Getting started with ember and rails
Mar 30th
Ember is your new friend when it comes to client side web application development. At the time writing this article ember was at RC2. We at bitcrowd have a strong background in Rails, so this post will list valuable resources (blogposts, videos, screencasts, …) to get you on the track with ember backed by a JSON-Rails-Backend.
I’ll update and extend this article regularly. Let’s go!
The basics
http://emberjs.com - the starting point of it all
http://emberjs.com/guides – the official ember guides – evolved a lot after feature freeze for RC
https://github.com/emberjs/ember.js – the code
Ember & Rails
As easy as it can be. ember-rails does all the work for you. It ships with ember, ember data and handlebars. Thanks to bundler and asset pipeline you are just 3 minutes away from “Hello World”.
The templating language
Ember is tightly connected to handlebars. Its syntax is kind of similar to html.erb. – Templates at rails. We prefer to use haml. You too? Have a look at Emblem.js.
Persistence – connect ember and rails
Ember itself does not ship with a persistence layer. Ember Data is your weapon of choice (included in ember-rails). BUT: it’s still in alpha and massive work in progress. Tom Dale and Yehuda Katz gave an update about the data component a few days ago.
Of course you can write your own persistence layer – have a look at this blog post how to user ember without ember data. But I’m sure – as soon as ember 1.0 is released there will be more time for ember data and it’ll be the well-working standard persistence component.
Watch and relax
The neat blog app in thirty minutes
Fire up Ember.js
Recordings of Ember Camp
Railscasts Ember part 1
Railscasts Ember part 2
Learn from the darlings
Travis CI ember web client
Discourse
TodoMVC
Conceptual stuff
A great interview with Yehuda Katz and Tom Dale about Ember and its concepts and motivations.
tbc…
Our second talk at apps.berlin.js
Nov 28th
Tomorrow Sebastian will take bitcrowd’s second speech at apps.berlin.js. He’ll talk about how we built a full featured mobile website for moviepilot.com (m.moviepilot.com) in just two weeks with vanilla Backbone and swipe.js.
Qipoqo – Going private beta soon!
Oct 7th
In March we gave out the bitcrowd camp champ to qipoqo, a platform for cash free exchange of services, or task swapping, as they call it.
After four busy and agile development sprints during the summer, the qipoqo platform is now ready for beta testing. – And our part of the process is done!
Now the qipoqo can go beta!. They will use the private beta to fine tune the mechanics of their task swapping community before they will go public – probably later that year. Michele, technical cofounder who has already contributed code during the summer will now take over controll in software development. bitcrowd might also join in future sprints if more manpower is needed.
We enjoyed working with qipoqo a lot and developing software together with them was real fun! We wish them lots of success and thousands happy task swappers on release!
By the way: Qipoqo has launched a crowd founding campaign at the “gründergarage”. It is part of a competition called “Gründergarage” by Google and Indiegogo. If they reach their funding goal and have a good viral spread through social media, then Google will double the amount raised.
Don’t miss your chance to support and to sign up for the private beta!
Joosy workshop @eurucamp2012
Aug 14th
We’re happy to make an advanced workshop at eurucamp 2012 in Berlin. It’s about Joosy, a new JavaScript framework based on Rails, CoffeeScript and Haml.
In the workshop we’ll give an introduction to Joosy and its concepts, compare it to Backbone and especially we want to code with you. Bring your laptops and hack with us. We’ll build a simple CRUD app with 2 connected models and authentication.
You should have at least medium skills in Rails and CoffeScript to enjoy the session; please checkout this GitHub repo and make sure you have Ruby 1.9.3 installed.
You can find the slides from our talk at bitcrowd.net/talks/joosy.
bitcrowd is hiring senior rails developers!
Jun 21st
Bitcrowd, berlins leading web and mobile agency is hiring senior rails developers!
We:
We people at bitcrowd develop agile and test-driven; pair-programming and code-reviews ensure we meet our high standards.
We deliver reliable, clean and optimised code. Apart from renowned customers like MTV/VIMN, helpster or the telekom we maintain strong ties to berlin’s startup scene. Thus, we support startups like Moviepilot, bookletmobile and Housetrip with our hands-on experience in rails and BDD.
We take great pride in the fact we deliver on-time and in-budget. We achieve this through close customer cooperation, agile development and realistic planning. This is especially important for startups that mandate us with the building of their first product version.
You:
… have demonstrated in-depth knowledge of ruby on rails
… are adept in the metaprogramming techniques that make ruby so outstanding
… have developed at least two rails applications from draft to live deployment
… swim freely in the pool filled with BDD, Cucumber, RSpec, CoffeeScript, Haml, Sass, jQuery, Backbone, Git, Scrum, Pivotal Tracker, Trello
… write not only outstanding code but are also able to explain how you proceed while you go along – and you love pair-programming
… are an excellent communicator, with the team as well as with the customer
… keep the product and the budget in view and are able to help the product-owner to come to a meaningful product – even with limited resources.
… feel comfortable with being the lead in technology as well as in product management if the project needs it
The Deal:
We offer a fixed contract in a friendly and focussed work environment. – With a selected team of experts who are both eager to learn as well as happy to share their knowledge with you. If you want to write software that matters and is used by thousands of people every day we would love to hear from you hire_me[at]bitcrowd[dot]net
bitcrowd sucht Senior Rails-Developer!
Jun 20th
bitcrowd, die führende full-service Web und Mobile Agentur Berlins sucht Senior Rails-Developer!
