Rails 4 .dat import postgreSQL and ajax search - ruby-on-rails

I want to implement a flight search system in Rails 4.
And I found this resource,
My questions are:
I've downloaded the airports.dat file and it contains chunks of data, do I need to import those data into psql? If yes, how?
If I just need the airport ID and name values, how do I selectively import them?
If I want to implement ajax load airport name just like the way expedia.com did, would it be buggy(slow loading time) if I use VPSs like Digitalocean?
Please advise me.

You can write a method that read line by line, and parse every line by the comma (","). Then you have enough information to insert to database.
For example:
flight1 = '507,"Heathrow","London","United Kingdom","LHR","EGLL",51.4775,-0.461389,83,0,"E","Europe/London"'
Then you can get the ID by call flight1.split(",")[0]
The speed of your search function is affected by your search algorithm and how do you implement the logic, and isn't affected by using a VPS.

Related

Hide/truncate long attributes in rails console

For a blog model I'm saving an RSS field as text under Blog.rss, problem is, some of this is rather long and each one prints when I'm working in the rails console, ie: Blog.last(10).
Is there a way to hide output unless I call someblog.rss specifically?
I had a similar problem and received some solutions in another forum, which were:
Use select to get just the columns you need
If you have a very long column (I had JSON data structure from a webhook cluttering the console), consider whether you really need it, and if you don't , don't store it in the table
Or, consider storing it in an associated table
if you need the whole object but just want to change how it's represented in console/log output, you can redefine inspect
yourobject.as_json(except: :unwanted_column)
Also
You could look into: https://github.com/awesome-print/awesome_print

Split datetime value received from external API in Rails app

I have a datetime value which comes from the API in this format: 2015-07-07T17:30:00+00:00. I simply want to split it up between the date and time values at this point. I am not using an Active Record model and I prefer not to use an sql database if I can.
The way I have set up the app means that the value is "stored" like this in my view: #search.dining_date_and_time
I have tried two approaches to solving this problem:
Manually based on this previous stackoverflow question from 2012: Using multiple input fields for one attribute - but the error I get is the attribute is "nil" even though I put a "try"
Using this gem, https://github.com/ccallebs/split_date_time which is a bit more recent and seems to be a more elegant solution, but after closely following the doc, I get this error, saying my Search model is not initalized and there is no method: undefined method dining_date' for #<Search not initialized>
This is when instead I put #search.dining_date in the view, which seems to be the equivalent of the doc's example (its not that clear). The doc also says the method will be automatically generated.
Do I need to alter my model so I receive the data from the API in another way? ie. not get the variable back as #search.dining_date_and_time from the Search model for any of this to work?
Do I need an Active Record model so that before_filter or before_save logic works - so i can (re)concatenate after splitting so the data is sent back to the API in a format it understands. Can I avoid this - it seems a bit of overkill to restructure the whole app and put in a full database just so I can split and join date/time as needed.
Happy to provide further details, code snippets if required.
As I am not using a conventional Rails DB like MySql Lite or Postgresql, I found that the best solution to the problem was by using this jQuery date Format plugin: https://github.com/phstc/jquery-dateFormat to split the date and time values for display when I get the data back from the API.
The Github docs were not too expansive, but once I put the simply put the library file in my Rails javascript assets folder, I just had to write a few lines of jQuery to get the result and format I wanted:
$(function() {
var rawDateTime = $('#searchDiningDateTime').html();
// console.log(rawDateTime);
var cleanDate = $.format.date(rawDateTime, "ddd, dd/MM/yyyy");
// console.log(cleanDate);
$('#searchDiningDateTime').html(cleanDate);
var cleanTime = $.format.date(rawDateTime, "HH:mm");
// console.log(cleanTime);
$('#searchTime').html(cleanTime);
});
Next challenge: rejoin the values on submit, so the API can read the data by sending/receiving a valid request/response. (The values can't be split like this when sent to the remote service).

