REXML and missing iconv

If You are parsing XML with Ruby, You probably have been using REXML to parse it. Well yesterday I was faced with error left by REXML: /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/parsers/treeparser.rb:90:in `parse’: No decoder found for encoding ISO-8859-2. Please install iconv.> (REXML::ParseException) I was a bit surprised, since it was on FreeBSD box, which have installed iconv by default. …

Empty nil

Recently I have started to add one extension to Rubys NilClass, when creating new Rails application. It is empty? method. For me is obvious that result nil.empty? should be true. Adding such method allow to write: if some_var_which_can_be_nil.empty? #code to handle nil/empty case end Instead of if some_var_which_can_be_nil.nil? || some_var_which_can_be_nil.empty? #code to handle nil/empty case …

Why I do hate IE – or just MS Script Debugger?

I have discovered some time ago that IE does treats Arrays and Hashes (JavaScript) a bit differently than Firefox when there is coma after last element. This is quite obvious ;-) and maybe IE is more standard compliant, but this is not the point. Let’s take following JS code: function loadSuggestions() { new Ajax.Updater ( …

Facebook API – developer impressions

During last two weeks You may have observed significant decline in new posts from NetManiac. Well, nothing happens without reason. With my friend from non-formal group of polish web developers and designers – Yashke I have started work on application, which uses Facebook API. Social network information is core feature for this application. My impressions …