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When preparing to add some layout features to JotRod, I realized it was a Rails 3.0.9 application. Here’s a quick rundown on upgrading to Rails 3.1.3.

In order to get someone a timeline in JotRod, we need followers and following lists to compile the Jots from. This means that we need to add a new ColumnFamily called Followers and another one called Following. We don’t have the joins capability from relational databases to do this for us. I’m going to hijack [...]

In the Jots (like tweets) in JotRod, I needed to generate a hash on creation as the key for the Jots. So, I determined that the easiest way to do that was to include ActiveModel Callbacks. The module is pretty simple to add to your classes. Here’s a demo of how to add it to [...]

Here’s an introduction to creating a Rails connector gem for an ORM with a model generator.

When I started playing with Cassandra, I wound up writing part of an ORM to get what I needed from it. I want to build actual projects with Rails, Ruby, or other technologies for my videos rather than just narrowly demonstrate a piece of technology. So, I’m bringing you up to speed with Sandra so [...]

I’m working on another Cassandra demo, but didn’t have time to finish, so I decided to show you Ruby Koans. It’s a very interesting test-driven approach to learning Ruby. I hope you enjoy it.

You can get cassandra at cassandra.apache.org and the ruby gem by running: gem install cassandra I did run into a problem with the trift_client gem when installing. If you get a Load Error, run this. sudo chmod 644 /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/thrift_client-0.6.3/lib/thrift_client/*.rb sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/thrift_client-0.6.3/lib/thrift_client/connection Here are some of the Cassandra commands from the video: #connects to [...]

With the recent release of the Google Plus beta (ask me for an invite if you want one), I felt it appropriate to show a simple way to create a Like or +1 button for your Rails application. The app and concept is pretty simple, so I won’t worry about posting the code below. Install: [...]

Specification Clicking a star rating turns on the stars to the left of the star I clicked. Clicking a star submits the star rating. When I refresh the page, the star ratings should be persistent. We’ll be using Rails’ functions including: form_for hidden_field Rails Helpers We’ll be using jQuery functions including: click each ajax <code> [...]

For a basic deployment recipe, check out Basic Deployment with Capistrano This episode demonstrates how to extend deployment to deploy to stage and production. Overall it’s rather simple. All it entails is creating a new task for each stage you want to deploy to with the settings you need changed. Here’s an example: task :stage [...]