I’m currently working on a project that has recently migrated their database to a PostGIS database, it’s a Postgres database with special Spatial/Geometrical extensions. Seems pretty straightforward until you realize the geometrical data is stored in this giant-ass column requiring those special functions to decode its contents. Those functions work great when executing straight SQL in a database client, but this is Rails.

So I started looking for anything that could help bridge the gap. I found this plugin: http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/spatial_adapter. The main website is no longer available and, so, I’m assuming it’s no longer maintained. Oh Joy! I moved forward with the plugin, regardless. While I was searching for the plugin I also had to learn how to build databases slated for PostGIS functionality.

In addition to the standard createdb -U [user] [database name] there are three additional steps:

1. createlang -U [user] plpgsql [database name]
2. psql -d [database name] -f lwpostgis.sql
3. psql -d [database name] -f spatial_ref_sys.sql

That’s what I did to create a new development database so a database dump produced for me would correctly load. I also used the development database to research a few of the PostGIS functions in the database client.

All was going smoothly. I created a Model and fired up script/console. So far so good. I then decided to start creating some tests. That’s when the fun began. Not with the tests themselves but with the Spatial Adapter and, ultimately to the Database rake tasks and the PostgreSQL Adapter.

Spatial Adapter Change Number 1

I uncovered a tiny bug when I first tried to run rake test: the schema.rb that was generated was missing column type information for my open id tables. Specifically for the binary columns. I tracked this down to the Spatial Adapter not using the right Column type in order to generate the correct schema.rb definition. The PostgreSQLColumn knows how to convert a column of sql type bytea to a column of type binary for the schema definition. The adapter was using a plain Column type which didn’t know how to do that conversion.

Database rake task and PostgreSQLAdapter changes

But after solving that problem I was faced with another one: how to create the test database such that it was PostGIS-capable? Because this app has frozen Rails to 2.0.2 I was able to find the databases.rake file. I figured I had to intercept, or at the very least override portions of the chain of tasks used to re-create the test database. What I found was kind of strange to me. Inside the databases.rake file was a mixture of shell commands and delegation to ActiveRecord::Base.connection. My thinking is: Let the adapters do all the work since they should know what they need and how to perform the tasks. MySQL is generally handled this way. Postgres is not. I needed it to be so that I could add the necessary commands at the right time in the sequence.

So I changed databases.rake such that when the adapter is ‘postgresql’ delegate to ActiveRecord::Base.connection for create_database, drop_database, and recreate_database. create_database and drop_database were my first proofs-of-concept. I basically took the shell commands out of databases.rake and put them in postgresql_adapter.rb. I added the recreate_database since the commands inside databases.rake for db:test:purge were essentially the same as drop_database and create_database; I just moved the shell commands into the Adapter. I now have a databases.rake file that delegates to the Adapter for MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Spatial Adapter Change Number 2

Now that I had the commands to recreate the test database in the PostgreSQLAdapter and I knew the SpatialAdapter sat on top of that, I just had to override the recreate_database method and add the three additional commands. Easy-Peasy. Oh, I did put the additional sql scripts (steps 3 and 4 from above) in my db directory so that the shell command to execute them would work. Now I can do rake test and my test database will be created, PostGIS-ready, and my tests will get executed.

Next Steps

Application-wise: start writing some spatial/geometrical tests.

Changes-wise: produce some diff files(patches) for anyone who wants them. And here’s where I’m asking for suggestions. What would you do with the changes?

It was a lot of fun and hard work to go through the code and make the necessary changes. I’m glad I did it. I’m doubly-glad Ruby makes it so easy to locate where you need to make the changes.

Update

Looks like I won’t be submitting my Rails changes. I looked up the files I changed in the Rails GitHub repository and the changes are already there; they’re not in 2.0.2 though. I also looked up the author of the Spatial Adapter on RubyForge. I joined the mailing list and asked about the status of development. While waiting on the reply I went ahead and created a Spatial Adapter git repository by forking an existing one. I made my changes. You can find my Spatial Adapter git repository here: http://github.com/melriffe/spatial_adapter/tree/master. If I hear back from the author I’ll let him know where he can find my changes. Ciao

Cheers

As I sit before this blank page I have no idea where we’ll go or what we’ll see but I have strong desire to pen some of the craziness I deal with on a daily basis. Those who already know, know details I’ll not share here. Those who don’t and care enough to ask will get the unvarnished truth, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Life can be raw and messy and not always go according to plan. Just smile, dust yourself off, give Thanks for being alive and move on. Life’s too short (a lesson I need to learn) to hold grudges, especially against ethereal entities.

