Sönke Rohde

Using Redis as Node.js Express Session Storage on Heroku

The default way to use sessions with Node.js and Express is using the bundled memory store. However, if you want to deploy your app to Heroku and use multiple dynos it won’t work because the memory store doesn’t work across dynos.

The solution is to use a database for session storage and it seems like Redis or MongoDB [...]

New Machine Setup

Recently I’ve got a new work Mac Book Pro. Here a a summary of my initial setup:

Preferences

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Software

Chrome Firefox 1Password Dropbox Evernote Sublime Text 2 (with packages for CoffeeScript and Stylus) iTerm 2 GIT GitX node.js Heroku toolbelt Homebrew Mongo DB Spotify Skype Adium Kindle Twitter XCode

Global NPM packages

coffee-script node-dev

Command line

Custom bash prompt Heroku SSH Shortcut for Sublime (sudo ln -s “/Applications/Sublime Text 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl” /usr/local/bin/subl) Show hidden files (defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE & [...]

Node.js server-side compile Hogan.js templates

If you are using Node.js with Hogan.js you want to compile your templates on the server. With Node.js you can create a route which looks like this:

Include it like: <script src=’templates’ type=’text/javascript’></script> Templates are in the T namespace and can be renderered [...]

CoffeeScript with Sublime Text

Recently I’ve played with node.js and the Play! framework and I came across CoffeeScript. CoffeeScript is a language which compiles to JavaScript. The advantage over using JavaScript is basically having a more compact language which looks a lot like Ruby. Sometimes one very readable line of CoffeeScript translates into 7-10 complex lines of JavaScript.

My dear friend Alec [...]

Detect Spark List Control Scroll To End

If you want to implement lazy loading (when the user scrolls to the end of the list it triggers to fetch more items) for a spark List control you have to use a workaround right now.

Usually you would add an event listener on the scrollers verticalScrollBar but due to a bug it does not fire events [...]

Compile-time FXG

FXG was introduced with Flex 4 and offers a great way to skin and style your application without relying on bitmaps like PNGs.

“FXG is a declarative XML syntax for defining vector graphics in applications built with Flex.”

When you declare FXG within your MXML it is computed at runtime but there is also a way to use compile [...]

AIR Mobile StageWebView UIComponent

When you want to use webkit to display HTML in AIR 2.5 mobile projects you want to use StageWebView. Since StageWebView is a subclass of EventDispatcher you cannot add it to the display chain right away. The API works a bit differently and you need to define a Rectangle as the viewPort. However, I thought it [...]

How to Skin AIR Mobile ActionBar

It took me a bit to figure out how to skin the ActionBar in a mobile AIR application so here a short tutorial. There are also two small bugs when you want to skin the ActionBar but there are decent workarounds for now.

To apply a custom skin to the ActionBar you first have to define a [...]

Updating to AIR 2.0 Barriers

Now that Adobe 2.0 is released it’s time to update some older apps to use the new APIs. The process to update seems kind of complicated and definitely worth a blog post. In my special case I am upgrading from an self signed 1.5.2 app to a self signed 2.0 app.

Since 1.5.3 the publisherID works differently so [...]

Swiz Yahoo Finance Metadata Processor

Swiz 1.0 alpha introduced a very cool new feature which lets you extend Swiz be creating custom metadata processors. This means that if you want to add a metadata like [MyCustomMetadata] you can now do so and Swiz offers you a very easy way to implement it. For the Swiz 360 Flex demo app I have build a [...]