ThinkRuby

Aptana: the best IDE for RoR

2008-06-21T22:10:55-06:00

Hi all, I just want to share about an IDE that already replaced the RadRails for Ruby on Rails IDE, i.e. Aptana. I use this new kind of IDE to create static HTML/XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby on Rails. This is a greate IDE. I think some of you already use this too. OK..we have to migrate to Aptana.. not RadRails again!

Game Programming with Ruby

2008-02-22T19:20:05-07:00

Hi all, I really sorry 'cause I never write at this blog for very long time :D. I want to try to start it again with a small share information. This article is very interested me to figure out about how to programming it with Ruby. Sorry if this blog just like a bookmark.

Creating Games in Ruby

May be we can try to make ruby as our base language programming.

Comet application with Rails

2007-10-31T02:20:36-06:00

Who knows the fanatastic technology called commet?
Commet is the final weapon to our website much more interactive!!
Of course, you know Lingr!! Very Amazing web service.
Don't you want to develop the web site like Lingr with commet technology??
Here is your fire starter :)
At very first, we should install one plugin which is called "Shooting star!!"
This plugin makes your rails application fly up to the star and your request to the web server directly reflects to the reader of your web application.
OK, that's enough to enlight.
Start the very small tutorial. This tutorial makes your appilcation commet :)

#1: First of all, create your own project
$ rails real_chat
#2: Second, install the shooting star plugin with gem command
$ gem install shooting_star
#3: change the direction
$ cd real_chat
#4: initialize the shooting star, this command reacts nothing but don't worry :)
$ shooting_star init
#5: generate the bottom technology of commet with the generator given by shooting star
$ ruby script/generate meteor
#6: Also you can get the chat scaffold type the following command
$ ruby script/generate chat
#7: Launch your web server!!
$ ruby script/server
#8: Shooting star also needs to be launched
$ shooting_star start

OK that's all, now time to call your buddy and try the application
http://localhost:3000/chat is your brand new comet application.
there is no Ruby code... Agile!! Be agile!! Hahaha!!
Time talk today's dinner dynamically with this application :)

I hope you enjoy the tutorial!!
Thanks a lot :)

Ruby's method_missing

2007-10-23T01:41:57-06:00

Normally,when ruby is not able to find the method,it usually raises
"NoMethodError: undefined method "methodname"".That's what we always stuck,nothing special.
Above all,because of Ruby is a kind of dynamic language,what it does exactly if it can't find the method is calling "method_missing" method and method_missing raises a NameError exception,what is the point? you're able to apply the method_missing method in your application and do something cool.When we use hash,we normally call hash["key"] or hash[:key].What if we would like to call it something like hash.key.And here is a bit tricky used of it.

def method_missing( id, *args )
      if self[id].nil?
	      m = id.to_s
	      if /=$/ =~ m
		self[m.chomp!] = (args.length < 2 ? args[0] : args)
	      else
		self[m]
	      end
      else
        self[id]
      end
end
h = { "foo" => "bar",:blah => "thinkruby"}
h.blah  # => thinkruby
h.foo   # => bar

It's not bad,right?

Handling second demensional array

2007-10-18T03:28:30-06:00

Hi all devils!!
How are you.
Yas is reactivated finally :)

Today I tried some tricky situation.

I needed to compact second dimensional array, which includes some id's and other elements.

Using id and detect the target elements and remove them.
Oh my English is getting worse day by day...
But I believe code talks everything instead of me :)
Ok today's small piece of Ruby code is following

#Compact the second demencional array
arr = [[0,"miyake","password"],[1,"miyake","hoge"],[2,"hoge","hoge"]]
@target = 0
arr.each {|a|
  if a[0] == @target
    arr[@target] = nil
  end
}
p arr.compact

Enjoy if you have some comment or any more great idea!!
Please share with us! Thanks from Japan!

Convert WMA to MP3

2007-10-16T00:34:15-06:00

Mostly,we listen audio files in mp3 ,but sometime we have the audio in other formats.Then how to trancoding it to mp3?
And again using powerful ruby library always help us.Like today I'd like to show you guys with
R2mp3 library which intends to convert all audio files on the planet to mp3 with super simple Ruby code and currently support wma,m4a(aac),ra(rm).

Requirement software
(on Ubuntu)
$sudo apt-get install mplayer lame
(on OS X)
$sudo port install mplayer lame

Install the library
$sudo gem install r2mp3
or
$svn checkout http://r2mp3.rubyforge.org/svn/trunk/ r2mp3

Start Coding

require 'rubygems' # if install using gem
require 'r2mp3'
Converter.new(:convert=>:wma,:file=>"test.wma"){|f| f.to_mp3 }

test.mp3 is already there.Thanks R2mp3.
We don't need to download any fancy gui programs,do we? :)

Standard Library you must know

2007-09-27T00:45:34-06:00

Here are Ten libraries you must have in the box.

1. Zlib
2. Digest::MD5
3. StringIO
4. Tempfile
5. Readline
6. Find
7. YAML
8. dbm
9. Pathname
10. OptionParser

Fully pointed out by [Doug Beaver]
(It's a bit old article,but it's all great libs)

RailsConf Europe 2007 is over

2007-09-26T12:26:03-06:00

King raja wakes me up,lol.Though no technical today :)
One superb conference just finished.
RAILSCONF EUROPE 2007
you guys could check all Presentations out.
those cool slides covering areas as wide as Ferret, REST, Adobe Flex, Amazon S3 and JRuby.
while i'm looking forward to watching DHH keynote in downloadable format.(Streaming kills me T_T)
anyone has?

