Install mysql gem using bundler in ubuntu 11.10 64 bit

Well just tried doing a mysql gem install using bundler (Gemfile) but got an error like this

Gem::Installer::ExtensionBuildError: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

        /home/praveen/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p290/bin/ruby extconf.rb
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lm... yes
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no

and much more

and i forgot to install  libmysqlclient-dev :) how careless! so did
sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev

and redid the bundle install and wohooo it worked!

Released BrokenCompass

So finally after much of ifs and buts and all hesitation have released a version of BrokenCompass.. Full text search engine built using ruby on rails and serving ruby on rails app.

Some of the features which are available as of now in this first release are..

1. Able to work with all databases for which ruby in rails have no issues(examples shown in links uses mysql)
2. Availability of extended_mode which allows to search in any particular attribute(from set of attributes which is used while in index creation)
3. In extended_mode queries can have logical "&"(pronounced as 'and') and "|"(pronounced as 'or') between them(Not operator is not available still, but working out to release in next version).
4. One can assign weight to set of attributes depending upon requirements and in response get weighted result and also sorted in descending order of weight of record.
5. By default 20 records are returned as query response(which can be altered)
6. look_in_brokencompass static method is attached to rails model to get inference of instantaneous parameter set. And to find using brokencompass static method is find_with_brokencompass("searchterm", :brokencompass = {}) and many other..

Here are few links(if interested, will be helpfull)
BrokenCompass: How to go about it
BrokenCompass - Install instructions

BrokenCompass: How to go about it

Once you are done with installation and index creation for brokencompass, can play around with the search capabilities of it..

Point 01. ruby script/console
==> Output

Adding BrokenCompass Version: 1.0
Loading index... [broken_compass/advertisment.index]

Point 02. Searching in all fields, i.e not using extended_mode

Advertisment.look_in_brokencompass("train")

==> Returns an inference hash like this

{
# Time elapsed in the execution(in seconds)
:time_elapsed=>0.00617599487304688,

# Field(s) which is/are available for indexing
:fields=>["location", "title", "description"],

# Weight given to different attributes to ranks result items
:column_weight=>{:description=>10, :location=>10, :title=>10},

# Count of total records found
:total_record_count=>44,

# Boolean field to unload indexes from memory once query is fired
:eager_unload=>false,

# Boolean field for extended_mode, set to true when using attribute(column) level searches
:extended_mode=>false,

# Boolean field for PLURAL forms of search word
:plural_forms=>true,

# Result set with weighted scores
:weighted_records=>[[14844, 20], [17445, 20], ... , [15148, 10]]}

# Limit to result set
:limit=>20,

# Offset to result set
:offset=>0,
}

Point 03. Searching in extended mode i.e specifically in some attribute(from the attributes used in sql query for index creation)

Advertisment.look_in_brokencompass("'job'@title", :extended_mode => true)

==> Returns an inference hash same as above

{
:column_weight=>{:description=>10, :location=>10, :title=>10},
:total_record_count=>1419,
:time_elapsed=>0.0523371696472168,
:fields=>["location", "title", "description"],
:eager_unload=>false,
:limit=>20,
:extended_mode=>true,
:offset=>0,
:plural_forms=>true,
:weighted_records=>[[14607, 20], [17685, 20], ...... , [13727, 10]]
}

Point 04. Searching in extended mode and also using other possible options

Advertisment.look_in_brokencompass("'job'@title", :extended_mode => true, :offset => 4, :limit => 5, :column_weight => {:title => 40, :description => 20})

==> Returns an inference hash same as above

{
:column_weight=>{:description=>20, :location=>10, :title=>40},
:total_record_count=>1419,
:time_elapsed=>0.0521509647369385,
:fields=>["location", "title", "description"],
:eager_unload=>false,
:limit=>5,
:extended_mode=>true,
:offset=>4,
:plural_forms=>true,
:weighted_records=>[[17947, 80], [17946, 80], [9597, 80], [12556, 80], [25975, 80]]
}

Point 05. To retrieve data results from above mentioned conditions and critriea

Advertisment.find_with_brokencompass("'job'@title", :brokencompass => {:extended_mode => true, :offset => 4, :limit => 5, :column_weight => {:title => 40, :description => 20}})

==> Returns an result-set array of type Advertisment

Point 06. To user "and" & "or" operators in extended mode

Advertisment.look_in_brokencompass("'job'@title | 'career'@description", :extended_mode => true, :offset => 4, :limit => 5, :column_weight => {:title => 40, :description => 20})

==> Returns an result-set array of type Advertisment

Advertisment.look_in_brokencompass("'job'@title & 'career'@description", :extended_mode => true, :offset => 4, :limit => 5, :column_weight => {:title => 40, :description => 20})

==> Returns an result-set array of type Advertisment

In case of any further queries please contact me at praveen[dot]kumar[dot]sinha[at]gmail[dot]com

BrokenCompass

New in-memory full text search engine in ruby and in rails "BrokenCompass".
Coming soon....
keep an eye on this space..

Pretty urls with name or title in ruby on rails

Hi folks,

Something on which is very old.. might not be very interesting for many of you who are into rails development. I am talking about the pretty-urls the SEO stuff(forget all this, it is for good readability of url).

