I’m actually pretty excited to talk this year because after all the aforementioned ski accident surgery business, I didn’t think I could make it to the left coast let alone walk(ish) and get to present a really awesome story. Huh? you say. Aren’t you talking about, ah hem, analytics? Why yes, and its Ms. Analyze This! to you, actually. I’m going to take this presentation back through time to the early days of digital page view counters (come on, you never hit refresh 6 times so you could be visitor number 1,000… nirvana was playing on radio?) through a couple of  BIG SCALED rails analytics implementations and all the way to today’s brave new world of actionable analytics where we care about retweets and bounce rate instead of how many (not guest, don’t count the guests!) users you had last Thursday. Oh yeah and of course there is code, glorious wonderful code! Here’s a preview and/or challenge. What are 6 reasons you want to avoid this:

after_filter do |controller|
  Hit.create!(
    :ip_address => request.ip_address,
    :headers    => request.headers
  )
end

Hope to see you at the function! Thursday 10:45am 6/10/2010 Ballroom IV

For example,

• Is Email is sent successfully?
• Is the SMS gateway alive and you bought sufficient credits?
• All database connections are alive? Backgroundrb down again?
• The cloud computing setup jacked the imagemagick? Again?
• You are running out of disk space and there are no more file descriptors for your
• The git SHA and version is correct

Health Monitor adds a single controller action to generate an html, js, or xml report with details of all your custom defined health checks. An error response code (500 server error) indicates failure when any monitored feature fails or exceeds the custom timeout definition. Health monitor is easier to setup than custom server side cron tasks and adds the advantage of exercising more code since everything from your load balancer to nginx to mongrels must be happily shoving rubies around to get that 200 oh boy success message. So ping away, grab a beer and know that hey, you might be too drunk but at least you will know your application is sick before your clients do.

Install

sudo gem install health_monitor --source=http://gemcutter.org

config.gem :health_monitor, :source => http://gemcutter.org

Create a the health monitor controller

script/generate health_monitor

Add your customizations

  class HealthMonitorController < ApplicationController
    acts_as_health_monitor

    #More examples available at http://github.com/blythedunham/health_monitor
    #Built in checks
    monitor_health :schema_check, :database_check, :ey_agent_check

    #monitor specified process
    monitor_process :monit 

    # Custom monitor task
    monitor_health :email, :description => 'send an email' do |controller|
      ActionMailer::Base.deliver_my_mail('blah')
    end
  end

Routes

Routes are automatically generated:
http://localhost:3000/health_monitor
http://localhost:3000/health_monitor.js

Monitor specific tasks or skip tasks with the parameters skip and only
http://localhost:3000/health_monitor?only=schema_check,database_check
http://localhost:3000/health_monitor?skip=email,database_check

Hawaii 10-5 O (M G)!

Delicatable treats for the rubies.

Been a long time. shouldn’t of left ya without a dope plugin to step to. meh. But for reals, I’ve been working way too much. Here’s a tasty sampler of some new and revived github projects:

• ActiveRecord Dumper
• Asset Tag Extensions
• Ruby Prof Request Filters
• Google Base4r extensions

ActiveRecord Dumper

script/plugin install http://github.com/blythedunham/ar_dumper

Dumper. I barely know her! I wrote this ages ago back in the Rails 1 dot 0h(mg) daze, but still works like a charm.

Easily export records to csv, yaml, or xml using the :find options, or (new) specify an array of activerecords with the :records option. AR Dumper dumps to strings or files with a paginated option, and it supports full customization of displayed headers and content with options such as  nly, :export, :procs, :methods

Book.dumper :yml, :find => {:conditions => ['author_name like ?', 'snowgiraffe'] }

Book.dumper :csv,   nly => [:author_name, :title], :records => @my_books

Asset Tag Extensions

script/plugin install git://github.com/blythedunham/javascript_tag_extensions

Your high performance web site client loading slowly? In addition to combining asset files, one of the best ways to improve client load speed is to move the javascript files and inline script tags to the bottom of the page. Even better, execute inline javascript after the document loads.  To load files at the bottom of the page use the

include_javascript_tag 'myjsfile', :defer => true

Similarly, replacing calls to javascript_tag with Asset Tag Extension’s inline_javascript renders the script at the bottom of the page. Use the n_load => true functionality use JQuery OnLoad functionality.

