Blogging Without a Safety Net » Ruby on Rails

Rails-CMDB release 0.4.4

mrpurpleduck — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 17:36:16 +0000

I’ve released a new version of Rails-CMDB with some extra reports and behind the scenes improvements. Details behind the cut, it can be downloaded from here.

Add the following Operating Systems reports:
- Breakdown of Operating Systems (counts).
- Devices which are in sale Operating Systems.
- Devices which are in support Operating Systems.
Use a partial for the list of Operating Systems reports.
Use partials for reports where possible.

Rails-CMDB release 0.4.3

mrpurpleduck — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:54:43 +0000

I’ve released a new version of Rails-CMDB with some reports. Details behind the cut, it can be downloaded from here.

Add Reports Controller module.
Add the following Operating Systems reports:
- Devices with end of sale Operating Systems.
- Devices with end of support Operating Systems.
Add tests for Reports controller.

Rails-CMDB release 0.4.1

mrpurpleduck — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 22:24:39 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve managed to do a release of Rails-CMDB. This is mainly because I got stuck working parts of the test suite and I’ve been doing things that have kept me away from a computer.

However over the last few days I’ve managed to get an import integration story working, which seems to be working. I’ve also taken the chance to migrate to Ruby on Rails 1.2.5, but there are some DEPRECATION warnings still to dealt with.

Behind the cut is the changelog.

Use Rails version 1.2.5.
Added list_by_purchase_order page.
Fix some formatting issues with the side bar.
Fix some issues in importing of data.
Added some extra edit links to the device page.
Add environments export and import.
Correctly name CSV exports.
Added Export tests.
Added Import integration test.
Renamed the removed_on column in Assets to retired_on.
Many fixes from better unit, functional and integration tests.

It’s been a while…

mrpurpleduck — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:48:17 +0000

It’s been a while since I posted and this is mainly because I’ve been very busy with work and also trying to cut back on computer use for the last month.
Currently I’m managing to hold back on the upgrade to Leopard, however this is because some really important software is missing support and thus preventing me upgrading . I’m hoping that early December will give me the new shiny.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a talk at ScotRUG about StaticMatic and I’ve now ported my web site over to it from Website Meta Language. Now all that’s left is working round HAMLs handling of content within pre tags and updating the site so it looks like something created the in latter half of this decade instead of the late 90′s.

Testing import of CSV imports in Ruby on Rails

mrpurpleduck — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:42:10 +0000

It’s been a few weeks since I did any work on Rails-CMDB. This is mainly down me being busy and getting stuck on how to test the import of data. I’ve come to the conclusion that it really is an integration story, so now the problem is how to do the file uploads.

It’ll not be hard to generate a complete set of CSV files and place them on disk, but my issue would be how to upload them. Does anyone have any useful suggestions ?

Rails-CMDB release 0.4

mrpurpleduck — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 15:45:28 +0000

It’s taken a long time to get this release of Rails-CMDB ready for release, as I’ve done some tidying of the code base, plus adding lots of unit and functional tests. I’ve also improved the the views into the database and added the notation of Environments within Locations.

The source code can be found here. Not sure what is going to be in the next version, however I would like to get a public Subversion repository set up when I feel the testing good enough to catch any issues.

See below the cut for the (incomplete) change logs for version 0.4 (and the unreleased 0.3).

Changes in version 0.4

Added functional tests.
Updated (and added more) Unit tests.
Many minor fixes and improvements.
Added List devices by site page.
Removed unused welcome controller.
Use link_to for Home links instead of hard coding.
Added a default mongrel_cluster.yml file (prefix: /rails-cmdb, and 10 servers).
Renamed os model to operating_systems.
Reduced the ActiveRecord timeout to be less that MySQL session timeout.
Added support to add/update non-required date fields in controllers for models that needed them.

Changes in version 0.3, which was not released.

Added unit tests for all models.
Added functional tests for the login and admin controller’s
Renamed date fields to follow Rails conventions (ending in _on instead of _date).
Remove some unused fixtures.
Enforce uniqueness of name attribute in the following models:
- Hardware
- IpAddress
Enforce presence of manufacturer_id in Model Model.
Clean up uniqueness and presence statements in User.
Enforce uniqueness of name in Os Model.
Enforce presence of vendor_id and ordered_on in PurchaseOrder Model.
Rename serial_number attribute to name in the Hardware model.
Updates to the version 0.2 CHANGELOG entry.

Testing Love and Ruby on Rails

mrpurpleduck — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 17:29:00 +0000

For the last couple of weeks in some of my spare time I’ve being writing unit and functional tests for Rails-CMDB. So far it’s helped me spot a more than a few issues, the most surprising to me was the naming of my os controller, which the functional test tried to test as O. So currently I’m in the process of refactoring things to mesh better with the Rails idiom.

The main upshot of all of this; it’s likely to be early October before the next release of Rails-CMDB, and the version number is very likely to jump a few points due to unreleased versions.

I’m also contemplating what new features the next released version will have and so far I’m thinking of the following:

Environments: Separating out different types of devices within the same location (e.g. test, stage and production).
Virtual Machines: Modeling devices that are virtual and running as a guest on physical device.

The Ruby on Rails way for Model naming

mrpurpleduck — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 20:58:32 +0000

Following the comment from Graeme Mathieson on my last post on Rails-CMDB about the the Rails way for naming of columns within Models. I’m planning on doing the following column rename for the next release of Rails-CMDB:

rename_column :assets, :delivery_date, :delivered_on
rename_column :assets, :removal_date, :removed_on

rename_column :locations, :start_date, :started_on
rename_column :locations, :end_date, :ended_on

rename_column :purchase_orders, rder_date, rdered_on

rename_column :vendors, :last_order_date, :stopped_ordering_on

So the question for the Rails coders out there – does this seem correct ? There’s also a single table who’s primary field is not called name, so I guess to do it in the Rails way it should be changed as well.

I’ve also created about 90 unit test stubs and now just comes the hard part of coding the tests

Rails-CMDB release 0.2

mrpurpleduck — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:42:17 +0000

Well it’s been a month since the first release of Rails-CMDB and it’s now time for another release. This is the rather large list of changes:

Added some unit tests for PurchaseOrder.
Added Export to CSV.
Added Import from CSV.
An asset can have many hardware items.
The Asset name does not need to be a number.
Catch trying to show a device that does not exist.
Add order_date column to PurchaseOrder Model.
Rename order_date column in Asset to delivery_date.
Correct typo’s in CreateNetworks which prevented loading of the schema.
Rename the database’s used to match the application name.
Added some simple doc’s on getting the system up and running.
Change to using host: 127.0.0.1 in database.yml instead of sockets.

The source code can be found here. Not sure what is going to be in the next version, however I expect it’ll not be ready for release until mid to late September.

First release of Rails-CMDB (v0.1)

mrpurpleduck — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 10:41:58 +0000

This is the first ever release (0.1) of Rails-CMDB, the Ruby on Rails project I’ve been working on since the end of last month. It’s best described as little rough round the edges and the under laying DB schema may change with no upgrade path. However it’s possible to enter (and change) all of information via the interface and also view all details for a device on a single page.

The source code can be found here on my main web site, I’ll try to do a second release within the next few weeks when I get an idea of what’s needed next (I’m currently thinking it’ll need to be import or export via an Excel speed sheet or a CSV file).

Update: It’s been pointed out the me that I did not say what this software is, you can find a lot more details ITIL defines as a configuration management database (cmdb) in this post from last month.