So after messing up a couple of git branches, I finally get it work, yey!

Here are the steps:

• Watch the railscast about sending email
• Install the gem with TLS

sudo gem install ambethia-smtp-tls -v '1.1.2' --source http://gems.github.com

• Add the following to your environment.rb (Be careful after the Rails::Initializer.run do |config| block. )

#to the top of file
require 'smtp-tls'

...
#to the very end of the file
ActionMailer::Base.smtp_settings =
{
    :address => "smtp.gmail.com",
    :port => 587,
    :domain => "gmail.com",
    :user_name => "dkberktas",#not with @gmail.com
    :password => "xxxyyyzzz",
    :authentication => :plain,
    :enable_starttls_auto => true
}

• Run the mailer generator by

script/generate mailer user_mailer

• Go to UserMailer class and add the method

  def registration_confirmation()
    recipients  "xxx@gmail.com"
    from        "xxx@gmail.com"
    subject     "Thank you for being that awesome"
    body        "no I am just kidding" #if you want to pass parameter do it like this -- > ":user => user"
  end

• Add a sample method to application controller and add it to the routes.rb

#in application controller
  def mailDeneme
    UserMailer.deliver_registration_confirmation()
    render :text => "OK"
  end
#in routes.rb
map.mail  '/mail',  :controller => 'application', :action => 'mailDeneme'

If you see an error like this:

Net::SMTPAuthenticationError (530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first.

You miss the item above about  installing smtp-tls gem. Read it again again, or check this forum post.

ps. This is the official rails guide.
ps2. this is another link.

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1143589/what-is-the-pastrykit-framework
• http://daringfireball.net/2009/12/pastrykit
• http://ajaxian.com/archives/pastrykit-an-iphone-webdev-library-from-apple

Sencha Touch — you should definitely see their kitchen sink, it is pretty cool.but there is no commercial license yet.

• http://ajaxian.com/archives/sencha-touch
• http://mobile.tutsplus.com/articles/news/sencha-touch-html5-mobile-framework/
• http://www.endofnative.com/

iUi — not that many people using it I guess. I build a site with it, if it is sth fast and easy to learn, iUi can do the job.

• Sites build with iUi — http://code.google.com/p/iui/wiki/PoweredBy

jqtouch — demos seem very nice, probably better than iUi in terms of current release capabilities and size of community.

iWebkit — demo seems promising, but not ready for prime time.

SproutCore — not for iPhone specificly, but its demo seems nice.

So my choice for the next task is jqtouch. not iui this time.

For image upload and manipulation, Paperclip seems to be the solutions. The following links does a great job of describing the installation process and basic usage, so I have nothing to add here.

• Paperclip: Attaching Files in Rails (don’t use SVN, use git repo instead as in the second link below)
• Goodbye attachment_fu, hello Paperclip
• http://railscasts.com/episodes/134-paperclip
• The Ruby On Rails Paperclip Plugin Tutorial – Easy Image Attachments
• Ruby On Rails Polymorphic Paperclip Plug-in Tutorial

So far so good, but if you are following railstutorial, you will probably doing this stuff to micropost, and you will probably get an error like this,

1. “missing” image replacement in microspots
2. In the log/development.log file,

Solution:

If you carefully inspect the log file you can catch the line

Just with just one line, open your model and fix the accessibility:

class Micropost &  ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :content, :photo
...

ps. In case you are a noob like me in RoR, this link shows howto uninstall the paperclip plug in.

ps2. Another possible problem might be your ImageMagick installation, make sure you have the correct path by trying convert and identify command. In case add the path to development.rb as described this Stackoverflow entry.

Summary of Steps to add Paperclip

• script/plugin install git://github.com/thoughtbot/paperclip.git

• script/generate paperclip product photo
• In the model

has_attached_file :photo

• In the form

header part

<% form_for @micropost do |f| %>
<% form_for @micropost, :html => { :multipart => true} do |f| %>

body part

<p>
<%= f.file_field :photo %>
</p>

• To show the uploaded file

<%= image_tag @product.photo.url %>

Since finding a good starter document is a very important decision, I took my time to select my first RoR source. I went over the following books and decided to use the latter one:

• Ruby on Rails For Dummies
• Sitepoint Simply Rails 2nd Edition
• Beginning Ruby on Rails
• The Ruby on Rails Tutorial Book

Although it is called as a tutorial, when you get the pdf dump, the 12 chapter tutorial is approximately 500 pages, which is literally a book.

