Nathan Colgate

mProjector 4 Windows Fixes

We’re a mac shop.  Anytime we have to go back to a PC, I’m not a fan.  These are notes for any future development, and if you can get use out of them: great.

Problem 1) We couldn’t get our mProjector apps to run on a PC.  They would compile, but not run.  And not even give the nice “Please go download adobe flash player” messages.  We were getting the full blown windows error.

Turns out: we had installed flash player from firefox.  This, apparently, is not the same thing as installing the flash player from internet explorer.  Once we did that, we could run the applications.

Problem 2) We certainly didn’t want our clients running into the same issues. Solution is to include flash player with the build, right?  Well, for some unknown reason, our app doesn’t like flash player 10.0.32.18 that comes bundled with mProjector. Opening this page in IE showed that we were running 10.1.53.64 (Note visiting that link in FF shows that were were running 10.0.32.18).  But why couldn’t we choose that from the drop down?

Turns out: This one took a call to ScreenTime’s Jim Roberts.  He pointed me in the direction of this folder on our PC:

C:\Program Files\mProjector 4\Flash Players\Win

Which has a bunch of .ocx files that correspond to the available flash players for inclusion in our projector.  He said I should find a newer .ocx file and see how it works.  With a little bit of searching I found this folder:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash

Which had a Flash10h.ocx file, which I copied to the mProjector flash players folder.  After restarting mProjector, I was able to choose Flash10h as a included player, and the app built and launched fine.

Problem 3) The app is freaking slow-as-molasses on a PC! It’s speedy in the browser, speedy on my Mac, but on this PC it’s moving at about 0.5 fps. 

Turns out: I hate this kind of stuff.  I’m throwing in the towel here. If you have any insight into what we can do to speed this application up, please let me know.

Rails 3 ActionMailer and Delayed Job

What I’d like to do:

message = Notifier.password_reset_instructions(self)
Delayed::Job.enqueue MailerJob.new(message)

What happens when I do:

TypeError in Public/password resetsController#create
can’t dump anonymous class Class
…
/lib/delayed/backend/base.rb:61:in `payload_object=’

Problem line 61:

self[‘handler’] = object.to_yaml

Console confirms:

> user = User.find(:first)
> message = Notifier.password_reset_instructions(user)
> message.to_yaml
TypeError: can’t dump anonymous class Class

How I fixed it. Note: all of my notifier methods take a user argument, so I thought this was a little cleaner than coming up with a new job class for every email method:

Delayed::Job.enqueue NotifierJob.new(:password_reset_instructions,user_id)

And my lib/notifier_job.rb file:

class NotifierJob < Struct.new(:notifier_method,:user_id)
  def perform
    user = User.find(user_id)
    Notifier.send(notifier_method,user).deliver
  end
end 

Hope that helps.

How to Rename a File on S3 with right_aws and Keep Permissions

Because this took way too much time to figure out:

s3=RightAws::S3Interface.new(S3SwfUpload::S3Config.access_key_id, S3SwfUpload::S3Config.secret_access_key)
old_name = "tmp/#{self.video_file_name}"
new_name = original_video_file_path
bucket = S3SwfUpload::S3Config.bucket
(1..5).each do |try|
  begin
    acl_prop = s3.get_acl(bucket, old_name)
    s3.rename(bucket, old_name, new_name)
    s3.put_acl(bucket, new_name, acl_prop[:object])
    break
  rescue Exception => e
    self.video_log += "Problem renaming file, trying again... #{e}\n"
    sleep 1
  end
end

Dealing with Exception Notifier and Rails 2.3.3

I installed Exception Notifier on one of our Apps running Rails 2.3.3 and kept running into this error:

Net::SMTPFatalError (555 5.5.2 Syntax error..

A little bit of insight provided this heads up:

But as of Rails 2.3.3, the from email address will get the angle brackets added, so it can only contain the address.

Rails 2.3.4 is/was supposed to fix that, and includes tests so it will be ensured in future versions.

A quick look at the Exception Notifier README and I tried this:

ExceptionNotifier.sender_address = %("app.error@myapp.com)

Success!

Adding Email and User Verification to AuthLogic

The Session

class UserSession < Authlogic::Session::Base

  validate :check_if_verified



  private



  def check_if_verified

    errors.add(:base, "You have not yet verified your account") unless attempted_record && attempted_record.verified

  end

end

The Migration

class AddVerifiedToUser < ActiveRecord::Migration

  def self.up

    add_column :users, :verified, :boolean, :default => false

  end



  def self.down

    remove_column :users, :verified

  end

end

The User Controller

class UsersController < ApplicationController



  ...



  def create

    @user = User.new(params[:user])

    if @user.save

      flash[:notice] = "Thanks for signing up, we've delivered an email to you with instructions on how to complete your registration!"

      @user.deliver_verification_instructions!

      redirect_to root_url

    else

      render :action => :new

    end

  end

end

The Verification Controller

class UserVerificationsController < ApplicationController



  before_filter :load_user_using_perishable_token



  def show

    if @user

      @user.verify!

      flash[:notice] = "Thank you for verifying your account. You may now login."

    end

    redirect_to root_url

  end



  private



  def load_user_using_perishable_token

    @user = User.find_using_perishable_token(params[:id])

    flash[:notice] = "Unable to find your account." unless @user

  end



end

The User Model

class User < ActiveRecord::Base

  acts_as_authentic



  def deliver_password_reset_instructions!  

    reset_perishable_token!  

    Notifier.deliver_password_reset_instructions(self)  

  end



  def verify!

    self.verified = true

    self.save

  end

The Mailer

class Notifier < ApplicationMailer

  default_url_options[:host] = "www.myurl.org"  



  def verification_instructions(user)

    subject       "Email Verification"

    from          "myurl"

    recipients    user.email

    sent_on       Time.now

    body          :verification_url => user_verification_url(user.perishable_token)

  end

end

The Mailer View

Thank you for signing up for this site. Please click the following link to verify your email address:

<%= @verification_url %>

If the above URL does not work, try copying and pasting it into your browser. If you continue to have problems, please feel free to contact us.