A new gem to help monitor Postgres performance in standalone instances

I just released my own gem for querying Postgres Databases for performance issues. I had used Heroku PG Extras and the Go Boundless New Relic Postgres plugin previously. Each are excellent tools with a lot of overlap. The holes for each-- hosting on Heroku needed for PG Extras and the lack of visibility into the queries themselves on New Relic-- pushed me to write this gem. My aim is to build an engine on it that will display the stats in screens that can be plugged into an application. We'll see how that goes.

Using table_for with HTML elements in Active Admin

Ah yes another foray into ActiveAdmin. Recently I needed to use the table_for feature on a show page and add some html options to it. This required looking into the code itself as the documentation was not exactly clear in either ActiveAdmin or Arbre. Essentially you need to do something like this:

    table_for agent.quotes, {:id => 'agent_quotes'} do
      column 'Quote Number' do |quote|
        quote.slug
      end
      column 'Business' do |quote|
        quote.business.name
      end
      column 'Status' do |quote|
        quote.state
      end
      column '' do |quote|
        link_to 'View Quote', admin_quote_path(quote.id)
      end
    end

It was as simple as adding a hash with the needed items after the collection for the table_for:

table_for collection, {:id => 'html_id', :class => 'html_class'}

Flay, a gem to help improve the maintainability of your code

Recently I read a post where the author listed the must have gems for rails development. Being an avid watcher of Railscasts I knew many of them however one, flay, caught my attention. It comes out of the Seattle Ruby group which also brought us flog.

Flay is along the same lines as Flog; it analyzes your code looking for issues. Rather than looking for tortured code though it is looking for similar or duplicate code blocks. You install with `gem install flay` and then run it against your files, e.g.:

flay ./app/models/*.rb

A report is generated of the suspect areas like this:

macscott:test-project scottshea$ flay ./app/models/*.rb
Total score (lower is better) = 1666

1) Similar code found in :call (mass = 170)
  ./app/models/level.rb:8
  ./app/models/level.rb:9
  ./app/models/level.rb:10
  ./app/models/level.rb:11
  ./app/models/level.rb:15
  ./app/models/level.rb:17
  ./app/models/level.rb:19
  ./app/models/level.rb:20
  ./app/models/level.rb:22
  ./app/models/level.rb:23

2) Similar code found in :defs (mass = 154)
  ./app/models/item_step.rb:260
  ./app/models/response.rb:195

3) Similar code found in :defs (mass = 138)
  ./app/models/feedback.rb:62
  ./app/models/hint.rb:54
  ./app/models/subtitle.rb:51

4) Similar code found in :call (mass = 136)
  ./app/models/level.rb:12
  ./app/models/level.rb:13
  ./app/models/level.rb:14
  ./app/models/level.rb:16
  ./app/models/level.rb:18
  ./app/models/level.rb:21
  ./app/models/level.rb:24
  ./app/models/level.rb:25

5) IDENTICAL code found in :defn (mass*2 = 128)
  ./app/models/report_generator.rb:7
  ./app/models/summary_report_generator.rb:7

6) IDENTICAL code found in :defn (mass*2 = 120)
  ./app/models/image.rb:17
  ./app/models/sharded_image.rb:23

[truncated]

The total app score of 1666 can be viewed in its individual components showing areas that provide the most bang for the buck. For experienced developers operating on their own or in a small team Flay may be unnecessary. However, on larger projects (as the one I ran it on) or those with beginner or intermediate programmers it can help increase the maintainability of your codebase.

I am not sure where the 1666 would rank on the overall chart (is that really bad? representative?) but the 'lower is better' advice holds true. This Stackoverflow question offers some interpretation of the score but really the best advice is "don't let it get higher!"

Using Sidekiq with Faye to notify client web pages and applications of updates

Recently I was given a small coding challenge of how I would update sites & client applicaitons with notifications of content being released. My mind immediately flew to the faye gem. However, this would be a serious block if my app had to halt everything to send out the notification to a bunch of browsers. So, I added in Sidekiq. In the Content Model I put this to call out to Sidekiq:

  def self.release_next
    ContentWorker.perform_async
  end

The ContentWorker then looks like this:

class ContentWorker
  include Sidekiq::Worker
  sidekiq_options queue: "content"

  def perform
    next_release = Content.next_release(Content.last_release)
    # puts the data into JSON format; for actual content it could encode a url that is then loaded
    vars = ["title" => next_release.title,
             "site" => next_release.site,
             "released_at" => next_release.released_at.strftime("%l:%M:%S %p %m-%d-%Y")].to_json
    message = {:channel => "/releases", :data => vars, :ext => {:auth_token => FAYE_TOKEN}}

    uri = URI.parse(FAYE_SUBSCRIPTION_PATH)
    Net::HTTP.post_form(uri, :message => message.to_json)
    next_release.update_attribute(:released_at, DateTime.now)
  end
end

I created a designated queue in Sidekiq for the messages and then made the Faye channel creation configurable via an environment variable from an initializer file (/config/initializers/faye_configuration.rb):

FAYE_SUBSCRIPTION_PATH = "http://localhost:9292/faye"

The client then just listens in on the Faye channel and acts upon a message coming through. Here is the Javascript I wrote for listening to the Channel and adding the new release to the top of the view table just below the headers:

$(function() {
   var faye = new Faye.Client("http://192.168.0.12:9292/faye");
   faye.subscribe("/releases", function(data) {
      add_to_table(data);
   });
});

function add_to_table(data){
    var json_obj = jQuery.parseJSON(data);
    var $content_table = $('#content_table');
    if ($content_table.find('tr').length >= 10 ) {
        $content_table.find("tr:last").remove();
    }
    $("#header").after("<tr><td>" + json_obj[0].title+ "</td><td>" + json_obj[0].site + "</td><td>" + json_obj[0].released_at + "</td></tr>");
}

All in all a nice little challenge. I have not had a chance to try it out beyond my home network yet so I am not sure how performant the solution would be.

Railscasts used for this:
Faye
Sidekiq

Current Rails Project

Currently I am working with a company that is upgrading their Rails 1.2.3 app to Rails 3.0.13. We decided not to tackle the asset pipeline in this go around.

In production their app resides on a Windows server hosted inside the clients walls and operates off of MS-SQL. I have it up and running on my Windows box at home while I work on an Ubuntu laptop. I am trying to make it as agnostic as possible so that should a client want the Rails app on a Linux server there is little to change. Who knows how successful this will be.

Customary Introduction Post

The title of my blog comes from the fact that I have a cat who will sit on my lap staring at the screen while I try to write code. I am taking the stance that he wants to learn what I am doing rather than he is really saying "Srsly? You should read a best practices book."

I am a mid-range Ruby/Rails developer at this stage. Proficient in some areas, woefully lacking in others. Also, because I have only had one 'longish' term assignment I have had to hop around from Windows to Linux to Mac and from Rails 1.2.3 to 2.3.n to 3.n.

I find myself learning a lot of things... sometimes repeatedly... so I decided to start blogging about it as a way to take notes and possibly help someone else-- hopefully more than just providing a "don't do this!" example.