The language of the book is very clean and most of the time funny. You can easily develop the code when you are reading it.  You can also follow a test driven approach if you want, but you don’t have (I didn’t).

I finished the book in 7 days with a daily 4 hours concentrated reading/coding sessions and with lots of Starbucks Misto (thanks Starbucks Besevler crew!).

The final code is at Github, and live demo site at Heroku.

As a pointer for the further steps, the tutorial suggest some pointers but I prefer to go on with my path, which requires ImageMagick and Paperclip, so next post will be about these two.

See you next time!

ps. I really like Heroku. Grails has something similar but to be honest, it is not that magical (as in iPad).

After 3 nights the application was ready for the submission. It got rejected since I didn’t read the iPad User guidelines carefully (actually I just skimmed it in 5 minutes). The rejection reason is “You can’t show more than one popover at the same time”. I fixed the problem, and it is available in the app store (App Store link)

I will probably change the default RSS feed of Hackernews which only show top 30 posts. Probably something on GAE, and maybe a simple my favorites kind of thing.

So I changed all the groovy file locations into a new folder(package) with my application name ( by the way all these are about my latest online usability testing tool Remotespots.com project). But something weird is happened with the ImageTools plugin. Since I move the controller files, ImageTool class is no longer visible to the controller that uses imagetool. Also, there is no way to import ImageTool since it is in default package, to solve this, go to .grails folder in your home folder and locate your projects folder and change the package of ImageTool.groovy as the following screenshot shows.

further information link

Ad hoc distribution is one the things I really don’t like at all.

These are the caveats  :

-Download the distribution provisioning profile again from the Provisioning Portal, and remove the old one (from the organizer) before installing the new one

-Don’t forget to add the Entitlements.plist file with the key get-task-allow and the value false. (also add it tho the target build settings as Code Signing Entitlements key )

- If the client uses Windows make sure use .ipa file for sending the .app

- It is not iTunesArtwork.png but only iTunesArtwork

The links that explain the process:

• http://johnehartzog.com/2009/04/iphone-app-ad-hoc-gotchas/
• http://www.innerfence.com/howto/install-iphone-application-ad-hoc-distribution
• http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/forum/iphone-sdk-development/3156-problem-iphone-ad-hoc-distribution.html

Java Dergisi dagitim olarak cok iyi bir is basarmis, neredeyse her yerde gormek mumkun. Derginin fiyati biraz yuksek(9.90) ozellikle Java ile ilgilenmesi olasi ogrenciler icin fiyat biraz hedef kitleyi dusurebilir. Derginin basim kalitesini dusurerek, dergi fiyatinda biraz oynama yapilabilir diye tahmin ediyorum, cunku kullanilan kagit cok cok sacma bir bicimde kaliteli. Guzel ornekler icin, bkn Matematik Dunyasi, Wired, NTV Bilim.

Yazilar korktugum gibi giris seviyesi tutoriallardan olusmuyor, gerci burada bir denge yakalamak cok zor, onlarca dali olan java dunyasinin hangi alanina girseniz bir uzmanlik alani cikiyor. Ornegin Java ME ve Androiddin arka arkaya yazilar ile islenmesi cok hostu. Biri gitmek uzere olan, biri yerlesmeye baslamis siki teknoloji.

Teknik yazilarin disinda, birazda genel havayi soluyan yazilarin eklenmesi derginin okuma keyfini arttirabilir, ornegin bu sayida James Gosling’in SUN’dan ayrilmasi ya da Oracle’in SUN’i satin almasi satir aralarinda gecistirilmis.

Son olarak, derginin Java dergisi olmasi illaki Java programlamasi ile ilgili olmasini gerektirmez. JVM ustunde calisan diger dillerden de bahsedilmesi (jruby, jython, scala, groovy) ve bunlari kullanan frameworklerin tanitilmasi da bence onemli bir katki olur.

Umarim dergi yeterli satis rakamlarini saglar ve surekliligi saglayabilir.

And finally, my resolution for the next year is to have a couple of Android apps on the market (maybe a game who knows).

