1. ERROR: invalid SDK in BUILD.YML !
   iphonesimulator5.0 is NOT installed on this computer !

   Suggestion:
   XCode 4.3.2 comes with iphonesimulator5.1
   In build.yml change it like
   sdk: iphonesimulator5.1
   Another good option is to install missing simulator via XCode-> Preferences -> Select Downloads tab and then install iOS 5.0 Simulator

2. …/gems/rhodes-3.3.2/lib/build/jake.rb:297: command not found: /Developer/usr/bin/xcodebuild -version -sdk iphonesimulator5.1
   

   Suggestion:
   Older version of Rhodes iPhone rake tasks uses /Developer/usr/bin/xcodebuild path instead of /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer
   See the file [/platform/iphone/rbuild/iphone.rake] code “task :iphone” at line (around) 474.
   In your local gem installation change it to the path where actual xcodebuild is installed.
   You can use “which xcodebuild” to find the path.

3. 0560b000 APP| App error: Expected argument 2 of type int, but got Fixnum 0
   in SWIG method ‘set_view_notification’

   Temporary suggestion by Rhodes team:
   Set the scheme “rhorunner” to use Release instead of Debug.
   See the screenshot.
   

4. I have both XCode 4.2 and XCode4.3.2 but can’t get XCode 4.3.2 is not working with Rhodes
   

   Suggestion:
   You can use xcode-switch to select the xcodebuild that you want to use or modify the iphone.rake accordingly.

map_params = {
     :provider => 'Google',
     :settings => {:map_type => "hybrid",:region => [@params['latitude'], @params['longitude'], 0.2, 0.2],
                   :zoom_enabled => true,:scroll_enabled => true,
                   :api_key => 'Your api key'},
     :annotations => [{:latitude => '13.04708', :longitude => '80.198243', :title => "Click to see the direction", :subtitle => "", :url => "http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=Chennai&daddr=Madurai"}]
      }
MapView.create map_params

When we click on the marker it opens the Google Maps application with the specified source and destination parameters with suggested routes between start address and end address.
      

This works fine for iPhone/iPad as well.

Mobile phones and PDAs
Personal computers
Check-out cash registers or “point-of-sale” equipment
Turnstiles
Vending machines
Parking meters
ATMs
Applications around the office and house, e.g. garage doors

If you got some ideas (good crazy ones) on other usages, then please share it a comment so that we can develop it using RhoMobile under open source license.

RhoMobile does support NFC capability, which includes:

• Reading NDEF data from an NFC tag
• Beaming NDEF messages from one device to another

You can also check the RhoMobile NFC documentation at http://docs.rhomobile.com/rhodes/nfc

Let’s see how to develop NFC functionality based Rhodes application using Rhomobile.

1. Create sample rhodes app

$ rhodes app sample_app
$ cd sample_app
$ rhodes model nfc

2. Enable NFC in build.yml

android:
  version: 2.3.3
  extensions:
  - nfc

3. In app/application.rb file, activate NFC on Android device.
Rho::NFCManager.enable is used to enable the NFC capability on device.Rho::NFCManager.set_nfc_callback(call back url) is called when NFC device receives NFC event(peer to peer).Rho::NFCManager.set_nfc_tech_callback(call back url) is called for reading and writing NFC tag.Rho:NFCManager.perform_open_application_event method is enable the application to receive NFC when application is running in the background.

def on_nfc_app
   Rho::NFCManager.enable
   Rho::NFCManager.set_nfc_callback("set_nfc_callback url")
   Rho::NFCManager.set_nfc_tech_callback("nfc_tech_callback url")
   Rho::NFCManager.perform_open_application_event
end

4. In app/Nfc/nfc_controller.rb
Let’s see how to start peer to peer data exchange using Rho::NFCManager API.You can push NFC tag to another nfc enabled mobile.First you need payload message as follows,

Rho::NFCManager.make_payload_with_well_known_text("en", "HELLO WORLD")

puts payload message into hash of records.Create hash of record Using Ndef (NFC data Exchange Format) as follows,

hash = {
      'id'      = [0],
      'type'    = Rho::NdefRecord:: RTD_TEXT,
      'tnf'     = Rho::NdefRecord::TNF_WELL_KNOWN,
      'payload' = payload
      }

Then use Rho::NFCManager.make_NdefRecord_from_hash(hash) method to create message record.Convert record array into message using following method

record= Rho::NFCManager.make_NdefMessage_from_array_of_NdefRecord(records)

Now we can push message using Rho::NFCManager.p2p_enable_foreground_nde_push(record) and when you want to stop message use Rho::NFCManager.p2p_disable_foreground_nde_push.

