erratic

jQuery When the DOM isn't reacting to your javascript selectors as expected try a little specificity: instead of this: do this:

Got this error when loading a rails site served under my local apache" I updated my passenger gem and regenerated the apache passenger module, updated the httpd.conf at it was all good after that.

Javascript has to know what 'it' is before Javascript can tell if 'it' is what you want 'it' to be. Example: Result: ReferenceError: unreferencedVariableName is not defined so much to remember…

Where the error occured

Rails 2.1.2 / bundle_fu / Javascript file

Why the fu…?

A javascript files that ends with a line commented out. -1 is being compared to an empty string.

Fix

Add a blank line at the end of the Javscript file(s) that end with commented lines.

My favorite class name when styling a page is ‘padahoe’. If anyone ever asks what it stands for I’ll tell them “pad a horizontally oriented element”. Lies, damn lies, statistics.

When I commit to git I tend to flavor my commit messages with humorous snark, usually related to how something in the application is deviously circumventing my attempts to enforce my authority. My logic is shot through with regression insurgents.

FTP is way the fuck broke on my past the return product policy expiration date of my gigabit router. I want to hack it but A) I'm just not that skilled in the ways of *nix; b) I'm too lazy to learn mips cross-compiling for linux embedded systems (whatever the fuck that means).

So I google my incompetence as usual. Search for "rvs4000 ftp" and you get a whole lot of what you already know. The shits broke. No ones gonna fix the shit. You're ten kinds of fucked if you want to ftp anything, ever.

So I roll a search on the processor "star 9202" which drops me a few gems of badassery:
Hacking the WRVS4400NX Stock Firmware V1.1.03 for Full Linux Shell Access
http://openwrt.org/logs/openwrt.log.20071102

Not my model - but it appears the only difference betweenRVS4000 and the WRVS4400N is that the WRVS4400N has a wireless chipset - that is a separate processor to run the wireless services with.

So they seem to be the same except one does wireless and one does not. So I go to the diagnostics pages of the administration ui and start pasting in the different commands from the "Hacking the WRV44...." post to see what happens. No dice. The ftp no longer works - probably a good thing - so I start stumbling around the web glossing over many pages of stuff about busybox. I try pasting in all kinds of shell commands into the way not secure 'Traceroute Target:' field when I happen to get a command to try off of the busybox wikipedia page: ';/bin/ls' - I paste-a-bitch and wa-la:



Would you check that the fuck out!?! 'Hidden_telnet.html' I (again) paste-a-bitch and HOT DAMN if I don't get some purty radio buttons. And after i click yes in the little circle and save the settings hot damn if i don't have an insecure as all holy hell no login needed telnet accessible router spread wide open and waiting like a rufied sorority pledge coed at the frat kegger... and a quick test of my dyndns enabled domain confirms that yes, I do have world facing telnet access of my router sans any security. None, nada. Zero. Luckily I can uncheck my telnet access on my hidden telnet access page and then save settings so I longer have hidden telnet access.



Maybe I can use this knowledge to fix my ftp problem. Or to get my whole home network compromised.

Oh boy do I suck like a black hole. My bird flu typo theme had some major issues in the default.rhtml. So if you've downloaded it grab it again and trash the old one. Now Working: RSS Feeds; ajax comments; ajax admin menus...

Essential understanding: In php str_replace and preg_replace do function similarly yet if you want exact matches you have to specify your regexp pattern with serious prejudice lest you match ANY and ALL partial or exact string matches and fubar your sweet logic with redundant nasties. I consider knowing this progress. Next up is understanding the hows and whys of stringing methods in ruby... Feet don't fail me now!

Error handling in rails is very technical. The TextMate Backtracer Plugin has been invaluable to me in my development in recent days, yet it only gets me to the file(s) when something is amiss in the code.

Building and running tests is one way of confirming the functionality of your application, and I’m learning the power of good testing, be it quite slowly and with a lot of errors.I’ll get there.

Here is a short list of things I had to consider when flopping from code to browser during development and things kept blowing up in my face:

• Ruby/Rails has RESERVED WORDS. If you have a class/table that isn’t playing nice make sure you aren’t naming it with one of these. This is tantamount to pouring sugar in your gas tank. And then driving in reverse at full speed. While wearing a blindfold. With your hair on fire.

