Dr Nic

If you are using TextMate (OS X) or E Text Editor (Windows) then you’ll be dead keen to know there is a TextMate bundle for Merb, and another one for Datamapper.

[This is cross-posted on the new Merbunity community site for Merb]

Currently, you can access the bundles via git:

cd "~/Library/Application Support/TextMate/Bundles"
git clone git://github.com/drnic/datamapper-tmbundle.git Datamapper.tmbundle
git clone git://github.com/drnic/merb-tmbundle.git Merb.tmbundle

Now “Reload Bundles” or restart TextMate.

You can now select from three Merb syntax/scopes. Press Shift+Alt+Cmd+M to see the options (below)

• If you select Merb (Datamapper) you will have access to the Merb bundle AND the Datamapper bundle.
• If you select Merb (ActiveRecord) you have access to the Merb bundle AND the Ruby on Rails bundle.
• If you select Merb (Sequel) then nothing special happens as there isn’t a Sequel bundle yet. Want to create one?

Currently there is no separation in the Rails bundle for ActiveRecord and non-ActiveRecord snippets and commands, so if you use Merb (ActiveRecord) there will be some snippets + commands that you don’t want from Rails. In future, there may be more separation to help the Merb bundle. Also, TextMate 2 may help this cause.

As always, to learn what snippets are available at any given cursor position, use Ctrl+Cmd+T.

If you have new snippets for any of the bundles, I suggest forking the git repositories, pushing up the changes to github and sending Pull Requests to me (drnic).

Sponsored by Engine Yard

The initial development of this bundle was sponsored by Engine Yard because they care.

Rails bundle

There is also the hughly popular Ruby on Rails bundle for TextMate that you can use. Download from http://railsbundle.com/ or via github.

If you want to learn everything about the new Ruby on Rails bundle for TextMate and daily life with TextMate (short cuts, editing bundles) then I highly recommend the new TextMate for Rails 2 Peepcode:

This recommendation comes from inside information on the quality of the Peepcode… it was written by me, and incorporates the vocal skills of the operatic Geoffrey Grosenbach.

The killer app for JavaScript in the 90s was to take a perfectly readable sequence of words - aka “a sentence” - and turn every single character a different colour. You did that, then you went back to doing normal work.

The killer app for JavaScript in the 00s is widgets/badges. Taking perfectly useful stuff from one website - aka “data” - and re-posting it on your blog sidebar.

In both circumstances, across two decades, you did this to look cool. Sure, it never works but you do it anyway.

Thusly, riding high on the world-dominating success of GitHub there seems to be a vacancy in the department of “JavaScript badge for my blog to make me look cool” projects, in the sub-category of “GitHub”.

The first entrant and thus market leader of the “Blog Badges for GitHub” micro-industry is the “GitHub Badge” It is beautifully demonstrated in static image form above, or if you click the image through to the website (or here to my blog and its aesthetically appealing enhancement with said GitHub Badge) you’ll see it live and interactive.

Touch it. Feel it. Press the “Show more” link for hours of entertainment.

Installation

Then get it for yourself. Read the GitHub Badge website or just…

Slap the following into your blog sidebar:

<div id="github-badge"></div>
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
  GITHUB_USERNAME="drnic";
  GITHUB_LIST_LENGTH=10;
  GITHUB_HEAD="div"; // e.g. change to "h2" for wordpress sidebars
</script>
<script src="http://drnicjavascript.rubyforge.org/github_badge/dist/github-badge-launcher.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Only GITHUB_USERNAME is a required pre-set variable. The others above show the defaults, and can be changed by being specified.

For my WordPress sidebar, which uses <li> and <h2> for sections and headers, I use the following:

<li id="github-badge"></li>
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
  GITHUB_USERNAME="drnic";
  GITHUB_HEAD="h2";
</script>
<script src="http://drnicjavascript.rubyforge.org/github_badge/dist/github-badge-launcher.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Thus the badge is inserted in the <li> element, and the “My projects (drnic)” header is an <h2> instead of a <div>.

Source and tests on github

You can fetch the source from github - http://github.com/drnic/github_badges/tree/master - using:

git clone git://github.com/drnic/github_badges.git

You might want to add an option to turn off the auto-CSS generator so you can theme it yourself.

The JavaScript tests are in test/ folder. Either run them with rake test, or individually open the files in your browser.

Future cool things the badge could do…

Ultimately, when Chris Wanstrath (harass him on twitter) adds more fields and APIs to the GitHub API then the badge can do more. Currently it orders the projects in reverse order - that is, newest projects first. If I can get the network/watching counters then I can order the list using those values, etc.

Any other cool ideas for what the badge could do?

I’d like to be able to show project version numbers (e.g. gem version numbers) and other project meta-information. This would require GitHub to offer a CRUD UI for generic key/values and for the fields to be returned via their API.

If you know Chris and can throw heavy objects at him with moderate certainty of hitting him and not damaging any expensive equipment, please do so til he gives me this stuff.