Sample screenshots taken from Android Emulator:
       

We hope you liked this blog.
Comments are welcome.

* Create a rhodes application
* Pass the input parameters to rhoconnect application
* Make a SOAP request in rhoconnect
* Display the SOAP response in rhodes from rhoconnect

We will use http://www.webservicex.net/length.asmx?WSDL webservice to consume and manipulate response in rhoconnect. Let’s see how to make these things work.

1. Sample Rhodes Application with search action

First we will create a rhodes app with model Unit as shown

	rhodes app rhodes-unit-webservice
	rhodes model Unit value,from,to
	

Enable sync in Model to connect to rhoconnect

	class Product
	enable :sync
	end
	

Pass inputs given by user to rhoconnect search action

	def search
         Unit.search(
            :from => 'search',
            :search_params => {
                :Value => @params['unit']['value'],
                :From => @params['unit']['from'],
                :To => @params['unit']['to']
                 },
            :callback => url_for(:action => :search_callback),
            :callback_param => ""
        )
       render :action => :wait
      end
      

We will implement search callback after SOAP request done in rhoconnect. Now let’s see what to do in rhoconenct

2. Rhoconnect Application with SOAP webservice call in search action

We will create a basic rhoconnect application with Unit source adapter as shown

	  rhoconnect app rhoconnect-unit-webservice
	  rhoconnect source Unit
	  

Add savon gem in Gemfile

	  gem 'savon'
	  

Call ChangeLengthUnit method in webservice using savon

	  require 'savon'
          @webservice_url = "http://www.webservicex.net/length.asmx?WSDL"
          client = Savon::Client.new(@webservice_url )
          data= client.request :change_length_unit do
          soap.body = {
           "LengthValue" => params["Value"],
           "fromLengthUnit" => params["From"],
           "toLengthUnit" => params["To"]
            }
          end
          puts data.to_hash
	  

Here data.to_hash has the response of webservice called. We will get inputs for this SOAP request from rhodes search action. We can access those params in rhoconnect search action as

          def search(params)
	  # params - values from rhodes
	  end
	  

We will assign the response of SOAP call to @result which will in turn stores in redis database as shown

	  puts data.to_hash
	  @result = data.to_hash
	  @result
          

3. Display SOAP response from rhoconnect

Now response of SOAP request is stored in redis database. We can access it in search callback in rhodes as

	def search_callback
          status = @params["status"]
          if status == "complete"
             data = Unit.find_all
             data.each do |val|
               Alert.show_popup("The Converted value is #{val.change_length_unit_result}")
             end
          WebView.navigate(url_for :action => :index)
         end
       end
       

All values stored in rhoconnect can be retrieved through find query. This is how we consume SOAP webservice from rhodes through rhoconnect.

Some of the screenshots taken from Iphone Mobile

I hope this blog will be helpful for making SOAP request in rhomobile. Source code of rhodes and rhoconnect application is available at https://github.com/Dhepthi/rhodes-unit-webservice, https://github.com/Dhepthi/rhoconnect-unit-webservice.Please feel free to improve and send me a pull request. Any suggestion or comments are welcome.

The most difficult task is to create SSL certificate and Provisional certificate. Let’s see how to create it and make use of it.

1. Create Certificate Signing Request (CSR)

Open Keychain Access application in your mac and generate CSR as follows

* Request a Certificate from authority as shown



* It will open a dialog, follow the process to create the certificate. The certificate with certSigningRequest extension will be created.