So what my basic funda that i have gathered from last three years is that, every resource is identified by an identifier in rails(generally called id, in terms of database), but displaying the id doesn't sounds legal to me.. so to hide the ids and to have a nice looking readable

we can have title or name fields in the database's relation(table) and to make use of pretty urls, we make corresponding column like stripped_title or stripped_name.
create a file "make_pretty_url.rb" in initializers in config and append the following code.

puts "===================================================="
puts "Adding engine to make pretty url(s)"
puts "===================================================="
module ActiveRecord
class Base
after_create :make_or_update_pretty_url_name

def make_or_update_pretty_url_name
parent_column = nil
stripped_column = self.attributes.collect {|x| x.to_s.include?("stripped_") ? x : nil}.flatten.compact.first
if stripped_column
parent_column = stripped_column.gsub("stripped_","")
if self.send(parent_column)
self.send("#{stripped_column}=",stripp_it(self.send(parent_column)))
if self.class.find(:all, :conditions => ["#{stripped_column} = ?",self.send(stripped_column)]).length > 0
self.send("#{stripped_column}=","#{self.send(stripped_column)}-#{self.id.to_s}")
end
self.send("save")
end
end
end

def stripp_it(str)
str.strip.downcase.gsub(/[^a-z0-9]/,"-").gsub(/(-)+/,"-").gsub(/(-)+$/,"")
end
end
end

it will automatically create stripped_{column_name} and will take care of duplicates and instead of using find_by_id(), find_by_stripped_{column_name} will be used to get the resource and "make_or_update_pretty_url_name" method will also be available for any manual work too.

Hope this just adds in the knowledge base of stuff, and if there is anything about it, let me know through comments..

RAILS: interning empty string

Hi folks,

Really after a long time, writing a post on ROR (even a simple post). AN the reason for delay.. work as usual and secondary i want people to educate on an error, with the statement as "interning empty string" something showing thing like this.

Being from IT industry and not much into literature, first thought came in my mind after hitting this error was "what does interning means?" and the answer from dictionary.com says "to restrict to or confine within prescribed limits" which just meant some breakage of boundary of something and i am the culprit( as always :)) )

But an ware of what i did, started hitting Ctrl + Z (to undo my bad deeds :))) but no luck!! just nothing.. i was like what!! what is that which is not getting undone over here and even google search was showing some very unresponsive result... so was left alone to trigger army against this.
And finally i got the answer and it was...

If you have a partial defined something like "_partial_name.html.erb" everything is fine till the time you don't append an extra dot to the partial file name something like "_partial_name..html.erb" it will through "interning empty string" even if you don't render the partial anywhere

So guys and gals next time try to be more concentrated on renaming a partial, because it can lead to something where even google searches don't have a definite answer to.

That is it for the day.

Happy coding and happy engineering

SSL and RubyonRails

Hi guys and gals too :),

Am back after a fair long interval this time, ya ya same old reason was busy with office and all. But recently did something good(if not unusual).
And the heading is telling it very correct, did implemented the SSL and used https for some of my pages in rubyonrails.

As many of my readers know, i am new to ubuntu so is new to apache too(initially i used to think, these dealings are sort of system admin stuff) but hey after all it is a software and some bit of configurations.. so i thought lets do it.. and i did it...

So now trimming all the conversation.. the aim of my application was to implement https(SSL) for the "payment gateway" and "pick package" page
and here is the solution
for the prerequisite purpose i assume that you have apache and ruby on rails setup in your system and you have an ROR application which needs https protocol for some of the pages

Step 00: Create a ssl certificate signed by yourself (by following these steps)
install the ssl-cert package

sudo aptitude install ssl-cert

# to create a self-signed certificate.. it will open several dialog boxes, keep on answering the question in correct format(some 7-8 inquiries are there) and at the end you will have your self-signed certificate

sudo make-ssl-cert /usr/share/ssl-cert/ssleay.cnf /path/to/ssl/certictare/selfsigned.pem

Step 01: first of all enable the modes(for apache)

sudo a2enmod ssl
sudo a2enmod proxy
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo a2enmod proxy_balancer
sudo a2enmod proxy_http
sudo a2enmod headers

Step 02: set the virtual host
goto apache root directory(which is at /etc/apache2 in my case) and execute following commands
#to switch to apache directory

cd /etc/apache2

#to disable the default site(which have the default configuration of apache)

sudo a2dissite default

#create a new configuration for virtual host by copying the default site configuration and (rename 'ourapplication' with your application name)

sudo cp sites-available/default sites-available/ourapplication

#to enable our application site configuration in apache

sudo a2ensite ourapplication

Step 03: edit the newly created ourapplication configuration, which is available at /etc/apache2/sites-available/ourapplication using any of your favorite editor

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/ourapplication

and it should look something lie this

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName ourapplication
ProxyPass / http://somename.com:3000/
ProxyPassReverse / http://somename.com:3000/
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName ourapplication
ProxyPass / http://somename.com:3000/
ProxyPassReverse / http://somename.com:3000/
ProxyPreserveHost On
RequestHeader set X_FORWARDED_PROTO 'https'

SSLEngine On
SSLProxyEngine On
SSLCertificateFile /path/to/self/signed/certificate/selfsigned.pem
SSLProxyMachineCertificateFile /path/to/self/signed/certificate/selfsigned.pem
</VirtualHost>

Step 04: We also have to change the proxy configuration, so that proxy request can be handled as we desire it to do

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/mods-available/proxy.conf

change the setting from
previous proxy setting

<proxy>
AddDefaultCharset off
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from .example.com
</proxy>

to new proxy setting

<proxy>
AddDefaultCharset off
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</proxy>

Step 05: To reload the new setting so that apache can follow our rule..

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

(but it should not give any error, and it will not if no wrong is done to it form the above mentioned procedures)
if it gives some ouitpit like this

* Reloading web server config apache2
apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName

Step 06: Now all apache work is done, you had to do small amount of effort in your rails application and here they
a) install a plugin

ruby script/plugin install ssl_requirement

b) include it in the application controller so that it can use ssl using

include SslRequirement

c) to use https on any particular action of some controller use

class EcommerceController < ApplicationController
ssl_required :action_name_1, :action_name_2, :action_name_3
# some more codes..............
end

if you have any query just drop me a comment, otherwise all is well as expected :)