• Column names in your tables need to change with alterations to any class/model names, as well as any has_many/belongs_to associations along with any model inclusions in your controllers. If you’re not to invested in the code it’d probably be easier to regenerate a fresh app with the correct model/controller name. Running ./script/destroy (the arch nemesis of ./script/generate) can help in crime scene clean up, but you still have all those pesky symbols/variables/methods with the poison name throughout your app patiently waiting to spurt their demonic ire. Exterminate them with aggression.

• An objects information will carry from request to request in the session but you still have to stuff it into an instance variable inside whatever controller method is being called upon. I have a tingling sensation in my unmentionables that suggests session customization and databases can smooth out this bumpy road, but this strains the withering tethers of my sanity upon contemplation. I can only learn so much each day.

• Getting compile errors means you’re trying to bake a duck with a hammer on a string in a pail of kittens. It won’t work. Ruby/Rails doesn’t know or particularly care what you are trying to do, but how you are going about doing whatever it is you are trying to do will never, ever work no matter what. Get rid of whatever you added since the last time it worked and try again. Remember when you went to grandmas house and you had to take off your shoes and you weren’t supposed to go out into the field because you’d get muddy? Yeah, Rails has grandma rules that sometimes take all the fun out of life and make your feet cold.

Throwing away code is a part of development, just as throwing away designs is a part of being a designer. Having the willingness to let go of what’s not working makes room for what will. Even if what that is is nowhere to be seen at the moment.

The document object model is sweet, sweet nectar dripping from the bosoms of the gods. The supa-genius cats who whipped that shit up are rock solid, grade A badassmotherfuckers.

It’s like this, all you gotta do to interact with the areas of your image map is a little javascript:

var map = document.getElementsByTagName('area');

Now there’s an objectHTMLCollection , or if you prefer, an array named map containing all of the area tags in the document. My page has 6 area tags. I can read the id attribute from any of the objects in the map array by using the index like this:

map[0].id

The above would return:

northamerica

which is AWESOME! You’ll see why in a second.

Next up is to access and alter the background of the invisible gif I’m using as a mask to show small sections of the HUGE background image that contains all of the over states for my image map links.

I’ve conveniently given my transparent gif the id of mapimg so all I have to do to play with it is:

mapbg = document.getElementById('mapimg');

Now I have my transparent gif and it’s attributes all tucked inside my mapbg variable ready to be fondled and violated. Violate it I will.

I’m going to take the id from the area my mouse is over in the map array and use it to alter the className in my mapbg object.

Now the AWESOME part: the id ’s in my area ’s have corresponding classes in my css file! So by looping through my map array I can get the relevant area and feed it to the hungry ‘onmouseover’ and ‘onmouseout’ event handlers:

function readMap ()
 {
     var map, i;
     // get array of map area tags
     map = document.getElementsByTagName('area');
     for(i=0;i<map.length;i++)
     {
     map[i].onmouseover=function(){shift(this);};
     map[i].onmouseout=function(){shift(this);};
     }
 }

And then hand things over to the shift function for some background repositioning madness:

function shift (o)
 {
     var mapbg, id;
     id = o.id;
     mapbg = document.getElementById('mapimg');
    if(id == mapbg.className){
     mapbg.className = 'mapbase'; 
    }else{
     mapbg.className = id;
     }
 }

First up after I initialize my var’s is to grab the id attribute from where the mouse is and give it to a variable named id. The o* in that line is where ever the mouse is hovering on the image map. It was passed from *this inside our readMap function.

Then I get the current state of the image map’s background and test to see if I need to un-hover by seeing if my id and my className match. If they don’t I rewrite the className (class) of the transparent gif with the id attribute of the area the mouse is over.

So when you roll over North America:

<img src="spacer.gif" usemap="#Map" class="mapbase" id="mapimg" />

Would become:

<img src="spacer.gif" usemap="#Map" class="northamerica" id="mapimg" />

and so on… It won’t work if I don’t call the function when the page is loaded:

 window.onload=function(){
  readMap();
 }

The next iteration of this script would be to capture the initial class attribute of the transparent gif and store that for testing instead of hardcoding the default class value into the if statement of the shift function. Then the only thing needing to be changed to use this code with any image map is the getElementById() id value. As long as you have a corresponding class for each area’s id value it should travel from page to page rather painlessly.

Any comments from people smarter than me would rock as I’m new to this DOM/Javascript gig.