A Distributed Ruby Web Application Framework

Thanks to Mack user, Diogo Almeida, there’s a great write up on the wiki on how to configure Apache using mod_rails to host a Mack app.  Thanks Diogo.

http://www.mackwiki.com/using_passenger_phusion_to_host_a_mack_application

Peter Cooper just posted a very nice article about Mack, which features an interview with me, Mark Bates, over on Ruby Inside. Please check it out:

http://www.rubyinside.com/mack-distributed-ruby-web-application-framework-releases-070-1107.html 

I know that with every release I say something like, “This is a big release”, but the fact of the matter is this is a big release. Amongst the 49 tickets that make up release 0.7.0, there are two in particular that are at the core of Mack’s very existence, they are Distributed Objects and Distributed Views/Layouts.

Back on March 26th Mack 0.4.0 was released. This release brought the first of three large distributed features, Distributed Routes. With 0.7.0 Mack fully realizes it’s goal of making it easy to write fully distributed web applications. There is a very nice wiki page, on our new wiki, that shows in detail how to use the new distributed features. That page can found here. Also, don’t forget to watch the screencast of the new distributed features that can be found here.

Distributed Objects

Distributed objects allow you to easily distribute access to your library and model code amongst any of your other Mack applications. Allowing this access is as simple as requiring the mack-distributed gem, adding a few lines to your configuration, and starting the mack_ring_server binary. ‘Client’ applications just need to require the mack-distributed gem.

Distributed Views/Layouts

With distributed views and layouts you can now share the look and feel from one application with all of your applications. Configuration and use is just as easy using distributed objects.

Form and HTML Helpers

People have been requesting more HTML and form helper methods, and we’re more than happy to comply. There are whole bunch of these new methods now to help you more easily build your applications. The generators have been updated to use these new methods, to make your job even easier. There is also now support for doing Date/Time drop downs, similar to Rails and Merb.

‘Tell’ Messaging

Rails folks know ‘tell’ messaging as ‘flash’ messaging and Merb folks know it as ‘message’ messaging. We went with ‘tell’. Tell messages are cleared after any non-redirect request. They’re a great way to send a simple message down to the client.

New Wiki

With this release there is also a new wiki at, http://www.mackwiki.com. This new wiki, incidentally built using Mack 0.7.0, will house all the tutorials and how-to’s for Mack. There are a few entries from the old wiki that still need to brought over during the next day or two.

Changelog:

• [#114] Javascript link_helper
• [#112] Error generating mack application
• [#109] DataMapper 0.9.4
• [#103] Log colors for the console are now configurable per log level.
• [#102] New association method in data_factory
• [#101] Update to file upload testing (build_file -> file_for_upload, and multipart support in put)
• [#100] Inline routing parameters are being mutated
• [#99] Upgraded to facets 2.4.3
• [#98] Fixed mack-facets not being loaded before app_config files.
• [#97] Fixed sessions only working with ‘local_memory’ mode
• [#96] Distributed Views module now uses file cache
• [#92] Removed deprecated app_config.orm code.
• [#91] Fixed Mack blowing up if there is no config/initializers/gems.rb file.
• [#90] Added deprecation system.
• [#89] rake gems:* will now only display warning if any gem required is not installed (and not break)
• [#88] Implemented pending SQLite3 tests in mack-activerecord
• [#87] Refactored out common ORM code from mack-active_record and mack-data_mapper into mack-orm
• [#86] stylesheet link helper
• [#85] Refactored out Mack::ViewHelpers::HtmlHelpers into Mack::ViewHelpers::HtmlHelpers, Mack::ViewHelpers::FormHelpers and Mack::ViewHelpers::linkHelpers
• [#84] Added Mack::Distributed.lookup(url) to retrieve specific distributed services.
• [#83] Added mail_to HTML helper.
• [#82] Added ACL support to mack-distributed
• [#81] Fixed sessions working with redirects in testing
• [#80] Distributed objects present both the DRb::DRbObject inspect and the original object’s inspect when asked.
• [#79] Renamed app_config.mack.use_distributed_routes to app_config.mack.share_routes
• [#76] Move mack_ring_server to mack-distributed
• [#75] Left over mack-distributed rake tasks
• [#74] Added optional feature to disable initialization logging.
• [#73] Tests no longer use the functional/unit directories
• [#69] Added ViewHelperGenerator and ControllerHelperGenerator
• [#68] Transactional support in mack-AR
• [#67] Added test:setup tasks for active_record and data_mapper
• [#62] Removed const redefined warnings if mack-l10n is used along with mack-activerecord
• [#39] HAML 2.0.2 support
• [#28] Refactored out encryption into the mack-encryption gem.
• [#25] Added ControllerGenerator
• [#19] Added HTML form helpers
• [#15] File upload testing support (ability to do multipart form post in testing)
• [#11] Distributed Layout/Views
• [#10] Added distributed objects to mack-distributed.
• [#8] Move distributed code from mack-core to mack-more
• [#5] Added tell messaging
• gem: genosaurus 1.2.2
• gem: haml 2.0.2
• gem: addressable 1.0.4
• gem: facets 2.4.3
• gem: data_mapper 0.9.4

