The status_update Plugin

Posted by Chris Blackburn Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:41:00 GMT

I’ll be publishing the status_update plugin for Rails in the coming weeks. The plugin is an interface to Ping.fm, the cool new service that allows you to update all of your social network statuses with a single API.

Coming Soon…

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Acts As Configurable: Missing Documentation (ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: Mysql::Error: Table configurable_settings doesn't exist)

Posted by Chris Blackburn Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:38:00 GMT

If you are getting an error message like this:

ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: Mysql::Error: Table configurable_settings doesn't exist

… when trying to use Jacob Radford’s http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/acts_as_configurable

Just do this:

./script/console development ConfigurableSetting.create_table

Of course replace ‘development’ above with whatever environment you need.

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Acts As Bytefield :: ActiveRecord Bytefield Plugin

Posted by admin Tue, 24 Apr 2007 02:58:00 GMT

We needed a convenient way to store a series of values in a single field. A bitfield would not do because it would only allow a value of 1 or 0 for each field, and we wanted to be able to store at least 3 values for each field.

So I found Gabriel Gironda’s acts_as_bitfield plugin and made a few tweaks. ActsAsBytefield is the result. It allows storage of 256 values in each field, or 255 discrete values ranging from 0-255 (unsigned char or byte) for each value in a MySQL varchar(255) field.

NOTE: Gabriel’s site has been down for some time. My own repository has also been down but is now back up. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Values greater than 255, or less than 0 wrap around. For example, setting a bytefield column to -1 will actually set it to 255, and setting it to -2 will actually set it to 254, etc.

Installation

./script/plugin install acts_as_bytefield

OR
./script/plugin install https://svn.cbciweb.com/svn/plugins/acts_as_bytefield

Documentation (RDoc)

rake rdoc

Testing

The tests require rspec

rake test

Usage

  • Create a string column in your table – varchar(255)
  • Add this directive to your model:
 acts_as_bytefield :bytefield_column_name, :fields => [:field_name_one, :field_name_two]

You will then be able to use the model in the following manner, for example:

 class SomeModel < ActiveRecord::Base
   acts_as_bytefield :bfield, :fields => [:test, :production]
 end

 obj = SomeModel.new(:test => 1)

 obj.test          #=> 1
 obj.test?         #=> 1
 obj.production?   #=> 0

 obj.test = 0
 obj.production = 65
 obj.save

 obj.test?         #=> 0
 obj.production?   #=> 65

 # The field that's storing the value:
 obj.bfield        #=> "\000A"

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