skater coder

Dan Weinand and Luke Francl have written a nice plugin which simplifies the task of retrieving emails. Kudos to them!

So basically what you need to do is install the plugin, create the Action Mailer receiver, and then use cron to schedule the script to run

Here are the steps:

First install the fetcher plugin from http://github.com/look/fetcher/ and SystemTimer gem it requires

$ script/plugin install git://github.com/look/fetcher.git
$ sudo gem install SystemTimer

Create your ruby script eg. script/mail_fetcher

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../config/environment.rb'
 
require 'system_timer'
require 'yaml'
require 'fetcher'
 
 
begin
  puts "Start checking email"
 
  Lockfile.new('cron_mail_fetcher.lock', :retries => 0) do
    config = YAML.load_file("#{RAILS_ROOT}/config/mail.yml")
    config = config[RAILS_ENV].to_options
 
    fetcher = Fetcher.create({:receiver => EnquiryMailer}.merge(config))
    fetcher.fetch
  end
rescue Lockfile::MaxTriesLockError => e
  puts "Another fetcher is already running. Exiting."
end

Create the config/mail.yml file

defaults: &defaults
  # Settings for gmail
  type: imap                # pop OR imap
  server: imap.gmail.com  # server hostname
  port: 993                 # 993 for IMAPs
  ssl: true                 # Remove if not using SSL
  username: user@gmail.com    # Username
  password: xxx                # Password
  use_login: true           # Required for GMAIL
  processed_folder: processed
  error_folder: error
 
 # settings for bluehost
  type: imap                # pop OR imap
  server: boxXXX.bluehost.com  # server hostname
  port: 993                 # 993 for IMAPs
  ssl: true                 # Remove if not using SSL
  username: user@domain.com    # Username
  password: xxx                # Password
  use_login: true
  processed_folder: INBOX.processed
  error_folder: INBOX.error
 
development:
  <<: *defaults
  # Override other values here
 
test:
  <<: *defaults
  # Override other values here
 
production:
  <<: *defaults
  # Override other values here

Create your Action Mailer

$ script/generate mailer EnquiryMailer

Add the receiver in app/models/enquiry_mailer.rb

class EnquiryMailer < ActionMailer::Base
  def receive(email)
    # do whatever you want with the email here
    # you can use:
    # email.subject, email.from, email.body
  end
end

Run the script

$ script/runner script/mail_fetcher

Then follow Ryan Bate’s screencast on how to use Cron in Ruby

Resources

• http://guides.rubyonrails.org/action_mailer_basics.html
• http://railspikes.com/2007/6/1/rails-email-processing
• Railscasts: Cron in Ruby

Was inspired to cook today :)

Found out how to make the sweet japanese style omelette, it was surprisingly easy!

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp sugar
• Dash of salt
• Mirin
• Fresh ginger juice
• Olive oil

Steps:

1. Beat eggs and mix in the ginger juice,  sugar, salt and mirin
2. Heat oil in small frying pan, I used those really small frying pans they sell to make the perfect sunny side up egg.
3. Pour the egg mixture into the frying pan and stir it so that it’s slightly scrambled, but don’t stir it too much or you will end up with scrambled eggs instead.
4. Let the eggs cook till it’s slightly brown on the bottom, then carefully flip it over to cook the other side.
5. That’s all!

Just recently launched a WordPress website for a very talented Singaporean bassist and composer, Wendy Phua.

Check out her site at www.wendyphua.com!

I was getting this error when trying to create a mailbox using create(mailbox) from Net::IMAP

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/opt/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/imap.rb:981:in `pick_up_tagged_response': Unknown namespace. (Net::IMAP::NoResponseError)

Realised that the processed and error mailboxes names had to be appended to “INBOX.”

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type: imap            
server: boxXXX.bluehost.com  
port: 993                
ssl: true               
username: username@domain.com 
password: xxx
use_login: true        
processed_folder: INBOX.processed
error_folder: INBOX.error

 Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Resource Kit Tools

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=56fc92ee-a71a-4c73-b628-ade629c89499&displaylang=en

Here’s a useful MySQL code snippet:

Select rows from table A that do not exist in table B

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SELECT FROM A WHERE id NOT IN (SELECT id FROM B)

Need to install PHP zip on your mac?

It’s easy :)

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$sudo pecl install zip

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sudo aptitude install memcached
 
sudo aptitude install libmemcache-dev
 
sudo gem install RubyInline
 
sudo gem install memcache-client

in application.rb

Uncomment the protect_from_forgery

in environment.rb

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CACHE = MemCache.new 'localhost:11211', :namespace => 'your_app'
 
config.action_controller.session = {
:session_key => '_your_app_session',
:secret      => 'yoursecrectkey',
:cache       => CACHE,
:expires=> 900  }
 
config.action_controller.session_store = :mem_cache_store

In the /etc/my.cnf file add

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[mysqld]
#
# * Basic Settings
#
 
# utf8
init-connect='SET NAMES utf8'
character-set-server=utf8
collation-server=utf8_general_ci
default-collation=utf8_general_ci

View the railscast on using thoughtbot’s paperclip

http://railscasts.com/episodes/134-paperclip

or

attach multiple images to a model using polymorphic paperclip

http://burm.net/2008/10/17/ruby-on-rails-polymorphic-paperclip-plugin-tutorial/