Skuunk Works

Let's say that you want to allow people to upload files to your server. Let's also say that we want to make sure any particular user does not hog up all the space available. Let's also say you want to give each user a variable limit as to how much they can upload (i.e. for tiered services). How would you go about doing that? Well, from a pseudo code perspective you would do the following. 1) Create a folder for each user based on the user id 2) Make sure all the user's uploads go to that folder 3) Before you do an upload, check against the user's settings to see how much space s/he is allowed 4) Check their folder to see how much space has been used 5) If they have no space left, message the user So let's see how we do this in practice... I guess we really want to see how much space is used, so let's start there on the User. In this example the user has a UUID as well as a space_allowed attribute which is set to a default value (and which an admin can change...

So in my last post I talked about Drag and Drop file uploading with qq.FileUploader ( http://valums.com/ajax-upload/ ). Anyways, I discovered that qq.FileUploader uses AJAX/XHR to post the file uploads. What I also discovered is that these file uploads need to be handled in a separate manner from a regular file upload form post. A normal form post (when File upload XHR requests are not available on the client like in Internet Explorer) passes in the following parameters params: {"qqfile"=>{:type=>"image/png", :head=>"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"qqfile\"; filename=\"bb2.png\"\r\nContent-Type: image/png\r\n", :tempfile=># , :name=>"qqfile", :filename=>"bb2.png"}, "upload_type"=>"rec", "id"=>"24db8cab-285a-abcb-cb47-4daceee977ca"} Sinatra then reads the :tempfile and :filename parameters to write the file to the server name = params[:qqfile][:fil...

You know that cool Drag and Drop file uploading they have in Gmail? You know, the one where you can drag a file from a folder onto a webpage and upload it? Have you looked at the code? Looks complicated huh? Well, thankfully, for any cool bit of JavaScript functionality out there, someone has created a plug in (most likely in jQuery, but not always...). http://valums.com/ajax-upload/ is (as far as I can tell) a library agnostic JavaScript plug in which factors out all the hard work. All you have to do is put in a "dummy" element on to which to hook (never end a sentence in a preposition) and then put in a small snippet of code to turn it into a file upload element <div id="file-uploader"> <noscript> <p>Please enable JavaScript to use file uploader.</p> </noscript> </div> var uploader = new qq.FileUploader({ // pass the dom node (ex. $(selector)[0] for jQuery users) element: document....

I had a quick look at Node.js . Looks very interesting (kind of like a JavaScript version of Sinatra ). Now all I need to do is find out if they have any frameworks...

Just found a great new service called Show Off IO https://showoff.io/ This is a godsend for Ruby contractors. Basically you port forward the web server on your laptop to showoff and they give you a URL which you can send to a client which allows him to see your website (for a limited time for the free version). Previous to this, you would have to wait until you had staged the site to show it to your clients. Good job guys!

RhoMobile ( http://rhomobile.com/ ) offers an open source framework which allows Ruby developers to write mobile apps using web technologies. I have been using it for about a year now. You can find out the details of it on the website linked above, but I just wanted to go over some of the issues I have found and cover some of the pluses in minuses from a personal perspective to help you decide whether or not this is a technology you will want to exploit on your next project. So what is it? At a basic level, a Rhodes ( http://rhomobile.com/products/rhodes/ ) app comprises of a small Ruby web server/framework and an embedded browser. Server is a little bit of a misnomer because it lives on the client, but essentially it's like a small Rails server which is only used by one client (though in theory you can connect to it from another client if you so choose). Because the display is done in an embedded browser, you can mark it up in HTML and CSS and even (in some cases) use JavaScript t...

I wanted to go over Responsive Web Design using CSS. In the old days of web development, we had to code to common screen sizes (i.e. 800 X 600, 1024 X 768) and we patiently waited for people to upgrade their computers to have a decent amount of screen real estate so we could design things the way we really wanted. We also took on semi stretchy web layouts etc to expand and contract appropriately. Then about 2 or 3 years ago, Apple released this little device called an iPhone with a 320 X 480 resolution which took the world by storm and suddenly a lot of people were viewing your website on a tiny screen again... Anyways, as it can be difficult to design a site which looks good on 320 X 480 AND 1680 X 1050, we need to come up with some kind of solution. One way is to sniff the client and then use an appropriate stylesheet, but then you are mixing CSS with either JavaScript or server side programming and also potentially maintaining a list of appropriate clients and stylesheets. Also, you...