My wife is my best friend, my lover, my hero. She is everything I’m not and want to be: Smart, Kind, Generous, Beautiful, Thoughtful. I mean I can be those things. She /is/ those things, and more. She truly is my better half. I am nothing without her. And there’s a real possibility that will be sooner rather then later.

When we’re young, Death is so far away and unfathomable. Into our twenties and early thirties many of us still feel invincible; Death is real but still not close. Forty and beyond Death is real, close and sometimes holding our hands as we cross the street. It’s so crazy. We have no idea when it’s our time to go - Be happy as often as you can. However, through a series of unfortunate events Death, I believe, is closer then ever. And it scares me.

Three years my wife had what was supposed to be routine surgery. Well, three years ago she died. Three years ago she came back, changed, but alive none the less. We’re still dealing with the aftermath of that event. We’re in the early stages of coordinating a kidney transplant. Her health is quickly deteriorating. I mean she has good days and she’s stubborn and will push herself beyond her limits. But, and this frustrates her, she doesn’t have the stamina to ‘be normal’ and ‘do normal’ things.

Where did it begin? With Corhn’s Disease in her teen years; her ‘official’ diagnosis came in 1998. This is a nasty disease when out of control. We had many, many trips to the ER during the numerous episodes prior to finding the right doctor and mixture of drugs. Because she was still having problems it was decided to move forward with the aforementioned surgery. This led to another surgery to save her life but caused severe nerve damage; she couldn’t walk for weeks after the surgery. Her ciatic and femeral nerves were damaged. Unbeknownst to us this led to one of her kidneys completely failing and the other one (where we are today) close to total failure and Heather needing a transplant.

Heather is so good at everything she does. When she decided she wanted to be an EMT she did it - getting the highest score on the certification test for the entire state of Virginia (which still holds). On the rescue squad she ran with, she became the youngest squad leader, running her own ambulance. The plan was to become a paramedic and parlay that into a nursing career. The surgery made her alter her plans.

When Heather decided to go to Nursing school, she obtained a 4.0 average. This, from the women raising a family, working as a preschool teacher, and taking advanced classes: Calculus, Physiology & Anatomy, Microbiology. She started her 2d semester where she left off - getting the highest test scores in all of her classes. The news and surgeries to date to learn about her kidney damage has her changing plans again.

I’m not saying it’s been all doom and gloom. We’ve had tremendous support from family and friends. We’ve prayed, a lot. Even the families of the children she teaches has helped us through this latest bit of craziness. I’m just saying it’s always on my mind like it’s always on her mind. It’s distracting. It’s stressful. I’m usually not the one to play “What if” games - I’m more of a go with the flow kind of guy. However, there is the real possibility that Heather and I won’t grow old together. Who understands that stress? I wish I didn’t.

I wish I was strong like Heather. But I’m not. I get my strength from her. She’s my inspiration. I pale in comparison.

Be Well

What have I been up to lately? Plenty!

Let’s start shortly after I started working for/with Terralien; I still think it’s kind of cool that I’m part of the crew. It was during this time that I sent up the Bat Signal. In my opinion, I have one of the coolest networks on the planet. All my friends rock! I was able to get a couple more clients/projects. The downside: I’m working all the time. I work harder now then when I was just a POE. But you know what? That’s OK.

So I need to get back to work…

Cheers

March has been a difficult month for me; details to follow with a later post. However, and I believe there’s a silver lining to /every/ dark cloud, something really cool happened: I was made a part of the Terralien crew.

At the beginning of the month, Nathaniel Talbott pinged me about doing some side-work for his company Terralien. I, of course, said, Yes! After suffering for far too long, mired in Java projects, I was given the chance to get paid to write Rails code. I was overjoyed, to say the least.

Now, I’m not saying I didn’t have my share of challenges (again a later post) (hint: some of my closest friends know about the personal struggles currently going on at the Riffe household) but I was determined to do a good job. This was one opportunity I didn’t want to squander away. I dove right in and was relieved to find out my hard work was greatly appreciated. Nathaniel called me and asked if I was interested in becoming a full-fledged member of the crew. Yup that was my jaw dropping. I was elated!

What makes this so cool, for me, is the timing. I’ve always wanted to go Independent. Since being introduced to Rails (and Ruby) I’ve wanted to push my career in that direction. Since leaving Smalltalk I’ve always wanted to get back, if not directly, then indirectly with a dynamically typed language - you really are more productive! However, as my friends know, I need to provide medical benefits for my family. That is and will be my challenge; until my wife completes Nursing school, that is.

I now find myself in a strange position. Where just two weeks ago I was unemployed and scared shitless, I find myself with numerous opportunities in front of me as a member of the Terralien crew. I still have some loose ends to tie-up; should be fun though!

Thanks Nathaniel. I guess Twitter’s useful after all, eh?

