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Centralized rich content distribution in the web era
A typical global retail organization will have many points of sale (POS), and will usually require enriched content to be presented to customers. This is especially true in industries such as luxury watches, where it is important to educate customers … Continue reading
Posted in Thoughts
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Using a partial as an optional layout
Rails uses partials a lot, and you can even use partials as mini-layouts. What I wanted to do is render flashes either as a normal partial (i.e. passing a string of text to be displayed), or as a layout (passing … Continue reading
Posted in Rails
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Rake task with an external script using ActiveRecord
Using Rake to call an external script is quite straightforward: you can simply load it, or call “system”, or “exec”. By the same token, using ActiveRecord classes in a Rake task is easy: you just need to state your task … Continue reading
Posted in Rails
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Icon links with data-uris (no CSS sprites !)
One step in getting to a snappy website experience is reducing HTTP requests. One technique contributing to this reduction is using CSS sprites for icon links. Today, however, I’ll show you how you can achieve the same objective using data-uris. … Continue reading
Posted in Rails
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Rails 3 in Action
Several months ago, I took a look at Rails 3 in Action by Ryan Bigg and Yehuda Katz. The publisher has since provided me with a copy of the first edition, and I’m pleased to say that while the eBook … Continue reading
Posted in Rails
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Automating web site interactions with Selenium
Dannon currently has a “promotion” called Cups of Hope where you can enter codes into their web page to donate money to breast cancer research. Entering data repeatedly gets old real fast, so I figured this would be a great … Continue reading
Posted in Automation, Ruby
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Selecting an option from dropdown form fields with Mechanize
Mechanize works great for uploading data through forms: it has great support for manipulating text fields, check boxes, and so on. Selecting the appropriate option from a dropdown is slightly more roundabout.
Posted in Automation, Mechanize, Ruby
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Uploading data using Mechanize
In this post, I’ll briefly describe a Mechanize script I wrote to update data in a web application. We’ll see how to navigate using Mechanize, and finding HTML elements with XPath. The goal was simple: open a CSV file containing … Continue reading
Posted in Automation, Mechanize, Ruby
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Posting forms with AJAX on checkbox toggle
In a recent Rails 3.1 project, I wanted to have some values updated via AJAX when a checkbox value is checked or unchecked. As I was unable to find anything on the subject online, I figured I would document it … Continue reading
Posted in AJAX, CoffeeScript, jQuery, Rails
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First encounter with the Rails asset pipeline and Coffeescript
I was working on a Rails 3.1 project, and wanted to have some javascript image preview functionality (much like this) in several places within the project. Since this project used the new Rails 3.1, I decided I’d do my best … Continue reading
Posted in CoffeeScript, jQuery, Rails
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