Archive for September, 2007

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REST 101 with Rails

September 1, 2007

railsI’m doodling around with a new idea. Since it’s goal is to produce several standardized web feeds (Atom, KML, HTML) of a data set over the web, I’ll be using Ruby. Since it makes sense for this to be a REST web service, I’ll also be using Rails. Mike asked about Rails yesterday, and I just read a GREAT introduction by the Softies on Rails guys called “REST 101“. It’s split into five parts (start reading from the bottom), with the first being a pretty non-technical overview of HTML, HTTP, REST and understanding their differences, and the last being technical code samples to show why Rails is a very clean way to pull this off. It’s very well written and I encourage even non-technical people to read at least the first section. Others can read until their eyes glaze over.

BTW – these guys put on a two day “Essential Rails” seminar in Chicago which I attended this past January. I see another is coming up Sept 21-22. Highly recommended.

Photo credit

Posted in rails, rest, ruby | 1 Comment »

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This is why I was trying to stay under the radar

September 1, 2007

Thanks Mike.

So my wife – you know, the one with the Masters Degree in Education and the Scrabble Championship Trophy – comes home and I say “Have I got a funny story for you!” She reads Wurzer’s classy post about Titze Fly and says “That’s not how you spell it”. After the bet is established, she spends 5 seconds in Google (yes, on my new Mac) totally smacking me down.

The results:

  • spelling beetitzefly.com and tzetzefly.com now go to the same place.
  • I have a renewed education in DNS.
  • We are going where my wife wants for dinner.
  • The smack talk will continue throughout the three day weekend.

At least she didn’t take my compuer away. I do, however, have to come to bed on time…

Posted in blogging | 3 Comments »

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I’ve been “outed”

September 1, 2007

jack in the boxSo Wurzer outed me! I figured I’d start slowly and build up some stories before I told *anybody* about this (that’d give me a chance to quit silently), but leave it to him to find me less than a week in. That’s either an indication of how dialed in Wurzer is, how social and linked the internet has become, or I guess a little bit of both. As always, Wurzer’s a class act, and a must read.

I guess I have to tell my wife why I’ve been staying up late now… (maybe you can give me some tips on that Mike?)

Posted in blogging | 1 Comment »

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Building librets on Mac OSX

September 1, 2007

SpaghettiI’ve used librets with Ruby on WinXP for a while now, but now I need it on my new Mac to try out some new ideas with RETS. Clearly, I’m a Mac “noob”, but boy – was this freakin’ hard! I’ve documented it here for future reference. Hopefully it will help someone else out.

Download librets

  • Download librets-1.1.9.tar.gz from CRT.
  • According to /doc/build/mac-osx.txt and unix.txt, it looks like there’s a lot of dependencies to install and build, which I’m not too comfortable doing manually.
  • There’s a note that that the OpenDarwin package manager can install these for you, and I remembered reading about MacPorts earlier, so that seems worth installing.

Install MacPorts

  • Download and install MacPorts from http://www.macports.org/
  • Make sure path is correct according to installation instructions.
  • Update MacPorts using “sudo port selfupdate”.

Install dependencies

  • Install Boost using “sudo port install boost”. Takes a while – about 15 minutes for me.
  • Install Expat using “sudo port install expat”
  • Install ANTLR using “sudo port install antlr”
  • Install libcurl using “sudo port install curl”
  • Install swig using “sudo port install swig”. This was not documented as a dependency, so it took a while to figure this one out after the below steps kept failing.

Build librets

  • “./configure” kept returning errors finding Expat and Boost files.
  • Used “./configure –with-expat-prefix=/opt/local –with-boost-prefix=/opt/local –enable-shared_dependencies” instead.
  • “make”
  • “sudo make install”

Build librets ruby

  • In the project/swig folder, use “make ruby”

Test

  • In the project/swig/ruby folder, run “ruby login.rb” and “ruby search.rb”

You’ll know now if you’ve got everything dialed in. Note that when you are writing your own Ruby code in a different folder, make sure you include the path to librets.rb at the top like this:

# Prepend load path with path to librets.rb
$:.unshift(‘/usr/local/src/librets-1.1.9/project/swig/ruby’)
require ‘librets’
include Librets

Geez! That took a while. I guess if I’d had a lot of *nix experience, it would have been easier, but librets has a special Windows install that easier.

Special thanks to the CRT guys for making librets freely available.

Posted in mac, rets, ruby | 6 Comments »

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