Wir:
Bei bitcrowd entwickeln wir agil und testgetrieben; durch Pair-Programming und Code-Reviews stellen wir unsere hohen Ansprüche sicher und liefern verlässlichen, sauberen und optimierten Code.
Neben renommierten Kunden wie MTV/VIMN, Helpster und der Telekom sind wir auch fest in der Berliner Startup-Szene verankert. Wir unterstützen mit unserer Hands-On Erfahrung in Rails und BDD Startups wie Moviepilot, Bookletmobile und Housetrip.
Wir bei bitcrowd sind sehr stolz darauf, das wir immer wieder in-time und in-budget liefern können. Dies erreichen wir durch engen Kundenkontakt, agile Entwicklung und realistische Planung. Dies ist besonders für Startups wichtig, die uns mit der Erstellung Ihrer ersten Produktversionen beauftragen.
Du:
… hast demonstriertes in-depth-knowledge in Ruby on Rails
… bist versiert in den Metaprogramming-Techniken, die Ruby so außergewöhnlich machen
… hast mindestens zwei Rails-Anwendungen vom Draft bis zum Live-Deploy begleitet
… fühlst Dich wohl im Pool von BDD, Cucumber, RSpec, CoffeeScript, Haml, Sass, jQuery, Backbone, Git, Scrum, Pivotal Tracker, Trello
… schreibst nicht nur tollen Code, sondern kannst auch erklären wie Du vorgehst und liebst Pair-Programming
… kannst gut kommunizieren. Intern als auch im direkten Kundenkontakt
… kannst das Produkt und das Budget im Auge behalten und dem Product-Owner helfen, auch mit begrenzten Ressourcen aussagekräftige Produkte fertig zu stellen.
… kannst sowohl im Projektmanagement als auch in der Technologie den Lead des Projektes übernehmen
Wir bieten Dir eine angenehme, konzentrierte Arbeitsumgebung in einem erlesenen und lernbegierigen Team mit freundschaftlichem Miteinander.
Wenn Du Lust hast Software zu schreiben, die von Tausenden von Menschen täglich genutzt wird, freuen wir uns über eine Mail an hire_me[at]bitcrowd[dot]net
Fixing NGINX 201 Content-Length Header Bug
Jun 15th
Developing locally – without nginx – everything worked fine, but on the staging and production servers we had to deploy to there was a nasty error. Nginx sent no 201 response. The blog post from Jim Neath pointed me to the right direction:
Nginx prior to v0.8.32 did not set the Content-Length header. Two solutions: Upgrade Nginx (that was not possible) or set the Content-Length manually in our app. Put this little little Rack middleware into /lib/content_length_fix.rb:
class ContentLengthFix
def initialize(app)
@app = app
end
def call(env)
Rack::ContentLength.new(@app).call(env)
end
end
end
And this goes into config.ru:
use Nginx::ContentLengthFix
Disable console.log in production
Apr 30th
You know the problem – sometimes you just forget one console.log statement in your JavaScript and have console logs in production mode or even worse – the script is completely broken on IE. Here I describe a way how you can be sure that console is defined and quiet in production mode:
Define a HTML5 data-atribute in your applictaion.html.haml:
%html
%head
...
%body{data-env: Rails.env}
...
Second step is to include this javascript snippet, which checks – after the DOM is loaded – if we are in production mode or if console is undefined. If so, we define console.log as an empty function.
if ($('body').data('env') == 'production' || typeof console == "undefined"){
var console = { log: function() {} };
}
});
Elefile. Send large files. Secured by Steganos.
Apr 4th
Elefile is out! Over the last weeks, we were very thrilled to work on Stegonos‘ newest goodie. Sending big files safely has now become a matter of a few clicks. And Elefile does client to client encryption, ruling out man-in-the-middle attacks and server-breakins safely. We were very thrilled when Steganos Founder and Managing Director Gabriel Yoran asked us to work on the Elefile product and enjoyed the work on it a lot – hopefully as much as you might enjoy using it!
Allready, the german computer magazine PCgo has made a review.
qipoqo is the bitcrowd CampChamp
Mar 18th
Congratulations to qipoqo! They came, pitched and won. We are looking forward to build their product with and for them – a platform for cashfree exchange of services. Of course we’ll keep you informed about the development and so on!
There’s a nice article on Silicon Allee, where all pitches from the Startup Camp are described.
Here is an blogpost with some more info about qipoqo.
***
Photo by Sandy Hathaway
- @javascript aes apps.berlin.js asset pipeline assets backbone bdd berlin campchamp capistrano coffeescript content-length css cucumber elefile ember engine yard eurucamp feature fingerprinting joosy jQuery mongodb moviepilot nginx php php-fpm qipoqo rack rails rails3.1 rails rspec ruby bdd ruby sass scb12 scss security selenium session steganos step definition time-saver uploadify wordpress x-sendfile
Jesse Smith: In my 3.0.7 rails application, form was posting uploadify parameters directly to the params[] Hash,...
Luis Ramalho: Thanks for the post, just one thing, if you're on Windows make sure you get the bits like::bits...
Andi Schacke: Thanks for that last comment, it is important if you use ruby 1.9.2! :-)
Peter: I had to make a small change to make this work:request.env['HTTP_COOKIE'].each_byte{|c|...
Andrew Theis: I'm actually wondering how to do just single file uploads and having the controller the upload is...
Adinda: I tried disabling forgery_protection for a while. I still get the same error And logger.info...
Tim Brandes: Found a solution to disappearing bar with S3 Upload: Try adding the "onComplete" option with...