Keywords — that I took note during the sessions

• Google Web Elements — http://www.google.com/webelements/

• Data Liberation Front — http://www.dataliberation.org/

• Google Ajax APIs — http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/

• KML Tutorial — http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/kml_tut.html

• Google Maps js API V3 — http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/

• Spring Roo –  Framework from VMWare that can easily be integrated with a GWT frontend — http://www.springsource.org/roo

• Google Chrome Web App Store — http://blog.chromium.org/2010/05/chrome-web-store.html

• WebM is an open media file format designed for the web.  — http://www.webmproject.org/about/

• http://www.openclipart.org

• Lots of things start or finish with enterprise enterprise enterprise (boooring…..)

• Draconian Future (from Keynote Day 2 — referring Apple and Steve Jobs I guess — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draconian

• Go ANDROID — Froyo 2.2 — 18 months — 180.000 developers — 50.000 applications on Market

• V8 Javascript Engine — http://code.google.com/p/v8/

• Sunspider javascript benchmark — http://www2.webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider.html

• qik — video sharing site — well, I have heard qik before, but when you use it, with live streaming and instant sharing stuff, it really is amazing

• Dalvik VM — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_%28software%29

• VP8 — video codec — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP8

• What is Android? — http://developer.android.com/guide/basics/what-is-android.html

• What is OpenGL ES ? — http://www.khronos.org/opengles/

–
Sessions I attend

The following three are from the Bootcamp which is one day before the io. I was fast enough to register for the event, that I can enter. This was like a warm up for the actual thing.(Bootcamp Schedule — https://sites.google.com/site/iobootcamp/schedule)

• Introduction to Google App Engine

• Mapping in 3D: Tips and tricks for Google Earth API and KML

• The Big Picture and How to Get Started

–

And these are from the session in io:

• Ignite Google I/O (http://code.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/ignite-google-io.html) — the ones I like the most are,

• • Matt Harding (Where The Hell Is Matt?
  • Bradley Vickers – How to Row across the North Atlantic, Ration Food and Not Have Your Teammates Eat You

• Casting a wide net: how to target all Android devices (http://code.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/casting-wide-net-android-devices.html) — way to technical for me, I am not an Android developer (yet). Also next room, there was another session of Paul Graham, it was full next time pg

• Architecting GWT applications for production at Google (http://code.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/architecting-production-gwt.html) — Presentation smells like enterprise which I am far from interested. Also, I am not sure about all these code generation stuff for DTOs (Spring Roo), also Vmware&spring is not my favorite source of inspiration (although I play with Grails lately)

• HTML5 status update (http://code.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/html5-status-chrome.html) — Last session of the i/o 2010. Two product managers of Chrome made a good summary of HTML 5 features and their perspective on the spec.

Keynotes that I can not attend since I was sleeping at that time

• Day 1 — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a46hJYtsP-8&feature=player_embedded#!

• Day 2 — they haven’t put a full version yet…

Day One After Party
This was a real nerdvana. a 8 leg giant spider that you can literally drive, pac man, food (like a lot), beer (free as in a lot free), huge screens with geeky videos, a toy like thing that you can control it with your mind and try to fly a ball by focusing sth sexy!, robots that play football, Tesla (sexy electric car), beer, remote control robot that try to demolish balloon with its tail, red wine…

Toys, Food, Drinks, T-shirts

Nexus One, HTC EVO, t-shirts, lots of Pepsi, Starbucks Coffee

-(void)showLoadingView
{
	CGRect transparentViewFrame = CGRectMake(0.0, 0.0,320.0,480.0);
	transparentView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:transparentViewFrame];
	transparentView.backgroundColor = [UIColor lightGrayColor];
	transparentView.alpha = 0.9;

	UIActivityIndicatorView *spinner = [[UIActivityIndicatorView alloc] initWithActivityIndicatorStyle:UIActivityIndicatorViewStyleWhiteLarge];
	spinner.center = transparentView.center;
	[spinner startAnimating];

	UILabel *messageLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 280, 320, 30)];
	messageLabel.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentCenter;
	messageLabel.text = @"please wait...";

	[transparentView addSubview:spinner];
	[transparentView addSubview:messageLabel];

	[self.view addSubview:transparentView];

	[messageLabel release];
	[spinner release];
	[transparentView release];
}

Now, you should call this function whenever needed. Let’s say you have a background process that will run while the transparent loading view is shown, below is the code to handle this situation:

-(void)myAction:(id)sender
{
	[self showLoadingView];

	[self performSelectorInBackground:@selector(myActionBackground:) withObject:sender];
}

-(void)myActionBackground:(id)sender
{
        NSAutoreleasePool *apool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
	//your code
        [apool release];
}