Merlin Mann reports that 43folders.com was mentioned on an All Things Considered discussion about Getting Things Done on NPR. As such he has provided a ‘Best of GTD‘ on his blog. Good reads!

So I am working on a Rails project that revolves around an acts_as_tree using single table inheritence (STI). I got tired REALLY quickly with figuring out what id to use for each parent_id field. I figured that in the spirit of Don’t Repeat Yourself I would come up with a DRY way to specify the parents that did not require reapplying the id’s to the fixtures when I change things.

Since the YAML fixtures in ruby are parsed through eRb first, I thought I would give this a try. I made a file called thing_data.yml with my fixtures like so:

root:
  name: root item
  parent_id:
first_branch:
  name: a branch
  parent_id: root
second_branch:
  name: another branch
  parent_id: root
a_leaf:
  name: a leaf on the wind
  parent_id: first_branch

Notice the utter lack of ids. Now with a little eRb magic we put the following in the yaml file you plan to load as your fixture. Lets call it thing.yml:

<%

id_key = 1

data = YAML.load_file(
  File.expand_path(
    File.dirname( __FILE__ ) + '/test/fixtures/thing_data.yml'
  )
)

@final = Hash.new
data.each {|key, value|

  record = Hash.new

  record.update( value )
  record['id'] = id_key
  record[ 'created_at' ] = Time.now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
  record[ 'updated_at' ] = Time.now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")

  @final[ key ] = record

  id_key = id_key.next
}  

thing_ids = Hash.new

@final.each { |key, value|
  thing_ids[ key ] = value[ 'id' ]
}

@final.each { |key, value|
  value[ 'parent_id' ] = thing_ids[ value[ 'parent_id' ] ]
}
%>
<%= @final.to_yaml %>

To test, run erb thing.yml and see your output. No more hand coding of ids and hoping you didn’t put something in the wrong place!

[tags]ruby, rails, dry, fixtures, testing[/tags]

“Interuption is not work.”

“Collabrative software turns collaboration into a passive activity, not an active activity.”

Check it out here.

E-mail is a great tool that is being used in the wrong way all over in American businesses today. Have you ever gotten an email from someone in the next cube asking if you want to go to lunch? I have. Have you ever asked someone to go to lunch with you and heard them say “I can’t. I am waiting on an important e-mail.” E-mail is a misused tool and like using a sledgehammer to put a nail in the wall to hang a picture, misused tools result in people getting hurt. (more…)

“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

- Herbert Simon, “Computers, Communications and the Public Interest”

[tags]quote,attention[/tags]