  <%  inline_javascript   n_load => true do %>
    alert("I love grapes");
  <% end %>

Ruby Prof Request Filters

script/plugin install http://github.com/blythedunham/ruby_prof_request_filters

Need to instantly profile a page? Output ruby prof results to your browser by adding the following params to the url: ruby_prof=true Flat graphs, html graph, whatever you need, this little tool comes in handy when your solving big problems.

Google Base: Base4r

I did some work on Dan Dukeson’s Google Base API For Ruby. Add, modify and delete items from Google Base (formerly Froogle) with Ruby.

rake mytask LOG=DEBUG > mytask.out

def set_logger
  #configure ActiveRecord to log to Stdout
  if (log = (ENV['LOG']||ENV['log'])) && log.to_s.downcase != 'false'
    ActiveRecord::Base.logger = Logger.new(STDOUT)
    ActiveRecord::Base.logger.level = begin
      log =~ /^\d*$/ ? log.to_i : Logger.const_get(log.upcase)
    rescue
      Logger::INFO
    end
    puts "ActiveRecord to STDOUT level #{ActiveRecord::Base.logger.level}"
    ActiveRecord::Base.connection.instance_variable_set('@logger', ActiveRecord::Base.logger)
    Paperclip.options[:log] = true
  end
end

Thus was born, ar_test_runner, a convenient plugin with a rake task to run the ActiveRecord test suites with your  code/gem/plugin load. You even can choose the ActiveRecord version and database.

Install

  gem sources -a http://gems.github.com
  sudo gem install blythedunham-ar_test_runner

Run ar_test_runner

Run all plugins and lib files against sqlite for app version

ar_test_runner DB=sqlite

Test 2.2.2 with rails_devs_for_data_integrity plugin loaded on mysql

ar_test_runner PLUGIN=rails_devs_for_data_integrity AR_DIR=/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.2.2

Rake Tasks

ar_test_runner works as a rake task, if installed as a plugin or by adding require “ar_test_runner” to the application’s Rakefile. The following example tests the applications default version of ActiveRecord with the files RAILS_ROOT/lib/my_file.rb and RAILS_ROOT/lib/my_other_file.rb loaded

rake test:activerecord:mysql FILE=lib/my_file.rb,lib/my_other_file.rb

Customize

To specify (or skip)  gems, files, dirs, and plugins ot load or build custom runs see the documentation at ar_test_runner .

OMG Unicorns at RailsConf!

The over all theme of this years RailsConf was: UNICORNS (click me!) I mean, yeah Rails 3 is rad, racks and clouds are great and we are scaling better now, but now with the power of OMG UNICORNS! The Phusion guys even made a Unicorn edition of Rubystein to prove how fast ruby can go. Wow! I really enjoyed Chris Wanstrath’s  keynote on how you could blog your to your way rockstarness (but its better to be a good coder), but Chris, you forgot to mention that adding unicorns makes a blog at least 83.45% more successful.

Back when I was a little girl, I dreamed of a future with flying Jetson like hovercraft and space travel. Yet this quite frankly, this future sucks. Instead of awesome, everyone just argues over the best way to round button corners. But now…. OMG UNICORNS!I don’t feel so sad anymore. As I mentioned in my SMS talk, I even upgraded my database to run on flowers so the unicorns will come and play! Thanks RailsConf!

There is no need to argue about the best way to add unicorns to your rails app. Simply cornify it up with the new acts_as_unicorn plugin. Acts_as_unicorn gives you control to decide which actions are unicorn worthy.

script/plugin install git://github.com/blythedunham/acts_as_unicorn

Add unicorns to your pages!

class UnicornController < ApplicationController
  acts_as_unicorn 'OMG UNICORNS!', :except => :stupid_not_unicorn_action
end

Try it: OMG UNICORNS!

Some ppt slides for you. Slide share soon to come.

SMS On Rails rdoc

script/plugin install git://github.com/blythedunham/smsonrails

At the end of the snowgiraffe SMS show, I demoed the sms on rails engine plugin. I’ll build it into a gem soon, but by using the generator there shouldn’t be any collisions, and the plugin should be version safe as everything is namespaced and modularized. Anyhow, here’s the script:

> rails dog --database=mysql
> mysqladmin -uroot create dog_development
> cd dog
> script/plugin install git://github.com/blythedunham/smsonrails
> script/generate sms_on_rails setup --default-service-provider=clickatell
> rake db:migrate
> mate config/environment.rb

Sign up for clickatell and update the environment.rb with your credentials. Alternatively, use the email gateway (specify no default service provider) and setup your mail settings.

