/app/controllers/twitter_controller.rb

config = YAML::load( File.read( File.join(Rails.root, 'config', 'twitter.yml') ) )

/config/twitter.yml

email: email@domain.com
password: twitter

After the YAML file is loaded, the values in twitter.yml are saved to my local variable, config. I can use them in my Ruby file such as the following example with a Twitter class I have created.

/app/controller/twitter_controller.rb

config = YAML::load( File.read( File.join(Rails.root, 'config', 'twitter.yml') ) )
twitter = Twitter.new(config['email'], config['password'])

In the future, I’ll explain how to load and cache Twitter updates to the database and how to use different config files for different environments. These scripts were written for Ruby 1.8 and Rails 2.3.2.

Example:

// Load Configuration
$config_path = PHP_PATH."/config/config.yml";
$class_path = PHP_PATH."/classes/spyc.php";
if (file_exists($config_path) && file_exists($class_path)) {
	include $class_path;
	$yaml = new Spyc;
	$config = $yaml->YAMLLoad($config_path);
} else {
	exit("The configuration file is missing.");
}

Spyc, “A simple YAML loader/dumper class for PHP,” is an open-source class for PHP that parses and stores the contents of a YAML file to an array. The line $yaml = new Spyc; creates an instance of the Spyc class, and the line $config = $yaml->YAMLLoad($config_path); stores the contents of the config.yml to the array $config. That’s all there is to it!

For more information about Spyc and to download the class, visit code.google.com/p/spyc.

<% form_for @review do f %>
  <%= f.label :rating, 1, :value => 1 %>
  <%= f.radio :rating, 1 %>
<% end %>

Undesired output:

<label for="review_rating" value="1">1</label>
<input id="review_rating_1" name="rating" type="radio" value="1" />

Here’s the code that works thanks to a few Google searches.

<% form_for @review do f %>
  <%= f.label :rating_1, 1 %>
  <%= f.radio :rating, 1 %>
<% end %>

Desired output:

<label for="review_rating_1">1</label>
<input id="review_rating_1" name="rating" type="radio" value="1" />

Thanks to Rails API FormHelper and Labels for radio buttons in rails form.

Client: SunCor Development Company
Website: Palm Valley 303
Agency: Catywampus

The first thing you may notice when browsing with Google Chrome is that backgrounds tend not to fill the entire window on certain sites. I don’t know if this is a bug or a feature, but there’s a line of code one can add to their site to fix this. The trick is to make Chrome stretch your site to full dimensions of the window using CSS attributes with the HTML tag. Below is an example where the background image is set to repeat horizontally and the area not covered by the image is colored black.

html { width:100%; height:100%; background:#000 url(background.gif) repeat-x 0 0; }

The most important part of the style is the width and height at 100%. As long as you have the width and height set then whatever background you want to display will fill the whole window. That’s all there is to it!