Save the certificate to disk for further use

2. Create SSL Certificate

We can create our ssl certificate in provisioning portal of IOS dev center. The steps to create SSL certificate

* Create a New App ID by clicking on APP IDs in the left menu as shown



* To enable Push Notification, check the Enable Push Notification Service box and clicking Configure button will open an dialog box as shown



* The Dialog will prompt for CSR certificate. Upload the certificate just created in above steps and follow the window to create APN certificate

* APN certificate with cer extension will be generated for given request and you can download it as shown


* Opening it in Keychain Access, you will able to see Certificate, Private,Public Key as shown

3. Create Provisioning Profile

Now we have to create a Provisioning profile for newly created SSL certificate. The steps are

* Create Provisioning profile by clicking Provisioning in left menu of IOS provisioning portal as shown



* By filling the necessary details, Development Provisioning profile with mobileprovision will be generated as shown



* Download,open it in Xcode and install the profile for your iphone/ipad.

4. Export APN certificate to .pem format

We need to export the generated .cer certificate to .pem format as follows

* Open KeyAccess, Select your generated certificate alone with private key and export it to p12 format as shown



* In terminal, use the following code to export it to pem format

openssl pkcs12 -in CertificateName.p12 -out CertificateName.pem -nodes

Make a note .pem certificate file, we will use it in ruby

5. Device Token

Each Device has token associated with it. We need to get the Device Token in order to make communication with that device. In rhodes it is much easier to retrieve the device token. The steps to get device token using rhodes
* Create a rhodes app

            rhodes app app_name
            

* Enable push in build.yml

             capablities:
               - push
             

* In terminal, type the following to run your rhodes app in Iphone through Xcode

               rake swtich_app
               rake build:iphone:setup_xcode_project
               

* Connect you device to Mac. Open rrhorunner.xcodeproj in Xcode and run the rhodes app in your device.

* Running you app in device will prompt you to allow for notification as follows



* Clicking Allow will get the device id from device. You can get the device id from the log window of xcode or through code as

             System.get('device_id') # => D12f5sad7673-h543
             

6. Send Messages using ruby gem

Once you have all the necessary things needed to communicate with IOS device, we can use apns gem exclusively for IOS device. The steps are

* First install apns gem as

                gem install apns
               

* Configure apns with your generated pem file, device token as

                APNS.host = 'gateway.sandbox.push.apple.com'
                APNS.pem  = '/path/to/your/cert.pem'
                APNS.port = 2195
                device_token = 'your_device_token'
               

* Send notification to your ios device as

               APNS.send_notification(device_token, 'Hello iPhone!')
               

The entire code looks like

require 'apns'

APNS.host = 'gateway.sandbox.push.apple.com'
APNS.pem  = '/path/to/your/cert.pem'
APNS.port = 2195

device_token = 'your_device_token'
APNS.send_notification(device_token, 'Hello iPhone!')

Note : Mobile Provision will not be installed in your xcode until it has the proper private key associated with it.

We will get an message in IOS device. I hope this blog would be useful to send push notification in Iphone using ruby gem. Any suggestion or comments are most welcome

1. First, Install the gem as

       gem install net-ldap
 

2. Initiate LDAP server as follows

      require 'rubygems'
      require 'net/ldap'
      ldap = Net::LDAP.new
      ldap.host = "x500.bund.de"
      ldap.port = "389"
      is_authorized = ldap.bind 

x500.bund.de is public LDAP server. You can find various public ldap server in net.

3. If suppose we need to authenticate Ldap server using username and password. We can do it as

      ldap = Net::LDAP.new
      ldap.host = "x500.bund.de"
      ldap.port = "389"
      username = "xxxxxxxx"
      pasword = "xxxxxxxxx"
      ldap.auth username, password
      is_authorized = ldap.bind  #returns true if auto works

4. Now let see how to search some records in LDAP server

  attrs = []
  ldap.search( :base => "l=init,ou=Service,o=Bund,c=DE", :attributes => attrs, :return_result => true ) do |entry|
     # entry is records returned after search
  end

Here entry will return set of records that matching the word given in base.

5. We can also use filter to refine our search as

filter = Net::LDAP::Filter.eq("username", "xxxxx")
attrs = []
ldap.search(:base => treebase, :filter => filter, :attributes => attrs,
  #refined search
end

I hope this blog will be useful for accessing Ldap server using ruby gem. Any suggestion or comments are most welcome

We covered topics like

• Introduction to RhoMobile [Basics of mobile app s, rhomobile basics, Enterprise apps demos]
• Enterprise apps using Rhomobile [device capabilities (barcode, signature, camera...), demos]
• Lets build a native mobile application

Thanks to the participants from Singapore for the attending it.

