When creating software, two people will never write the same implementation of a method or system of non-trivial design. Creating software is a problem solving process and there are usually many ways to solve one problem. The solutions may differ in elegance and efficiency while giving the same output for a given set of inputs. A correct solutions is a correct solution regardless of implementation. (more…)
Today I let out a dejected sigh after reading a response to my latest post on the Joel on Software message board. My post was just a reminder about the BostonScalability User Group meeting that takes place next Wednesday the 28th. I post the meeting announcements on JoS and a good number of people hear about the meetings from the JoS board. Every month a few new people tell me they found the group through JoS. So why did I sigh after reading the response to the meeting reminder?
The Boston Scalability User Group is hosting a technology round-table meeting on Wednesday January 28th at 6 p.m. The meeting is at the IBM Innovation Center in Waltham, MA.
This is the first time we’ve done the round-table style meeting and I’m excited to see how it goes. Guests are encouraged to come prepared with questions, answers and opinions on application scalability tools, strategies and designs. Hot topics will include platform and software stack, cloud computing and resources, vendor tools and support and CDNs. Those are my guesses about hot topics doesn’t mean the meeting is limited to those topics.
Guests, be the regular or first-timers, will drive the direction of the discussion. We’ll talk about solving technical problems based on past experience or serve as an advisory panel on where and when to use a particular tool.
Full meeting details are at the BostonSUG web site. We ask that you sign up for the meeting at the meeting registration page so we have an idea of how much food to buy. There will be snacks and bottled water at this meeting.
Hope to see everyone on the 28th at 6 p.m.!
It’s been quite a while since my last Ruby on Rails post so let’s go over a little “gotcha” that you might encounter when using the restful_authentication plugin.
Getting started with restful_authentication is fairly easy. After installing the plugin it’s just a matter of running the following generate command:
script/generate authenticated user sessions
This will create a migration for a users table, a model and controller for users and a sessions controller. It will also add some named routes to config/routes.rb.
So far so good, right? Well, a common mistake when generating the model and controllers is to user the singular form of both user and session. The command will run successfully and do exactly what you told it to do. You won’t become aware of a problem until you try to log in for the first time and see this:
NameError in SessionsController#create
uninitialized constant SessionsController
RAILS_ROOT: C:/rails/bookmarksRequest
Parameters:
{"commit"=>"Log in", "authenticity_token"=>"0c0f07222da8ed58d8c6ebcafb9bf32f0bc84143", "login"=>"anthony", "password"=>"mysupersecretpassword"}Uh oh! what went wrong? It looks like Rails is looking for a controller called SessionsController. But we generated one named SessionController. Why is this happening? Take a look in the views/session/new.html.erb file.
<% form_tag session_path do -%><p><label for="login">Login</label><br/><%= text_field_tag 'login' %></p><p><label for="password">Password</label><br/><%= password_field_tag 'password' %></p><!-- Uncomment this if you want this functionality<p><label for="remember_me">Remember me:</label><%= check_box_tag 'remember_me' %></p>--><p><%= submit_tag 'Log in' %></p><% end -%>The form_tag target is session_path. session_path is created for us by magic because of its mapping in routes.rb.
map.resource :sessionWhen mapping a resource like this Rails looks for the controller with the pluralized name of the resource name by default, which means session_path is getting SessionsController. We can change the behavior by explicitly setting the controller for the resource.
map.resource :session, :controller => :sessionTry to log in again and you will be authenticated! Of course it may just be easier to remember to use the pluralized name of whatever controller you want to use for managing sessions.
I’ve been digging around lately for a Boston area user group dedicated to architectural scalability and I haven’t been able to find one. Other user groups that I regularly attend have meetings centered around scalability once in a while, but I’m looking for something with a schedule dedicated to the topic. It’s a hot topic in the industry right now with a lot happening on different fronts and there should be some ongoing professional discussion dedicated what goes into growing an application.
Here are some of the topics I want to talk about:
Like I said, I haven’t found a group dedicated to discussing these topics. If you know of one in the Boston area please let me know. Assuming there isn’t one I am willing to start one. I’d like to start off small and meet at coffee shops around Burlington or Lowell. I have no delusions that this is going to start off or even become as big as NEJUG is now. If it starts off as a few people getting together to talk about scalability trends, cool caching solutions and specific products then I’d call it a good start.
The meeting location is still TBD and will be based on how many people are interested in attending. It will probably be somewhere in Burlington, MA. There is no planned presentation at this time. Instead we will have a meet and greet and then discuss scalability trends and news, what approaches to scalability are commonly used now and what are the plans for the future.
If you are interested in coming or in finding out more information please email me at <my first name>@<my domain name>.<my tld> or leave a comment below. Please make sure to include your email address when you fill out the form so that I can get in touch with you – your email address will not be displayed on my site.