The Generator does the following:

1. copy images and stylesheets to your public directory
2. generates 3 database migrations (the 2nd and 3rd have a 2 and 3 appended)
3. installs clickatell gem and static_record_cache plugin (for email carriers caching)
4. insert configuration into environment.rb

Join the club! Rails Devs for Data Integrity

I am a Rails Developer and I believe in data integrity. There I said it! And look, there are lots of people in the club. Jer on Rails had an awesome post in support for foreign keys a while back.

After my talk on supercharging ActiveRecord to behave in an enterprise environment at the MySQL conference, a lot of folks were interested in how to get around the Rails ActiveRecord errors that appear when one starts deifying the Rails Way and uses foreign keys and unique indexes on the database. Well I thought about it and came up with not only a list but a yet another new plugin rails_devs_for_data_integrity to help deal with some of the errors. So when someone tells you not to use foreign keys, don’t listen and join the Rails Devs for Data Integrity! Here is how to have em, and still make pretty Rails apps.

Super list….

Unique Keys

Use validates_uniqueness_of

validates_uniqueness_of introduces a query to check unique records before insert or update, but alone doesn’t guaranty uniqueness in a multi server/multi mongrel environment. By using it conjunction with a unique key on the database, you have proper rails error messages and your safety belt to retain data integrity. In most cases when dealing with a single instance (a single user’s user name for example), I can afford to eat the overhead of the rails validates_uniqueness_of query.

Use on duplicate key update and ignore

ar-extensions 0.9.1 supports ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE and IGNORE for MySQL on import, save, and create (all inserts and updates). This is especially practical for import (bulk insert) where validating each record’s uniqueness would produce a lot of overhead.

Catch and Handle the Duplicate Violation Exception

I wrote a lot of custom code in models and controllers to catch MySQL duplicate key error (ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid) and handle them appropriately. Typically, I added a new error to ActiveRecord::Base.errors, which is then displayed nicely with error_messages_for in the view. Sometimes this was done often with a save_safe model method possibly aliased to save or a rescue on the controller action.

After MySQLConf I decided to write a little plugin rails_devs_for_data_integrity to convert exceptions into ActiveRecord errors (like validations do) for tables with unique and foreign keys . Its still infantile (and without tests, gasp!) but if anyone likes to find bugs, hit me up on githubs new issue tracker. If there is more than one unique key per table, you might want write some custom error handling methods.

script/plugin install git://github.com/blythedunham/rails_devs_for_data_integrity.git

 class User < ActiveRecord::Base
   handle_unique_key_violation  :user_name, :message => 'is taken"
   handle_foreign_key_violation :primary_email_id, :message => 'is not available'
 end

Will write ActiveRecord errors instead of nasty MySQL errors:

 >> user.errors.on(:user_name)
 => "association does not exist."

 >> user.errors.on(:primary_email_id)
 => "is a duplicate."

Overwrite rescue_action_in_public in ApplicationController

Its a good idea to either send the user to a pretty 404 static generic error page (fast) or write some custom code in rescue_action_in_public. One idea is to create DisplayableException and subclass any exceptions where the text can be displayed to the user. If this is thrown, show exeception.to_s, if not show a generic error.

def rescues_action_in_public(exception)
  @message = if exception.is_a?(DisplayableException)
    exception.to_s
  else
    "Sorry but an error occurred. Please contact your mommy."
  end
  render :action => 'error_page'
end

Foreign Keys

I have been using the Redhills foreign key migration plugin for a long time and haven’t had too much trouble with foreign key violations.

Trouble Deleting Records

At one point ON DELETE was not specified to SET NULL or CASCADE on many dependent columns and there was trouble deleting rows. Reindexing the database with this option was the solution. Similarly,  one could use ON UPDATE on foreign key indexes.  However, due to the way ActiveRecord works and doesn’t really update id columns, I haven’t had any issues.

Foreign Key Validation Errors

This has happened so seldom that I never worried about it. That’s what the refresh button is for! Perhaps its because most users have their own data and aren’t really modifying and deleting simultaneously. However, sure this can happen and it throws an ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid exception as with unique key violations. I would recommend the same approach as for unique keys: catch and handle the exception. I added foreign key support to the rails_devs_for_data_integrity plugin experiment. Yay!