* Faster Reloading in Development

We can only reload classes if their dependent files get changed. You can do this by setting reload_classes_only_on_change to true or false

        config.reload_classes_only_on_change = boolean_value

* Better content_tag_for and div_for tag

These tags can take collection of records as a argument itself instead of looping through it for each record. An example

Instead of the below code

@products.each do |item|
       content_tag_for(:li, item) do
              Name: <%= item.name %>
      end
end

we can rewrite this as

content_tag_for(:li,@products) do |item|
       Name: <%= item.name %>
end

* Smarter Layout rendering approach

You can use default layout when you specify a layout with only and :except conditions and in those conditions fail. An example

class ProductsController
   layout 'banner' ,  nly => :new
end

In this above case, you will be using your default layout(layouts/application) for rest of the action. If the new action request comes in, you will be rendered with banner layout.

* Tag Level changes

form_for tag with :as option changes the values of css class and id as “#{action}_#{as}”. An Example

Previously it was

form_for(@product, :as => 'item') # => "<form class="item_new">"

But now we have it as

form_for(@product, :as => 'item') # => "<form class="new_item">"

button_tag is new tag added to ActionView::Helpers::FormBuilder. Its just similar to submit_tag. An Example as

<%= form_for @product do |f| %>
  <%= f.button %>
<% end %>

* Better rails commands

We have better Rails command line. Some of them are

– Atributes takes string by default
– Old plugin generator removed
– Destroy alias added

* Changes in render template

Now it is possible to provide :handlers and :formats directly as an options. An example

render :template => edit, :formats => :html, :handlers => :erb

These are some of the changes I went through while going through the changelog. I hope this blog would be useful for knowing new changes in Rails 3.2. Let move forward in working with Rails 3.2 further

1.User Repositories
2.User Forked Repositories
3.User Watched Repositories
4.User Following
5.User Follower

Now lets see how to authenticate user in github
First we need to register our application in github:developer site.we will use client_id and client_secret of registered application as shown

	def github_login
            local_callback_url =url_for( :action => :github_callback )
     	    call_back_url = RedirectServiceURL + "/" + '127.0.0.1:' +
            System.get_property('rhodes_port').to_s + local_call_back_url
     	    url ="https://github.com/login/oauth/authorize?client_id=xxxxx&
            redirect_uri=#{call_back_url}&scope=user,public_repo,repo,gist"
     	    WebView.navigate(url)
 	end

From above method we can get @params["code"] to access token of current user. We have used following callback url to redirect our rhombile application since rhomobile have random port number

	RedirectServiceURL = "http://redirectme.to"     //used to redirect application url//

You can attain port number as

	System.get_property('rhodes_port').to_s

Lets see how to process @params[code] to get user token as shown

	def github_callback
    		code=@params["code"]
	    	@@token=Rho::AsyncHttp.post(
                    :url => "https://github.com/login/oauth/access_token?client_id=xxxxx&client_secret=xxxx&code=" + code
		                            )
    		user_info = "https://github.com/api/v2/json/user/show?" + @@token["body"]
    		user=Rho::AsyncHttp.get(
             		:url => user_info,
              				)
	        WebView.navigate( url_for :action => :listing )
  	end

So far we saw how to authenticate user and get token. We can also get access to public, forked and watched repositories using Username as shown below

my_repo_url = "https://github.com/api/v2/json/repos/show/"
              + Rho::RhoConfig.username   #=> Get Public and forked repositories info
my_watched_url = "https://github.com/api/v2/json/repos/watched/"
              + Rho::RhoConfig.username   #=> Get watched repositories

Using callback events for the each url, we can manipulate data and display it

We can also list of followers and following users using the below url

my_following_url = "https://github.com/api/v2/json/user/show/"
              + Rho::RhoConfig.username + "/following" #=> Following url

my_followers_url = "https://github.com/api/v2/json/user/show/"
              + Rho::RhoConfig.username + "/followers" # => Followers list

Finally we will integrate Coderwall_page in github rhomobile application. Since Coderwall use github authentication to give patches, we can easily integrate coderwall page in github rhomobile application. We get details of user in coder wall in JSON format as shown

 	        user_details_url = "http://coderwall.com/#{Rho::RhoConfig.username}.json"
     		result = Rho::AsyncHttp.get(:url => auth_url)
 

The execution of GET request will give User details.

