Tag Archives: ruby

Back links for your Ruby on Rails application

By Tony | Published: November 29, 2009
Here is a nice little helper I wrote to display back links: def back_link link_to "« Go Back", request.env["HTTP_REFERER"].blank? ? "/" : request.env["HTTP_REFERER"] end If you just use the HTTP_REFERER without checking if it’s blank, weird things can happen if someone lands on your page from an email, for example. If you enjoyed this post, make [...]
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How to quickly set up a test for Twitter OAuth authentication from your local machine

By Tony | Published: August 17, 2009
Working with API’s such as Twitter from your local machine can be a pain. A problem that comes up is Twitter does not let you set your callback URL to hit your localhost. If you are working with OAuth on your local machine and want to test the user authorization flow, you are screwed. [...]
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MySpace Statistics

By Tony | Published: August 2, 2009
I wrote scripts to look at over 2 million MySpace pages and extract data about over 80,000 bands on MySpace.
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The best time_select plugin for Ruby On Rails!

By Tony | Published: April 21, 2009
In some cases, the Ruby on Rails time_select helper is much uglier than it needs to be. It spits out 3 select boxes for the hour, minutes, and seconds. Your users do not always need accuracy to the minute. For example, you do not schedule doctor’s appointments for 3:13PM. You would at least [...]
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MySpace Band Statistics

By Tony | Published: April 1, 2008
Lately I’ve been doing a lot of research on social networks centered, at least partially, on music. In doing this, I began gathering some statistics on bands that use MySpace. I wanted to get a ballpark figure of how active bands are in the MySpace network. My friend Dan collaborated with me on writing some [...]
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