Cheers!

I have a secret to share with you: I help run one of the coolest users group in the Richmond, VA, USA area.  The name of the group is Central Virginia Ruby Enthusiasts Group (CVReg).  It’s filled with some of the nicest, most passionate, technologically savvy people.  Our focus is in Ruby and the tools and frameworks that either sit on top of Ruby or co-exists with it.  We also dabble/demo/present on other dynamic language technologies; Smalltalk and Javascript being the most recent topics covered. You can get more information from Google (of course).  However, how about I just give you the link here?  CVReg.org

Cheers!

Hey Krusty Krew! Just a quick note to let you that I’m staring to look at Ruby Waves. Why you may ask? Good question. Probably mostly to satisfy my ADD. However I love learning about new technology and this new web application framework for Ruby seems different enough from Rails to make interesting.

I really want to expand my Ruby knowledge and I feel I’ll get that chance with Waves. Not to say I couldn’t have achieved this with Rails. It’s just that Waves is just starting up; it’s good to be on the ground floor sometimes. Waves is also my impetus for getting into Git (I’ll also start posting my experiences with it).

I’m already thinking of a personal project to try with Waves. I strongly encourage you to install it and follow the tutorial. Expect more posts about Waves.

Cheers!

A lot has happened since my last post: Gary Gygax died, (I’m linking to Wil Wheaton’s blog entry since it struck a chord with me), I’m learning Git (I know! About time, huh?), and I’ve been looking at Ruby Waves.

Back in the day I used to play D&D. In fact my first program was a dice-rolling application for my Vic20. I could roll-up some characters quickly. Crazy fun! I played until my early 20’s; after that I only played once. I hope Gary understood his influence. He changed many lives.

And onto Git: Thanks to a friend I now have a GitHub account. However I also have a Gitorious account. What can I say I signed up before I was told to get a GitHub account. It’s all new to me right now; exciting times! I have a long history with CVS and Subversion so I’m not new to SCM. It feels good learning something new.

However a heavy influencer in my getting some Git knowledge is Ruby Waves, a new (some would say next gen) Ruby web framework. It appears to be mostly glue around other open source offerings but that’s cool too. I like it now and plan to develop an application or two in it before giving my ‘official’ review.

Cheers!

i <3 the coffee

I always knew being on Twitter would one day pay off. I follow Pete Cashmore of Mashable and he posted a link to participate in a free beta ‘test’. Sign up and get your blog listed and you get a free sample of some coffee. Nice.

The company is Joffrey’s and the free sample is Jamaican Me Crazy. Head on over to their beta site (no time limit is posted but I have to believe samples will run out).

Links:

• Joffrey’s Main Site
• Joffrey’s Beta Site
• Pete Cashmore’s Mashable
• Pete’s Twitter Profile

Cheers!

In Conclusion

The end of the story is that I should wipe my drive, reinstall Leopard, and build what’s missing in my development environment; reinstalling all the ’soft’ items too (and by soft I mean: applications, documents, music, movies, and pictures)

TextMate and Rspec

While I was doing straight Ruby coding, using Rspec for my tests, TextMate was my friend. It was fun, worked a charm. However, while doing some Rails work I kept getting this bizarre error about not having Rails 2.0.2 installed.

Huh? I most certainly do!.

After I commented out RAILS_GEM_VERSION in environment.rb I finally figured out why it wasn’t working: TextMate was using Ruby shipped with Leopard and that version didn’t have Rails 2.0.2 installed.

Yikes! Now what?

I first went to the Rspec TM page and found this tidbit of info:

You may also have to set your TM_RUBY environment variable in TextMate’s preferences to point to your ruby executable.
You can also tell RSpec.tmbundle to use a particular RSpec (the library) at a particular location on your filesystem.
Just define the TM_RSPEC_HOME environment variable in TextMate’s preferences. This should point to the your working copy’s rspec directory.

So I updated my TextMate preferences, adding TM_RUBY and TM_RSPEC_HOME and Viola’ All is well and happy in the land.

The Cause?

I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard - just an upgrade - not a wipe and reinstall. And on Tiger I had installed Ruby from MacPorts and everything (minus TextMate until recently) was configured to look for Ruby in /opt/local.

I got some good advice last night: sudo port uninstal ruby. Looks like I’ll be planning some changes to my development environment.

Cheers!

Listed in the side-bar, along with my other sites on the intewebz, is the link to my PBJ Wiki for projects. I decided I didn’t want to move my projects notes to this site - I like the wiki-style of project documentation and PBJ Wiki provides that for me. Plus, you can subscribe to that site’s RSS Feed since I don’t have RSS support on the other pages of this blog.

Cheers!