Last August (damn! we are in October now!) was celebrated the most famous competition in the Ruby on Rails community which consists in setting a functional webapp and deploy it in less than 48h: the Rails Rumble.

The spirit of it is very similar to iWeekend and they share a lot of things; however, besides similarities they are quite different starting by the number of components which can form the team: as much as four, which let you have some programmers and fewer designers.

I really felt like taking part in such an event while commiting (nice word, huh?) one of my new year’s resolutions, so I proposed this to Felipe Talavera one of my partners in the startup we cofounded almost a year ago Biblioteco. I’m not part of that project anymore but I really admire the work the developers did then in order to have everything up and running. With no doubt they are part of the elite spanish rails developers.

Anyway, I was talking about the Rails Rumble. I came up with this and he told me that they already had a team, the Mallorca team where I gently was invited.

What came after were 48 hours of real extreme programming and some glances of design work. I would like to make a deeper analysis about the importance that the interface had in the final polls or the feelings I had about not being able of putting in the par of the rest of the members but as I said before I don’t really know how to express this.

Which remains from this great experience is a great mail voting system, Letsdecide.us and some impressions like the fact that 4 people were more capable than 40 to have a fully functional webapp.

I also want to congratulate the other Spanish teams which I only can bow to their work:

• Lets Wadus
• Diversion
• Parlio

And a enormous thank to the Mallorca team to let me join: Rai, Felipe and Fer. I’m so grateful for such an experience!

Extra balls: Fernando Guillen also posted something about this + Photo album +  Video demo

I have already worked with Ruby on Rails before, but only from the designer’s point of view: being able to implement my designs without the application to crash. Anyway the workflow with RoR, the philosophy behind and its singularities definitely definitely hooked me. Furthermore I must say to my own shame that I have only coded in C programming language in order to pass my practical lessons at the University.

To gain an insight into what I am talking about let’s face a real problem with which I had to deal while I am building this application.

Users must be able to register in the application, that will create a visit card for them with their data. One of the RoR conventions is the MVC architecture pattern that ensures the DRYness of your code (that’s a bunch of acronyms!). This is the piece of code from the Controller that was in charge of that (I am taking for granted some knowledge about these terms; if not, go Google them as I did before because they are really easy to understand):
/app/controllers/users_controller.rb

class UsersController < ApplicationController
  def create
    @user = User.new(params[:user])
    @card = Card.new
    @card.user_id = @user.id
    @card.title = "Visit card of #{@user.login}"
    if @user.save && @card.save
      flash[:notice] = "Account registered!"
      redirect_back_or_default account_url
    else
      render :action => :new
    end
  end
end

In RoR, there are always some mantras that one must follow in order to program good pieces of code, this way we will end up with an application that has everything in its right place and works properly. One of these mantras is Skinny Controller Fat Model, which says that many of our business logic must be in the Model instead of the Controller. So taking a look at our code we know we are not doing it well.

We can move some of the code from the Controller to the Model making use of the callback after_create. There is a good documentation about that and other people with much more talent than I have already written about this.
/app/controllers/users_controller.rb

class UsersController < ApplicationController
  def create
    @user = User.new(params[:user])
    if @user.save
      flash[:notice] = "Account registered!"
      redirect_back_or_default account_url
    else
      render :action => :new
    end
  end
end

/app/models/user.rb

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :card

  after_create :create_card

  protected
    def create_card
      Card.create :user_id => id, :title => "Visit card of #{login}"
    end
end

But there’s even a better solution because having card creation code in the user controller doesn’t make much sense. Here is where observers come, “a great way to reduce the clutter that normally comes when the model class is burdened with functionality that doesn‘t pertain to the core responsibility of the class” as once again the documentation says. There’s also a very good article about this in Spanish. So we have to move the card creation to an user Observer, that handles it everytime an user is registered.
/app/models/user.rb

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :card
end

/app/controllers/user_observer.rb

class UserObserver < ActiveRecord::Observer
  def after_create(user)
    Card.create :user_id => user.id, :title => "Visit card of #{user.login}"
  end
end

This is “the rails way”, Skinny Model Skinny Controller.

Finally I want to give thanks to the ror-es mailing list I signed up recently. I had the luck to work with some of the better rails developers in my past projects and now I have discovered that not only they were great but also the vast majority behind Ruby on Rails community is awesome. Thank you guys.

Update: I was using the restful_authentication plugin in order to manage the users authentication in the app, but as the comments say this is not the best solution. I have updated the code in order to handle this with the authlogic plugin, which is much better.

One of the pending tasks I had remaining was the review of Jack keane: Al rescate del Imperio Británico, a video game that Bloguzz (I’ve already told you that I love these people?) had kindly handed over me. This video game has been developed by Deck13 and 10tacle Studios and distributed by FX Interactive.

I really enjoyed playing this video game (as the staunch fan of graphic adventures that I am); it reminds me the time I used to play Day of the tentacle or Monkey Island. In fact, I think I won’t be wrong if I claim that it was deeply inspired in this LucasArts saga.

So, let’s get it on. The pack comes with the installation/play CD and a very useful handbook that may help you to solve any problem you may encounter during the initial contact. The first thing in order to play is install the game, which was rather slow. However a new system called WannaPlay let me watch some explanatory videos during the installation. Anyway it’s possible to skip them and turn to the handbook in any case if needed. Once it is installed and the game settings (screen resolution, effects, music and such…) are configured we are ready to have a great time.

Something I specially liked was the fact that the game started with a quite short and easy first level where you can get used to the controls, actions and response of the character. After this we’ll have hours of entertainment ahead.

The plot deals with Jack Keane, an intrepid (and a bit unlucky) captain. He is in a secret mission under the orders of the Queen of England who lead his ship to a very mysterious island. Although at first it may seem quite simple and linear, then the plot thickens in a sudden turn of fate, unveiling a very interesting story full of intrigue. Furthermore the witty dialogues, and the numerous references (like the famous “Por qué no te callas” or the Indiana Jones quote “I don’t like snakes“) make it very entertaining and funny.

Regarding the graphics it should be noted that a very good work has been done by the developers of the game. A great use of colors, shapes, textures and 3D modeling in general contributes to a pleasant gaming experience, with beautiful landscapes and vivid characters.

Besides all this, another thing that I also find it interesting are the resources that we can find in the FX Interactive website. There we can take a look at the guide, which only has some available episodes right now or view the promotional trailer, that I reproduce here.

Summing up; take Indiana Jones, Guybrush Treepwood (from Monkey Island) and a 3D videogame, mix it up and you will get Jack keane: Al rescate del Imperio Británico.

In my opinion a very good game which deserves 4 stars out of 5.