On Monday, August 25th, Mack 0.7.0 will be released. This is an extremely important release for Mack. Why is that you ask? Good question. Well, this is release that finally brings the much talked about distributed feature set to Mack. Distributed routes have been around for quite some time, but distributed views/layouts and distributed objects (models) have been missing. Well, in less than a week, you’ll have them!

Now I know that you’re just as excited about what’s coming as I am, that’s why I’ve prepared the first ever Mack screencast to demostrate these features. The screencast is a little rough around the edges, but it gets the ideas across. 

As always I’ll post more about the 0.7.0 as the release date nears. In the meantime enjoy the screencast:

The Mack Distributed Demo Screencast

Here’s the source code.

Mack 0.6.1.1 features 38 completed tickets and a whole host of really great features and improvements. Here’s a quick overview of a few of the big features in Mack 0.6.1.1.

Page Caching

There is now a mack-caching gem which gives you easy to use page caching when you require it. To use page caching first you need to add it to your gems.rb file like such:

gem.add "mack-caching", :libs => "mack-caching"

That will require the gem and give your app access to the page caching libraries. Next you to turn on page caching in your application. In the appropriate config/*.yml file add the following:

use_page_caching: true

Now, you just need to tell your controllers which actions they should cache:

class FooController
  include Mack::Controller
  cache_pages :only => [:index, :show]
end

If you give the cache_pages no optional parameters then it will cache all the actions for that controller. Alternatively, you could give it an :except parameter to list the actions you don’t want cached. 

Notifiers (aka Mailers)

Mack now has a mack-notifier gem that will be the repository for all ‘notification’ systems, the first of which is email. The Mack::Notifier API is simple and easy to use and will allow developers to plugin in different notification systems under the cover without having to change their application code. 

A notifier can look as simple as:

class WelcomeEmail
  include Mack::Notifier
end

With that you can then write the following bit of code:

we = WelcomeEmail.new
we.to = "foo@example.com"
we.from = "bar@example.com"
we.subject = "Hello World"
we.body(:text) = "My plain text body"
we.body(:html) = "My html body"
we.attach(Mack::Notifier::Attachment.new("/path/to/my/file")) 
we.deliver

Obviously there’s a lot more to the API, including a validations module, but that’s a subject for another post. 

JavaScript (aka RJS)

The mack-javascript gem now gives you Rails-like RJS support for Mack. The default library to use with mack-javascript is jQuery, but there is prototype support available as well. 

Data Factory

Creating faux data for testing can be a real nightmare. Fixtures can be difficult to maintain and trying to create your own faux data can be a chore. That’s where the mack-data_factory gem comes in.

For each model that you want to produce, you will need to define a factory class.  

