Tag: Rails

The demise of the squirrel

Posted by Neil – January 25, 2010

If you’ve ended up here from Google, expecting to see some sort of blog post on ColdFusion, Flash or Flex, the site you were expecting to see is no longer around, so you’re best off heading back to Google and trying another link.  Even better, stick around and have a browse, you never know, you might just like it.

After three years, and quite a few aggregated posts (over 100K at time of writing), I’ve decided finally to turn off feed-squirrel.com.  I’m not going to go into any nitty gritty of why, when and how, but basically just list out a few reasons in case anyone is bothered:

1.  Feed-Squirrel.com was largely a fully autonomous application, it sat there day in day out grabbing posts of various blogs out there, and turning them into a website.  Essentially the blog authors built it, I just supplied it with electricity.  Saying that though, one element wasn’t automated, which was adding new feeds and culling the old ones.  As I don’t really have the time to do this (or the inclination), I thought it best to stop.  There’s plenty of other aggregators out there (AXNA being one), or better yet, grab an RSS reader and make your own.

2.  Whilst, in 2006, ColdFusion was one of my main interests development wise, I now have moved on and no longer hold the same interest in the content.  I still use ColdFusion from time to time in a professional context when clients require it, but these days I much prefer to work with tools such as Ruby on Rails, jQuery and co.

3. Not having the site means not having to worry about uptime, backups, updates etc etc.  This blog is all I want to worry about.

If anyone really wants a copy of the database I’ll happily let them grab a copy, but don’t ask for the code, it’s too embarrassing.

So long, and thanks for all the nuts.

BrowserCMS Gotcha – missing cms/application.js

Posted by Neil – January 14, 2010

I came across an issue today whilst putting together a site using the BrowserCMS content management system for Rails (and if you need a CMS, look no further).

Essentially I was ending up with a situation whereby when I was trying to remove an item from a container I was getting the following error:

No action responded to show. Actions: cms_connectable_path,  cms_index_path_for, 
cms_index_url_for, cms_new_path_for,  cms_new_url_for, cms_toolbar, container, 
container_has_block?, create,  current_page, destroy, edit_cms_connectable_path, 
handle_access_denied,  handle_server_error, move_down, move_to_bottom, 
move_to_top, move_up,  new, page_title, render_breadcrumbs, and render_portlet

After a little digging, I discovered that this is not a rails bug, or a BrowserCMS issue, but a missing Javascript file that needs to be in all of your templates (as well as the cms_toolbar) cms/application.js.  This file attaches all the required js functions to the BCMS buttons, and thus turns the necessary GETs into POSTs etc etc etc.

However, you don’t want this included all the time, but only when you’re logged in as an adminstrator or someone who requires the use of those buttons.  Therefore, the following code is required in each of your templates:

< %= able_to? :edit_content, :publish_content, :administrate do
     javascript_include_tag ["cms/application"], :cache => true
 end %>

This will ensure that everything hooks up as it needs to, and only when it needs to.

links for 2009-07-28

Posted by Neil – July 28, 2009

links for 2009-07-27

Posted by Neil – July 27, 2009

links for 2009-07-23

Posted by Neil – July 23, 2009

links for 2009-07-22

Posted by Neil – July 22, 2009

links for 2009-07-21

Posted by Neil – July 21, 2009

links for 2009-07-20

Posted by Neil – July 20, 2009

links for 2009-07-17

Posted by Neil – July 17, 2009

links for 2009-07-16

Posted by Neil – July 16, 2009