Add your Business to Facebook (for Free)!

From a business standpoint, Facebook’s killer feature is it’s Social Network, which gives even none-techies the ability to share nuggets of information found both on Facebook and the web at large with their friends.

What I didn’t realise until recently is that Facebook also allows businesses to set up pages inside the walled garden, that gives FB’s users the opportunity to show their support of your business by becoming ‘Fans’.

It doesn’t cost anything to set up a business page, which comes with a reporting tool that shows you just how many visits / page views / fans you’re getting per day, an update tool that allows you to send news items to your fans, and a bunch of advertising tools that you can use to promote your business page.

I set Bouldr up on the 21st November 2007 (check it out!), and already I have around 15 fans, with a slew of visitors coming from Facebook over to Bouldr’s main site. If you have a website that could benefit from a little social promotion, I’d suggest taking a look at Facebook’s business listing service – it’s free, so there is very little risk, really.

Rails 2 Mysql Error – A Gotcha that Got Us

Symptoms

• rake wouldn’t work
• script/server wouldn’t run

# Logfile created on Wed Nov 21 13:39:25 +0000 2007 by /
DEPRECATION WARNING: observer is deprecated and will be removed from Rails 2.0  See http://www.rubyonrails.org/deprecation for details. (called from ./script/../config/../app/controllers/account_controller.rb:3)
DEPRECATION WARNING: depend_on is deprecated and will be removed from Rails 2.0  See http://www.rubyonrails.org/deprecation for details. (called from observer_without_deprecation at ./script/../config/../vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/deprecated_dependencies.rb:29)
wrong number of arguments (1 for 0)
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/vendor/mysql.rb:566:in `initialize'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/vendor/mysql.rb:566:in `new'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/vendor/mysql.rb:566:in `scramble41'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/vendor/mysql.rb:144:in `real_connect'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/mysql_adapter.rb:389:in `connect'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/mysql_adapter.rb:152:in `initialize'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/mysql_adapter.rb:82:in `new'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/mysql_adapter.rb:82:in `mysql_connection'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstact/connection_specification.rb:262:in `send'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstrct/connection_specification.rb:262:in `connection_without_query_cache='
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/query_cache.rb:54:in `connection='
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstrat/connection_specification.rb:230:in `retrieve_connection'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstrac/connection_specification.rb:78:in `connection'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/base.rb:760:in `columns'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/base.rb:768:in `columns_hash'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/session/active_record_store.rb:105:in `setup_sessid_compatibility!'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/session/active_record_store.rb:79:in `find_by_session_id'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/session/active_record_store.rb:283:in `initialize'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/base.rb:864:in `silence'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/session/active_record_store.rb:283:in `initialize'
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/cgi/session.rb:273:in `new'
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/cgi/session.rb:273:in `initialize'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/cgi_process.rb:122:in `new'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/cgi_process.rb:122:in `session'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/cgi_process.rb:154:in `stale_session_check!'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/cgi_process.rb:109:in `session'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/base.rb:1052:in `assign_shortcuts_without_flash'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/flash.rb:140:in `assign_shortcuts'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/base.rb:424:in `process_without_filters'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/filters.rb:624:in `process_without_session_management_support'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/session_management.rb:114:in `process'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/base.rb:330:in `process'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/dispatcher.rb:41:in `dispatch'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/webrick_server.rb:113:in `handle_dispatch'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/webrick_server.rb:79:in `service'
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/webrick/httpserver.rb:104:in `service'
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/webrick/httpserver.rb:65:in `run'
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/webrick/server.rb:173:in `start_thread'
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/webrick/server.rb:162:in `start'
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/webrick/server.rb:162:in `start_thread'
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/webrick/server.rb:95:in `start'
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/webrick/server.rb:92:in `each'
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/webrick/server.rb:92:in `start'
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/webrick/server.rb:23:in `start'
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/webrick/server.rb:82:in `start'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/webrick_server.rb:63:in `dispatch'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/commands/servers/webrick.rb:59
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `gem_original_require'
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `require'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:496:in `require'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:343:in `new_constants_in'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:496:in `require'
./script/../config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/commands/server.rb:39
script/server:3:in `require'
script/server:3

Solution

Very simple – the machine that was running this app hadn’t got the mysql gem installed, therefore, simply running:

gem install mysql

sorted the problem out.

Mike Robertson Sends The Eiffel Tower

In protest at Total’s involvement in Burma, Mike Robertson solos the Eiffel Tower. (via)

High Fidelity (V13), Caley

Andrew Earl sends this Highball problem with perfect style – Amazing to watch!

Wheel of Life (V16)

Just Awesome.

Helper for Testing Model Validation in Unit Tests

Here’s a little snippet that I use to quickly form tests to ensure that my models validation is working correctly from within unit tests:

  # In test_helper.rb
  # Give this function an array of invalid values, an array of valid values, the object and
  # attribute name to test, and it will ensure that only valid values are allowed
  def validation_tester ( valid_values, invalid_values, attribute_name, test_object )
    valid_values.each do |val|
      test_object.[]=(attribute_name, val)
      assert test_object.save, "#{attribute_name} should be valid: #{test_object.[](attribute_name)}"
      assert test_object.valid?
      assert !test_object.errors.invalid?(attribute_name)
    end

    invalid_values.each do |val|
      test_object.[]=(attribute_name, val)
      assert !test_object.save, "#{attribute_name} should NOT be valid: #{val}"
      assert !test_object.valid?
      assert test_object.errors.invalid?(attribute_name)
    end
  end

Then, use it as follows in your unit tests:

  def test_email_validation
    valid_emails = ['matt@test.com', 'matt.hall@test.com', 'matt@test.ing.com', 'matt.hall@test.ing.com']
    invalid_emails = ['@test.com', 'test.com', 'matt@', 'matt.hall@com', '.matt@test.ing.co.uk', 'matt@@test.com', '', '.@.']

    u = create_user
    validation_tester( valid_emails, invalid_emails, 'email', u)
  end

Can anyone suggest any improvements?

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.