Let’s say that I have 2 models: Item and User, and Item belongs to user.  So the factories will look like the following:

class ItemFactory
  include Mack::Data::Factory
  field :title, "MyItem"
  field :owner_id, {:user => 'id'}
end

class UserFactory
  include Mack::Data::Factory
  field :username, "planters", :length => 25, :content => :alpha
  field :password, "roastedPeanuts", :immutable => true
end

So, the 2 classes above defined the factory for item and user.  As you can see, each factory will need to explicitly list all the fields that it will populate, and for each field, you can define rules on how the content is generated.

Supported content types: 

• :alpha –> alphabets.  rules: [:length, :min_length, :max_length]
• :alphanumeric –> alphabets and number.  rules: same as :alpha
• :numeric –> numbers [optional, because if the field's default value is number, its content type will automatically set to numeric)
• :email --> generate random email address
• :username --> generate random username
• :domain --> generate random domain name
• :firstname --> generate first name
• :lastname --> generate last name
• :name --> generate full name
• :city --> generate city name
• :streetname --> generate street name
• :state --> generate state.  rules: [:country --> :us or :uk, :abbr --> true if you want a abbreviated state name (us only)]
• :zipcode –> generate zipcode. rules: [:country --> :us or :uk]
• :phone –> generate phone number
• :company –> generate company name.  rules: [:include_bs --> include sales tag line]
  example:  field, “”, :content => :company, :include_bs => true could generate something like:
  Fadel-Larkin monetize cross-media experiences

Changelog:

• [#60] Fixed Mack executable problem
• [#59] Fixed gems:* tasks
• [#57] Moved most files under to lib/mack
• [#56] mack-more: Added Mack::Utils::RegistryMap
• [#55] mack-more: mack-facets: Mack::Utils::Registry is now Mack::Utils::RegistryList
• [#54] Added DataMapper 0.9.3 support
• [#52] mack-more: mack-[orm] should require mack-[orm].rb using its full path.
• [#51] Application generator should generate orm support in the right place
• [#50] Mack will now have 2 environment files: mack_core and mack_app.  Mack.rb will load both files, but it gives other module chance to load just the core files and not the application’s files.
• [#49] Making sure the orm tasks is available when orm_support is removed from the app_config
• [#49] mack-active_record:  mack-active_record.rb will require mack-active_record_tasks.rb
• [#49] mack-data_mapper:  mack-data_mapper.rb will require mack-data_mapper_tasks.rb
• [#49] Updated warning message if orm is defined in app_config (i.e. user only needs to require mack-[orm_name], instead of both that and mack-[orm_name]_tasks).
• [#48] rake generator:list now displays the correct names for the generator tasks.
• [#47] rake gems:* tasks now work, and no longer require mack_ruby_core_extensions
• [#46] Calling .to_param on nil now raises a NoMethodError exception.
• [#45] rake stats task now works with Test::Unit::TestCase
• [#44] Mack::Runner has now been extended to allow for greater extension flexibility.
• [#43] Added a Mack::Utils::Registry class to allow for easy creation of registries.
• [#42] Sessions can now be turned off globally using the app_config.mack.use_sessions switch.
• [#41] Deprecate orm_support.rb
• [#38] There is now a registry of Controllers that are in the system.
• [#36] Renamed the initialize method in the Mack::Controller module to configure_controller. This gives
•   control of the initialize method back to the class.
• [#34] Mack::l10n now raises exception with a fully qualified name.
• [#33] mack-active_record now requires ActiveRecord 2.0.2 explicitly, not >=2.0.2
• [#31] Added support for ruby-debug.
• [#26] Log Coloring for console output.
• [#24] Added mack-notifier support.
• [#18] Added Page caching.
• [#14] Data Factory
• [#7] Added support for Extlib::Hook in a few places.
• [#6] RJS support
• Added a rake tmp:clear task.
• gem: application_configuration 1.5.1
• gem: ruby-debug 0.10.0
• gem: data_mapper 0.9.3