I love my Mac, and many of us like the idea of automating our software, until we try to use AppleScript to do it. To say that Applescript is professional developer unfriendly is an understatement. I like ruby but to make ruby and applescript talk requires sending strings to osascript in just the right way and getting the output from osascript back. Not a lot of fun at all.

Enter appscript. Appscript is a ruby library that interfaces with applescript seamlessly.

What's pretty amazing is its power after you spend a little while on the irb console and keep using the tab key for autocompletion. It even introspects the dictionary to see what is available at this time. It doesn't always give the right thing but by trying things out and with a bit of logic you always get there.

There's also an app called ASDictionary that will spit out the dictionary with ruby syntax, though I never found the dictionary all that useful anyway (I mean yes, it has definitions for everything, but it seldom provides info on exactly how everything is tied together or examples of use). I personally prefer trying things out on the console.

Here are a few examples of its use. You can do all this on irb immediately after installing it with sudo gem install appscript:

Driving iCal

This will get all your calendars and print their names:

 
require 'appscript'
app = Appscript.app("iCal")
app.calendars.get.each { |cal| puts cal.name.get }
 

Just expanding on this concept a little more, you can also grab all the to-dos:

 
app.calendars.get.each { |cal|
  cal.get.todos.get.each {|todo|
    puts todo.summary.get
  }
}
 

Automating Safari. Ruby to Applescript to Javascript

Haven't tried marshaling values back as I'm just exploring, but I don't see why it couldn't.

 
require 'appscript'
app = Appscript.app("iCal")
app.open_location("http://www.google.com")
window = app.documents.get[0]
window.do_JavaScript("window.alert('Your title is '+document.title)")
 

I'm sure you can find some use for this. I already did - I wrote myself a quick cron to add all the JIRA tasks assigned to me to Omnifocus if I don't already have them there. I'm looking forward to seeing what else I can put this to use.

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It is also a good example of parsing an XML resource in ruby. I am parsing most of the metadata so you should be able to do a lot more with this.

In the controller, you need to add the following:

 
  helper :picasa_album
 

In your .rhtml file, add the lightbox tags:

 
  <%= stylesheet_link_tag 'lightbox' %>
  <%= javascript_include_tag 'lightbox' %>
 
  <div class="slideshow" style="margin: 2em 10em">
    <%= slideshow( "http://yoursite.com",
    url_for( "/path/to/album/index.xml") ) %>
  </div>
 

Finally, add picasa_album_helper.rb to the helpers directory.

Let me know of your experiences with this.

Have fun! 

Update 06/23/2006: I got a patch for this not too long ago. Still waiting for confirmation before submitting it but I did add it to the subversion - see the repository browser for a version history.

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The Java hyper-enthusiasts have left the building, leaving a significant contingent of Java programmers behind, blinking in the bright lights without the constant drumbeat of boosterism.

But the majority of programmers, who have been relatively quiet all this time, always knew that Java is a combination of strengths and weaknesses. These folks are not left with any feelings of surprise, but instead they welcome the silence, because it's easier to think and work....

Clearly Ruby is making important contributions to the programming world. I think we're seeing the effects sooner in Python than elsewhere, but I suspect it will have an effect on Java as well, eventually, if only in the web-framework aspects. Java-on-rails might actually tempt me into creating a web app using Java again.However, I can't see Ruby, or anything other than C#, impacting the direction of the Java language, because of the way things have always happened in the Java world. And I think the direction that C# 3.0 may be too forward-thinking for Java to catch up to.

Weblogs Forum - The departure of the hyper-enthusiasts

Mainly, I think a pragmatic approach to a language is to assign value based on a) what you can accomplish with it, and b) how easy it is to write in the first place and maintain in the long run. So far Ruby is starting to become interesting on (a) - it was always interesting on (b) -, although we still have to do a lot of stuff in Java if we want to take advantage of a lot of features.

However, in Java there has been a lot of work already done to get you libraries and automated tools. I have been looking for some good IDEs for Ruby and I can't seem to find anything that is better than just using vim (I've looked, but that's another story) - Eclipse is my yardstick for comparison.

That means that I may want to switch to rails for web app development and maybe scripting, but not for any type of development where I have to apply deep pattern thinking and where I anticipate refactorings to come along as the system grows. It may be easier conceptually to do refactoring in Ruby, but that fact is superceded by the automatedness of doing it in Eclipse. It doesn't matter if it impacts a lot more files to, say change a member variable name in a domain object, in Java vs. Ruby if I can do it with Alt-R in Eclipse and in Ruby I have to go and change it manually - the masses will not switch until you give them this kind of capability.

On the other hand, I really do like the fact that you can get started in ruby from scratch in a few minutes using things like "gem install rails", vs. setting up a giant ant/java/spring/hibernate/tomcat on the java side.

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Este curso pretende proporcionar al usuario información suficiente para hacer aplicaciones de web profesionales utilizando Ruby on Rails. Está enfocado a personas que ya sepan algo de programación en otros lenguajes, lo cual quiere decir que durante el curso haré referencia a conceptos y librerías familiares a usuarios de otros lenguajes y productos.

Tutor de Ruby on Rails

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Note that I don't have an opinion on this because I don't know both
toolsets (and like many others I don't sound very smart when comparing
something I know vs something I don't know).

First you need to define the relationship on the parent and children models:


class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
has_one :person_details, :dependent=>true
end

Note that this automatically will provide with a person_details member for person when it gets retrieved.

Now on the controller, here's the CRUD:


def create
@person = Person.new(params[:person])
@person_details = PersonDetails.new(params[:person_details])
@person.person_details = @person_details
if @person.save
# Cool, you're done! It saves the person_details as well.
end
end

def destroy
Person.find(params[:id]).destroy
end


Now your rhtml _form.rhtml must have things like:


text_field 'person_details', column.name
text_field 'person, column.name


And you will get two sets of parameters (as you can see in your controller code), params[:person], and params[:person_details]. Your instance variables to set the current values on the view side would be @person and @person_details.

And I was sitting there writing custom code to find/save.. Ugh!