Fourth Month, Complete writing Skatr for iPhone and the web API for Skatr.
It was actually a lot of work doing all this considering I was working at my full-time job and not just a 8 hour job but a few days with emergency releases working over 10 hours. Also to mention it takes me almost a little under 2 hours to commute from work to home because of traffic and then I would continue with my iPhone app till usually around 12:00 AM sometimes 1:00 AM and other days when literally my eyelids where already closed and realizing I’m sleeping and I need to go to bed. It was very tiring. Then wake up early for work and continue the same pattern for about 4 months.
Now that Skatr is completed. I’ve submitted it to Apple, hoping it does not get rejected. Let’s see what happens now. Then hopefully take a vacation?
Lately, I’ve learned how to use GDB with XCode and it’s awesome! It really saves your lots of time debugging an app. I was having lots of trouble trying to figure out why an instance variable was not retaining it’s value in a new method.
Well, it happen to be I was using a UITableViewDelegate and those methods where being called before my setter method and so the instance variable was nil, the only way I found this out was by using GDB and believe me NSLog for debugging is not always going to work.
Today, I wanted to make a screencast to serve more as a reminder to myself on remembering how to create the UINavigation inside a UITabBar for iPhone Development. So I got a little cheap and I decided to look for something online to bookmark but I found screencast-o-matic which is really cool. It let’s you create screencasts from your browser. It uses a java applet. So this is what I created.
As I wrote earlier, I was trying to release skatr.us on the first of january but unfortunately that is not going to happen. I just don’t have the strength to pull it off.. I’m going to push back the release date for Skatr for mid February, I think that is a good enough time, thats like 8 full-days to work on it plus whatever time I have after work. I’m sure I’ll get it done, it’s better than half-complete.
Happy New Year!
Just a small updated on my development of skatr. It’s almost ready to go for beta release.
If anyone has taken notice, the site is currently down on purpose. I figure I will take it down it gives me more reason to complete my project. The site is being developed using the Merb Framework. After reading some news about Merb being Merged into Rails 3, was actually good I think. Anyways, my project skatr.us will be up live sometime soon, I’m aiming for the first of January, of course this will be beta release and I say beta because things might not be correct on the site, etc..
So I was taking a look at some of my old projects and I decided that I would like to continue with some of them well at least one of them. Which is my Skateboarding Spots site. I have my great ideas for it, its just that I don’t always have time and when I do have time it always wants me to do something else. So, in all seriousness I’m going to rewrite skatr.us in ruby with the Merb framework.
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