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Exciting Projects I Watched In February

Posted: March 6th, 2010 | Author: Jerod | Filed under: GitHub Watch | Comments

Another month, another handful of great open-source projects I found on GitHub. Let’s get straight to it, shall we?


RLOfflineDataStoreA simple Cappuccino wrapper for html5 offline data storage.

SlickGridA lightening fast JavaScript grid/spreadsheet. Finding a quality client-side grid tool is tough. This might just be one.

Textmate-MinimapA minimap plugin for TextMate. So great for those overly sized source documents we all hate to admit we have.
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Exciting Projects I Watched In January

Posted: February 2nd, 2010 | Author: Jerod | Filed under: GitHub Watch | Comments

One of my favorite GitHub features is the ability to find and track the progress of projects that interest me. I’ve decided to post the new projects I find each month on this blog since there is a high likelihood that you and I have common interests (Hey, I’m curating something on the internet!).

So I wrote a little script using the GitHub API to track which new projects I watch during each month. I watched 17 new projects in January. They are linked below along with their authors’ descriptions and some commentary of my own:
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Cappuccino On Rails

Posted: January 12th, 2010 | Author: Jerod | Filed under: Cappuccino, Projects | Tags: | Comments

I’m happy to announce the release of CappuccinoResource (CR), a library dedicated to interfacing between a Cappuccino front-end and a Rails back-end.

CR should feel very familiar to Rails developers. Its interface is akin to ActiveResource and it borrows heavily from the (very good) ObjectiveResource library for the iPhone.

All basic CRUD operations are supported, and you can perform advanced finds with arbitrary parameters. A brief example of fetching a record, modifying it, and saving it:

var post = [Post find:@"42"];
[post setTitle:@"Why X is Better than Y"];
[post save];

Check out the README on the project’s page on GitHub for more details and usage examples.

Live Demo

I also created a demo application which is a simplified clone of OS X’s Address Book. The demo is live on Heroku. Check it out. The source for the demo is also on GitHub.

If you’re a Rails developer waiting for a good opportunity to try out Cappuccino, there’s no better time than now.

If you’re a Cappuccino developer looking for an easy-to-use, powerful back-end for your applications, Rails might be the answer for you.

CR is a young project, but it drives one of my client applications that is production-ready (albeit not deployed), so I believe it is ready for prime time. Please try it and let me know how it goes.

Fork, report issues, et cetera.


Testing Cappuccino Notifications

Posted: January 7th, 2010 | Author: Jerod | Filed under: Cappuccino | Tags: | Comments

Writing a web app using Cappuccino has a lot of benefits, one of which is a really nice message passing system wherein certain objects can register to observe events and take action when other objects post notifications of those events.

Here is a very basic way to test if your app is posting event notifications as you expect it to. First, create an Observer class inside a test helper file, which will be included into your tests:
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Rubular

Posted: December 2nd, 2009 | Author: Jerod | Filed under: Ruby | Comments

Most of the online regular expression testers I’ve used just aren’t that useful, but Rubular is the exception. It uses AJAX appropriately, has a clean aesthetic, and the quick reference at the bottom of the page is so useful it hurts. Plus, it has great features such as match extraction and the ability to create permalinks to your results.

rubular

Rubular is only for Ruby regexes. I wish somebody would make one for JavaScript. Jubular, anyone?