Ruby for Symbian S60 3rd Edition

2007-08-04T22:57:34-06:00

I have upload the Ruby Intepreter for Symbian S60 3rd Edition. You can download from this link, and install it on your Symbian s60 3rd phone cell. There are some limitation features that you can not find in this version. For example, after I tried this intepreter on my N73, I could not pass a parameter when run a script that receive a parameter. Once again, please refer to the official Ruby for Symbian site.

DRECOM Award on Rails 1,000,000 Japanese Yen

2007-07-09T08:54:51-06:00

"Web application using Ruby on Rails (not limeted for PC, web application for mobile is also welcome.)
If Ruby on Rails is used for building a web service, there's no limitation to use other softwares and modules."

The competition starts from July 2 to Sep 25.
the first price a new application is 1,000,000 Japanese Yen (about8,300US$) & extra prize are sponsored by DRECOM (I think most guys here ever visited DRECOM ^^).

Check out more detail [here]

GOOD LUCK!!

Ruby bindings for Qt4

2007-07-08T09:57:37-06:00

This is just another "Hello World" blog (not in-depth one) about well-known GUI library,so called "Qt".You probably take a look at Trolltech's [How to Learn Qt] tutorial.
[Keep in mind that like most documents about Qt, it is very C++ oriented.]
And I use Qt4 for this example.
This example shows how to create Ruby program with Ruby bindings for Qt4
The underlying code is where you are able to start

require 'Qt'
app = Qt::Application.new(ARGV)
window = Qt::Widget.new()
hello = Qt::PushButton.new('Hello!,Qt'+Qt::qVersion,window)
quit = Qt::PushButton.new('Quit', window)
quit.setGeometry(10, 40, 80, 40)
Qt::Object.connect(quit, SIGNAL('clicked()'), app, SLOT('quit()'))
window.show()
app.exec()

you will see something like this:

Installing Ruby on Mac OS X with MacPorts

2007-07-02T12:01:14-06:00

Since I'm switched to be a Mac user, some of you guys may try the eye-candy and fully animated effect GUI before, well, but the coolest thing about Mac OS X is it's an UNIX, yes UNIX.

Somebody may know the great command of Linux, apt-get, and have a great experiences with this set of command, apt-get install PACKAGE_NAME. Well, Thanks to open source software community who brought the MacPorts to the world.

Just a few clicks of eh.. let say.. left click and wait a few minute of package installation, then you can use port install PACKAGE to install any open source software package (more info here). Before I'm go so far, you just type (you may need to put your password to complete installation)

gohan:~ keng$ sudo port install ruby
Password:
--->  Fetching ruby
--->  Attempting to fetch ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz from http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/languages/ruby/1.8
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for ruby
--->  Extracting ruby
--->  Applying patches to ruby
--->  Configuring ruby
--->  Building ruby with target all
--->  Staging ruby into destroot
--->  Installing ruby 1.8.6_0
--->  Activating ruby 1.8.6_0
--->  Cleaning ruby

and wait for a bit while, then boom, you get you ruby installed on you mac box.

To verify you ruby installation just try..

gohan:~ keng$ ruby -v
ruby 1.8.6 (2007-03-13 patchlevel 0) [powerpc-darwin8.10.0]

Yeah, that's all :D.

PS. I'm not an apple fanboy, and I hate Steve Jobs sometimes. But I still loving it because of MacPorts :D.

Ruby's lexer

2007-06-09T08:19:06-06:00

I just find out something like this:

a = 2.71828_18284_59045_23536
p a
b = 1_000_000
p b
c = 0xa
p c

Result:

2.71828182845905
1000000
10

it's just what the Ruby lexer works.
it's such a funny stuff that I should look out - -'

XRuby:Just another way on JVM

2007-06-06T20:30:51-06:00

The current stable version of XRuby is 0.2.0, released on May 15, 2007.
XRuby is the first Ruby to Java compiler which compiles Ruby source code (.rb) to Java bytecode (.class) and this is a different approach to JRuby, which aims to work just as the Ruby interpreter.
*And in most benchmark tests, XRuby is much faster than Ruby 1.8.5.

Vim 7

2007-05-24T17:52:44-06:00

I like vi. I can use it very quickly and lightly.
Vim is powerful and quick, so I like vim very much.
When I write Ruby code, I use Vim.
Vim has many functions to support writing codes such as completions and
"omnifunc".

Newest version of Vim is 7, so let's try Vim 7.

If you are Windows user, you can get it follows; http://www.kaoriya.net/#VIM70

Linux or BSD user can use package system such as apt, yum or ports.

Yes, I use Mac OS X! I installed Vim 7 from MacPorts.
http://www.macports.org/
MacPorts have many useful Unix applications and utils.

When you finish, please type "vim foo.rb".
You can edit "foo.rb" in Ruby mode; auto indent, coloring, and more.

When you define useful method "bar", you may write "obj.bar" everywhere in "foo.rb" . You can type "b" and Ctrl + p and vim will complete "ar" instead you write full spelling "bar".

You can install "vim-ruby" from rubygems. Please install now.

"omnifunc" is new function of Vim 7.
"omnifunc" and "rails.vim" will help writing Rails code.
You can get it follows; http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1567