Archive for the 'Rails' category

Acts_as_Chimp Updates

Fixed a sorta obvious bug and added a new feature to acts_as_chimp today. You can now specify a list of merge tags in your acts_as_chimp model declaration like so:
[sourcecode language='ruby']
acts_as_chimp :mailing_list_id => ‘your_list_id’, :mail_merge => {”EMAIL” => :email, “FNAME” => :first_name, “LNAME” => :last_name }
[/sourcecode]
The plugin will read the method values corresponding to the [...]

Braintree and ActiveResource

Been playing around with accessing Braintree transactions from ActiveResource, using the Query API in particular. Thanks to the folks over at QuarkRuby, getting started was quite easy, so I figured I might as well post what I have for the uninitiated.
pastie
To get started using the API, use commands like the following:

t = Braintree.find(:all, :params [...]

Recurring billing with Braintree and ActiveMerchant

If you’re using ActiveMerchant and want to setup recurring billing support for Braintree, you should be able to just modify the post parameters being sent across to include your recurring plan name in the following method in the Braintree gateway:
Braintree pastie
If you want to know more about ActiveMerchant, check out the Peepcode PDF. Should [...]

Favorite New Gap.com Feature

Gap recently redesigned their sites to support a single basket across all brands. Looks like every site is using a hidden iframe to register events that observe Prototype posts to the cart DOM element in the upper right. Probably some funky session stuff going on as well. Here’s my favorite feature:

“Including the [...]

Trouble with acts_as_taggable_on_steroids

The tag_counts instance method appears broken. I don’t have time to submit a patch right now, so I figured I’d write a quick post for others running into this issue. What I’m seeing is that if you try to access the tag_counts instance method (ie: @post.tag_counts), you’ll see a good times SQL exception much [...]

Rails Plugin for MailChimp

A plugin that beats the monkey metaphors to death:
script/plugin install git://github.com/matthewjcarlson/acts_as_chimp .
Let me know if it does or doesn’t work. It’s less a library then an implementation of a use case I’ve encountered a few times recently. As such, while plugins are falling out of favor a bit, I felt like a [...]

Rails and MailChimp

acts_as_chimp plugin underway this evening….finished product will be here shortly.
update: an early version of the plugin has been added to a github repository. Please see this post.

Image Science, Ruby Inline and Your Sanity

Doing an install on a VPS (or elsewhere), getting funky soul-sucking ruby inline permission messages in your Mongrel logs and feeling extraordinarily frustrated, dumb or both?
Google to the rescue!
This post and this post kept me sane. After installing freeimage and image science, create a .ruby_inline directory inside your tmp directory with the same permissions [...]

Feel the Love!

Lisp and Scatology

Stupid Rails Mistakes: Caching and Authenticity Tokens

If you’re using anything other than fragment caching on pages with forms (and your fragment caching runs after your form blocks), then you’ll likely see Rails freakout on on the 2nd user that submits your cached form. The authenticity_token from the prior user has been cached and Rails is protecting you (I think). So, [...]