upgrading to vagrant 1.2.x

Its been a while since i've done any updates on my vagarant installations.

Seems like the project has improved alot for the past six months specially in supporting multiple providers easily, i decided to upgrade my vagarant installation to the latest. here are the steps i followed.

1. download the latest package from vagrant
http://downloads.vagrantup.com/tags/v1.2.2

2. install the package using the osx package manager

3. update the vagrantfile to reflect the changes they made to config
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "ubuntu_precise64"
  config.vm.provider :virtualbox do |vb|
    vb.customize ["setextradata", :id, "VBoxInternal2/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate/v-root", "1"]   
  end
  config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 1337, host: 5001
  config.vm.provision :chef_solo do |chef|
    chef.cookbooks_path = "cookbooks"
    chef.add_recipe("nodejs")
  end
end

4. it seems like with the latest update they require medata file within the box, so i decided to add my base box once again
vagrant box add ubuntu_precise64 {{path to .box file}}

5. Success.
vagrant up

 This should work seamlessly. I'm planning to try out #puppet instead of #chef in my setup. i will write down my notes on it on a future article. 

Vagrant, Chef and Node - Part 2

This is a continuation from the previous blog post in learning how to set up chef script to use a local file instead of downloading the required files from the internet every time the VM is initialized.

Two scenarios:

1. have the source code locally so chef only have to compile it
2. have the package file locally so chef only have to install it using the package manager

Have the source code locally:

This was the first experiment so dont expect any code quality on it. (its added as a todo task already)
1. Create folder - cookbooks/nodejs/files
2. Create folder - cookbooks/nodejs/files/default
3. Download http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.8.6/node-v0.8.6.tar.gz (nodejs source)
4. Move the tar file to default folder
5. Comment the following lines from /cookbooks/nodejs/recipes/install_from_source.rb
#remote_file "/usr/local/src/#{nodejs_tar}" do
#  source nodejs_src_url
#  checksum node['nodejs']['checksum']
#  mode 0644
#end
6. Add the following lines instead
cookbook_file "/usr/local/src/#{nodejs_tar}" do
    action :create
    source "node-v0.8.6.tar.gz"
    mode 0644
end
7. destroy the VM and initialize it again using 'vagrant up'
8. Done!!

Todo:

1. Update the recipe to have this as a config option so I can propose the change back to the author of the recipe
2. Make the same changes on the install_from_package.rb

It still takes too long to startup (430seconds) and i suspect that most of that time is spent on downloading build-essential tools and compiling node from source. I hope this will be fixed once i introduce locally saved packaged file.

Vagrant , chef and Node

This is a note to myself, mostly to make sure I will not forget what I learned during set-up of the dev environment for NodeJs development. If you find it useful feel free to drop a comment on the post.

Steps followed:

1. installed vagrant and virtualbox using the osx package manager
2. Execute 'vagrant init' using terminal
3. This will create a sample 'Vagrantfile' config file
(as i didnt have the base VM downloaded yet, i had to download it )
4.vagrant box add ubuntu_lucid64 http://files.vagrantup.com/lucid64.box
5. Add the following line to Vagrantfile
config.vm.box = "ubuntu_lucid64"
6. Enable port forwarding to access the VM through the local IP address. (where 1337 is the port in the VM and 5001 is the port of the host machine)
config.vm.forward_port 1337, 5001
7. Create a folder named 'cookbooks' within the project folder
8. Download the nodejs recipe from chef community and put it to cookbooks folder
9. Add the following lines to the vagrantfile
config.vm.provision :chef_solo do |chef|
 chef.cookbooks_path = "cookbooks"
 chef.add_recipe("nodejs")
end
10. Execute 'vagrant up'
11. Execute 'vagrant ssh'
12. When you try to install node modules using npm within the VM you will always get error msgs saying "symlinks failure" (this is because virtualbox VMs cannot create symlinks with its default settings). so include the following line on the vagrantfile in order to change the default settings.
config.vm.customize ["setextradata", :id, "VBoxInternal2/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate/v-root", "1"]
13. Execute 'vagrant reload'
14. Write an node server which listens to 0.0.0.0:1337
var http = require('http');
var url = require('url');
http.createServer(function(req,res){
}).listen(1337,'0.0.0.0');
15. Test the connection by visiting localhost:5001 from your host machine browser.
16. Done!!

Points to remember when writing the node scripts:

1. If you are writing a server listening to a port using NodeJs make sure its listening to the IP address '0.0.0.0:1337' (otherwise you will not be able to access the site using hostmachineip:5001)

Todo:

1. Write a custom receipe for installing required packages using npm within the VM
2. find out how to install node using a binary saved in the local machine than rebuilding from the source - already completed. http://rarepraveen.blogspot.com/2012/12/vagrant-chef-and-node-part-2.html
3. write a separate blog post on how I used 'node dbox' (node library for dropbox APIs) to write a sample application

Okay that's it for the moment. If you know any tips that could help another dev's life easier feel free to share them as comments.

importing PHP projects to a fresh aptana 2.0

after long usage of notepad++ and vim for all my development needs, i wanted to try out a proper opensource IDE to see whether it could really improve my efficiency in development.

as i have worked with eclipse and netbeans before in various projects i thought i will give a try on aptana studio this time. after all it was build on eclipse eco system where you can choose to install 1000s of eclipse plugins available out there.

so i downloaded a fresh copy of aptana and installed it. the installation process was really fast. and once installed when i was trying to create a default web project i realized they don't support php by default. thats a little bit weird provided that php is one of the most widely used languages on the web development. so for their aptana studio 3 i wish they will be able to support few more different types of projects by default rather than getting the user to install them manually.

installing PDT on aptana was really a joke (seriously). both PDT 1 and 2 failed miserably on aptana studio 2. well i a little bit of googling linked me to this great article where barmus explained how to install the aptana 1.5 PHP module into aptana studio 2.

[Thanks for the great article bram, it really was a life saver]

once installed it wasnt much hard to import my previous projects into aptana, all i had to do was to follow the steps mentioned below to get it up and running like a charm.
1. goto file -> import
2. choose other -> existing folder as a new project
3. once created right click on the project and click "properties"
4. on the dialog goto "project natures" and select "PHP nature" and press ok.
5. let aptana re-open the project automatically to apply the settings

and now you have your project opened in aptana as a PHP project.

I'm going to continue to play with aptana and see what it has in it for me when it comes to my lame development habbits.

feel free to let me know if there any more sweet plugins that i should look into, or if there were any other way you guys managed to get aptana to run PHP projects.

easy product management with quickPad

"sometimes learning abt new technologies and frameworks seems to be a quiet frustrating task, but at the end it always give good results."

that is what i exactly feel abt learning "ExtJs" (the javascript framework). it was not an easy task but finishing a Demo project for online product management totally using extJs but it was a good experience for me.

it hardly took a one and half weeks to complete this demo project which has category management, editable product grid, product search and dynamic PDF generation.

i'll attach some sample screens so then anyone can have a rough idea about the project.

1. product /category edit section

2. text box in the editable grid

3. drop down in the editable grid

4. preview window for image references

5. the product preview window

6. add category window

7. the multi selection preview mode with quick tooltips

8. dynamically generated PDF

this project is currently online http://www.quikpad.net.
 

some good change in directions of my career

Well i guess its high time for me to use my knowledge on client-end programming on real life projects.

It was just as sweet as wine to take a little break from backend development to break some rules in front-end. ;)

lets get ajaxified more and more. I will try to post as much i can during the months to come.

till then adios.

word cloud on my cv

just tryed wordle on my cv. it looks good.