Project update

I posted last week about my progress with test/spec as I started work on a new project. Since then, I’ve expanded my spec quite a bit. I’ve really found BDD to be a lot of fun. The cycle of thinking up a spec and then going through the red-green-refactor cycle has really allowed me to bulk up my app without even firing up a web browser. This is something that I always seemed to struggle with in TDD for one reason or another.

I just got word from my doctor today that I’m still 7 weeks or so from going back to work (my surgery is booked for this Thursday) so I’m hoping to have this little app up and running by the time I go back to work. For the most part, it’s not the coding that’s slowing me down. Instead, it’s all of the research that I’m doing as I implement some of the niftier features in Rails and all of the plugins that are out there. In fact, I’m having a hard time stopping myself from researching features that I won’t be implementing right away.

Here’s the short-list of features that I’ve either already learned or will be learning:

• BDD using test/spec or RSpec
• OpenID authentication
• REST as a web API
• REST authentication
• handling different MIME types (i.e. iCal, JSON) within a respondto block in Rails REST
• using CC.rb for continuous integration
• actsascommentable plugin
• actsas_voteable plugin
• simple design for a CSS-driven XHTML site that uses semantic markup
• how to use AJAX where it should be used rather than where it can be used
• deployment to a remote host (Dreamhost) using Capistrano
• managing plugins using Piston
• using Heckle rather than a coverage analysis tool

Right now, I’m knee deep in the second edition of Programming Ruby and I’ve got to say that it’s a fantastic book! I’ve definitely been enjoying Ruby as I get more familiar with it but still get stumped on some of the syntax or the idioms. This book is helping with that. I’m now starting to think that the greatest feature of Ruby on Rails is the Ruby language itself.

Feel free to follow along with the progress of my project at svn.sideline.ca/piper. For now, it’s codenamed Piper in honour of Piper’s Pale Ale from Vancouver Island Brewery.