Setting up Sinatra and DataMapper on Windows

I use a MacBook Pro for work and pleasure on a day-to-day basis. Recently, I was asked to teach web students at a local high school. These students know html/graphics/flash/etc. The advanced students were ready for some server-side programming and database integration. I wanted the students to be able to get up and going quickly (for motivation reasons) and to create useful apps (using a database). I felt Sinatra to be a great fit for this. I created a Sinatra app for my uncle and his business. It was a joy to work with it and I was able to deploy quickly using Heroku.
My experience of using Sinatra on my Mac was straightforward. Like most things using Ruby and Mac: it just worked. However, I found out the students at the high school use MS Windows. Fortunately, I have a Windows XP virtual machine running in VMWare so I could prepare that way. I used to teach computer science and web development at Spokane Community College and am aware of teaching Ruby in a Windows lab environment. Things can get tricky at times - and preparing a Sinatra app on Windows XP was a little tricky.
Here I am to quickly document what I can about setting up Sinatra on a Windows environment.

1. Grab the installer and install Ruby: http://rubyinstaller.org/
2. Install Sinatra from the Command Prompt:
1. c:> gem install sinatra
3. Install sqlite3
1. Go to http://www.sqlite.org/download.html and download the Precompiled Binaries for Windows:
1. sqlite-3.x.y.z.zip
2. sqlitedll-3.x.y.z.zip
2. Unzip and look for these files. Copy them into the Ruby bin directory path c:\ruby\bin
1. sqlite3.exe
2. sqlite3.dll
3. sqlite3.def
3. Install sqlite3-ruby gem
1. c:> gem install sqlite3-ruby
4. Install DataMapper
1. c:> gem install dm-core
2. c:> gem install do_sqlite3
5. Code Reloading:
1. Sinatra by default does not reload your code while you are editing and saving. Thus you have to restart sinatra server after changes = annoying!
2. On the Mac I quickly found shotgun for my code reloading needs. However shotgun does not work on Windows. :(
3. I then found out another gem that does code reloading on Windows: sinatra-reloader whew!
1. c:> gem install sinatra-reloader
6. Sinatra starter code:
1. Put the code snippet (see below) into a file and save as: sinatra_starter.rb
2. From command prompt, start the sinatra server:
1. c:> ruby sinatra_starter.rb

I hope this helps get some of you started with Sinatra development on Windows. Please refer to these resources to further your Sinatra knowledge:

• http://ididitmyway.heroku.com/
• http://www.sinatrarb.com/documentation

Get Started with Rails 3 and RVM

Presentation I gave at the Spokane Ruby User Group. Wednesday March 3rd, 2010.

Attributes Sort on Github and Gemcutter

For fun and to try out Gemcutter I turned AttributesSort into a gem and put it up on Gemcutter. I used Jeweler to do all the hard work for me. it was super easy! You can view source code and specs on Github.

Flexible Sort turns into Attributes Sort

I was looking at my old blog posts and saw this one (Flexible Sort) from about a year and a half ago. I thought I'd tweak it a bit and see if I could make it more useful.
Below is what you see I've come up with. I've made the calling code off of array instead of a static method on the class type. I like it better. If anyone sees improvements they want to do with it then feel free to fork the gist on github. :) I'll probably throw some tests on this bad boy, gemify it, and throw it up on gemcutter eventually.

Boy Scout Rule

So I was happily coding the other day and ran across some code new to me. Mind you we used to have something like 8 developers on our team over the last couple of years and now we have 3. So naturally there are parts of the codebase I have not seen before. Anyway, the code looked like this:



I saw the todos commented above each method and thought I could tidy these up a bit. It wouldn't take long. So here is what I ended up with:



It took me five minutes and was a nice confidence booster to keep me going on my regular task at hand. So the lesson for the day is follow the "boy scout rule" which is nicely described here by Uncle Bob Martin: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1235624&seqNum=6

Code Kata: Simple Content Tag

In this video I test drive code to build a simple content tag class. This was presented at Spokane/CDA Ruby User Group on Oct 7th, 2009. Enjoy!
Code for the video is on Github: http://github.com/kblake/Code-Kata-Exercise

Tools used:

• Jeweler


• Rspactor


• MacVim


• Rspec

Click on link below to view screen-cast in High Definition.

Code Kata: Simple Content Tag from Karmen Blake on Vimeo.

Ruby Chops: rubyisms 2 with metaprogramming examples