Some of the screenshots taken from Android Mobile
      

I hope this blog will be helpful for integrating github authentication in rhomobile. Source code of application is available at https://github.com/spritle/rhodes_github_client_demo.Please feel free to improve and send me a pull request. Any suggestion or comments are welcome.

* “load.c” patch to speed up requiring/loading files
* Improved GC performance with a lazy garbage collector
* Random.rand accepts inputs in form of ranges
* IO/Console, new library in stdlib
* New encodings supported
* New String methods
* Extended formats for Timezone
* Scope of Constants in Struct
* Improved matrix library
* New methods private_constants and public_constants in Module

Let’s have a quick walkthrough of some Ruby 1.9.3 features below

* Extended formats for Timezone

Time#strftime now supports some extended formats for timezone like :z and ::z. An example of strftime method

               Time.now.strftime("%:z %::z")   # => "+01:00 +01:00:00"

where :z includes the minutes and ::z gives the full HH:MM:SS

* New Methods for String Class

In addition to some changes in String class, we have some new methods like prepend and byteslice.

String#prepend prepends a new string to an existing string. A simple example is

              str = " Programmer"
              str.prepend("Ruby ")
              puts str    # => "Ruby Programmer"
 

String#byteslice returns a substring from the given string depending upon the arguments passed. Some formats of byteslice are

       "ruby".byteslice(1)     # => "u"
      "ruby".byteslice(1, 2)  # => "ub"
      "ruby".byteslice(1..3)  # => "uby"

* Changes in Random#rand

Ruby 1.9.2 introduced Random class in which we can create our own random number object. In 1.9.2, you can use rand as instance method like

                     1.9.2p290 :003 > r = Random.new
                     1.9.2p290 :004 > r.rand(2..6)

But now in Ruby 1.9.3, you can directly accept ranges on its own rand class method like

                     1.9.3p0 :029 > Random.rand(1..3)
                     => 3

In addition to this, Kernel.rand also supports ranges like

                     1.9.3p0 :030 > rand(2..8)
                     => 6

* New encodings supported

Ruby 1.9.3 supports some new encodings. In previous version, we used to have UTF-16 and UTF-32 for big-endian(BE) and little -endian specific forms but now we have 4 new encodings like

                   1.9.3p0 :001 > Encoding.find("UTF-32")
                   => #<Encoding:UTF-32 (dummy)>
                   1.9.3p0 :002 > Encoding.find("UTF-16")
                   => #<Encoding:UTF-16 (dummy)>
                   1.9.3p0 :003 > Encoding.find("CP950")
                   => #<Encoding:CP950>
                   1.9.3p0 :004 > Encoding.find("CP951")
                   => #<Encoding:CP951>

* Constant Scope in Struct Bug Fix

A weird bug in Ruby 1.9.2 Struct. Passing a block to 1.9.2 Struct.new does not create a new scope for constants. For example

             VALUE = false
             Test = Struct.new(:name, :age) do
                def self.check?
                     VALUE
                end
              end

              Test::VALUE = true
              Test.check?

The output of above code differs in ruby 1.9.2 and ruby 1.9.3. The output will be as shown below

    # ruby 1.9.2-p180
    Test::VALUE = true # Actually does VALUE=true
    Test.check?        # Reads new value of VALUE
    => true

# ruby 1.9.3-p0
Test::VALUE = true # Creates new constant Test::VALUE
Test.check?         # Reads unchanged value of VALUE
=> false

In Ruby 1.9.2, the interpreter assumes you mean to write VALUE = true and changes the global constant. This behavior is a bug.

Ruby 1.9.3 corrects this behavior. It interprets Test::VALUE = true to mean “Create a brand new constant named Test::VALUE and assign it to true”. And so the global VALUE remains unchanged.

* Lazy Sweeping Garbage Collector

Ruby 1.9.3 provides Lazy sweeping GC which is 8% faster on average. The Simple (non-lazy) Mark Sweep GC executes mark and sweep atomically. Also, it sweeps the whole heap and links all live objects to the freelist whereas in Lazy sweeping, each invocation of the object allocation sweeps the heap until it finds an appropriate free object.

These are some of the ruby 1.9.3 features I learnt.