Friday, June 22, 2007

[PLUGIN RELEASE] Metrics


From Jeffrey Damick


Introduction

This gem provides a metrics collecting for controllers, database queries, and specific blocks of code or methods. It is designed to be light-weight and have minimal impact on production builds while providing performance indicators of the running application.



Disclaimer

This software is released to be used at your own risk. For feedback please drop us a line at rails-trunk [ at ] revolution DOT com.
Using this plugin should not be your first step in application optimization/scaling or even the second one.



Example

class SomeClassToTest
collect_metrics_on :my_method

def my_method(blah = nil)
true
end
end


Output:
[ERROR] [2007-06-21 23:21:19] [trunk] [Metrics]|[76716]|[MysqlAdapter.log]|0.012727|args=["root localhost trunk_test", "CREATE DATABASE `trunk_test`"]
[ERROR] [2007-06-21 23:19:56] [trunk] [Metrics]|[35158]|[Request to [Test::SomeControllerWithMetricsId]]|0.001373|action = index|path =some?
[ERROR] [2007-06-21 23:19:56] [trunk] [Metrics]|[33676]|[SomeClassToUseModuleMixin.another_method]|0.000020|args=["also"]


for more samples and test cases see test/metrics_test.rb



Usage

The metrics are written to: logs/_metrics.log

Configuration can be updated in metrics/config/metrics.yml, you may copy this file to your RAILS_ROOT/config/metrics.yml and customize for your application, the RAILS_ROOT will be checked first.



Sample metrics.yml

production:
min_real_time_threshold: 1.0
single_line_output: true
some_module/test_controller: 0.0




Installation

As plugin:
script/plugin install svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/metrics/trunk/vendor/plugins/metrics



License

metrics is released under the MIT license.



Support

The plugin RubyForge page is http://rubyforge.org/projects/metrics

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Code Digest #1

When you program for a living, you write lots of code. There is often some code that you are fond of. We start the Code Digest series to present such code written by the RHG developers. We encourage other teams and individual developers to share similar snippets in their blogs so we all can learn from each other and become better rails developers.

Daniel Silva



<%= link_to(image_tag("/images/icon.gif", :style=>"padding-right:0px;"), {:controller => '/registration', :action => 'login', :dest => request.request_uri}, {:style => ""}) %> 

With this line, I can create an image link using Rails code, to take advantage of the power of routes in Rails while still creating this kind of structure: <a href="#"><img border="0"/></a>



Jack Dempsey



Ok, so here's something useful for using keyboard short cuts to navigate through a small supporting application:
def include_keyboard_shortcuts

hotkey = 'Ctrl+Shift'
code_string = ''
keys = {
'm'=>'/account_info/show',
's'=>'/account_info/index',
'c'=>'/menu/go?menu_action=new_customer',
'p'=>'/products',
'o'=>'/account_info/orders',
't'=>'/order_tracker',
'x'=>'/auth_sessions/destroy',
'r'=>'/current_users/reset_password'
}

current_user_needed = %w{m o r}

keys.each_pair do |k,v|
next if current_user_needed.include?(k) && current_user.nil?
code_string << "shortcut('#{hotkey}+hm#{k}',function() { document.location.href='#{v}' });\n"
end

javascript_tag(code_string)

end



Then in a layout file just:
<%= javascript_include_tag 'shortcuts' %>
<%= include_keyboard_shortcuts %>



Makes use of a nice shortcuts.js lib.


Val Aleksenko


This is a fragment of a conversation on our internal IRC with my solution for refactoring a piece of code:
May 07 14:07:56 <Anthro> There has to be a better way to do this (x and y are non-negative integers): increment = (x!=0) ? ( (y!=0) ? 0 : 1 ) : -1
May 07 14:08:22 <Anthro> I think it can be done with math instead of logic.
May 07 14:16:56 <jack> Anthro: have you thought about using sin and cos? ;-)
May 07 14:18:42 <muzzy> (x <=> 0) <=> (y <=> 0)



Granted, it is not as clear as the original, but it is hard to resist it from the aesthetic point of view.

Val Aleksenko


I love writing dynamically generated methods and classes in Ruby as the next guy. When I was writing acts_as_readonlyable, I needed to manage multiple connections. I found that the easiest solution for managing active connections was generation of an AR class for each read-only definition and borrowing the connection from it. The usage is acts_as_readonlyable :read_only_entry_in_database_config.
def acts_as_readonlyable(readonly_db)
define_readonly_class(readonly_db) unless ActiveRecord.const_defined?(readonly_class_name(readonly_db))
end

def readonly_class_name(db)
"Generated#{ db.camelize }"
end

def define_readonly_class(db)
ActiveRecord.module_eval %Q!
class #{ readonly_class_name(db) } < Base
self.abstract_class = true
establish_connection configurations[RAILS_ENV]['#{ db }']
end
!

end



Warren Konkel


The ConfigFile class is a quick and easy way to load YAML files located in your Rails application's config directory. Simply place a YAML file into your config directory and then access it like a hash. For example this will read your config/database.yml: ConfigFile['database']['production']['adapter'].
class ConfigFile
def self.[](arg)
@@cached_configs ||= {}
@@cached_config_mtimes ||= {}

base_name = "config/#{arg}.yml"
filename = File.join(RAILS_ROOT, base_name)
raise "ERROR: Config not found: #{base_name}" unless File.exists?(base_name)

if @@cached_configs[arg].nil? || @@cached_config_mtimes[arg] < File.stat(filename).mtime.to_i
@@cached_configs[arg] = YAML.load(File.open(filename))
@@cached_config_mtimes[arg] = File.stat(filename).mtime.to_i
end

@@cached_configs[arg]
end
end