Ruby on Rails: How to have multiple controllers for one table AND multiple models

I'm new to Ruby and to Rails. I have played a bit with Sinatra but I think that Rails is a more complete framework for my project. However, I am running into trouble with this.
I am working with an fairly substantial existing, and heavily used, mySQL database and I am trying to build an API for this that will report on certain features. The features that are needed are, for the most part, counts of records by certain groupings, then drilling down into details.
For example we have a table - tableA, that contains lots of information relating to documentation. One piece of information we want to report on from that is the number of items in a given language. The language code is stored against each item and based on a get request I would like to return JSON.
Request: /languages/:code/count/:tablename
There are two variables in that most specific URL - the code we are counting and the table we are counting from.
I understand that in routes.rb I can set up a mapping:
get '/languages/:code/count/:table', :controller=>'languages', :action=>'count'
I have a controller - languages_controller.rb with a count method in it. this then matches to a corresponding view file count.html.erb
In all the tutorials I have read and examples I have followed the main point seems that 'languages' would be a table in the database and would therefore be available under the 'magic' Rails approach.
My issue is that it is not a table, rather the results of the call should be a limited subset of the fields in tableA. Such as languagecode and count(id).
The description of the language needs to be looked up 'manually' as it is stored as an internal code that is not in a database anywhere (historic decision/madness).
The questions:
how do I have a model that is only a subset of fields, plus some that are manually populated - languagecode, isocode, description, count
Am I right in thinking that once I have the model defined as such as I could use ActiveRecord to get data from the database and then in the controller add the extra information in?
Can I change table in the model based on the parameter sent in the URL?
Essentially, I am at a loss at the moment on what to do with this. I have the routes defined, the view templates in place and the controller there and ready to go. The database component - getting some data from a pre-existing table seems mysterious to me.
Any help is greatly appreciated, it seems that the framework is currently getting in my way and I know that I can't be the only one trying this sort of thing so if you have any advice please share.
There's really no need for a model here, at all. This isn't what ORMs are for. What you should be doing is just running raw SQL against the database, and iterating over the results. Consider doing something like this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/14840547/229044

Adding custom attributes to Task?

How can i add custom attributes/data to Task via API . for example we wanted to add field like customer contact number or deal amount e.t.c
We don't currently support adding arbitrary metadata to tasks, though it's something we're thinking about. In the meantime, what many customers do is to simply put data in the note field in an easily-parseable form, which works well and also lets humans reading the task see the e.g. ticket number.
It's not a terribly elegant solution, but it works.
https://asana.com/developers/documentation/getting-started/custom-external_data
Custom external data allows a client application to add app-specific metadata to Tasks in the API. The custom data includes a string id that can be used to retrieve objects and a data blob that can store character strings.
See the external field at https://asana.com/developers/api-reference/tasks

Parsing a CSV for Database Insertion when Formatted Incorrectly

I recently wrote a mailing platform for one of our employees to use. The system runs great, scales great, and is fun to use. However, it is currently inoperable due to a bug that I can't figure out how to fix (fairly inexperienced developer).
The process goes something like this...
Upload a CSV file to a specific FTP directory.
Go to the import_mailing_list page.
Choose a CSV file within the FTP directory.
Name and describe what the list contains.
Associate file headings with database columns.
Then, the back-end loops over each line of the file, associating the values with a heading, and importing these values into a database.
This all works wonderfully, except in a specific case, when a raw CSV is not correctly formatted. For example...
fname, lname, email
Bob, Schlumberger, bob#bob.com
Bobbette, Schlumberger
Another, Record, goeshere#email.com
As you can see, there is a missing comma on line two. This would cause an error when attempting to pull "valArray[3]" (or valArray[2], in the case of every language but mine).
I am looking for the most efficient solution to keep this error from happening. Perhaps I should check the array length, and compare it to the index we're going to attempt to pull, before pulling it. But to do this for each and every value seems inefficient. Anybody have another idea?
Our stack is ColdFusion 8/9 and MySQL 5.1. This is why I refer to the array index as [3].
There's ArrayIsDefined(array, elementIndex), or ArrayLen(array)
seems inefficient?
You gotta code what you need to code, forget about inefficiency. Get it right before you get it fast (when needed).
I suppose if you are looking for another way of doing this (instead of checking the array length each time, although that really doesn't sound that bad to me), you could wrap each line insert attempt in a try/catch block. If it fails, then stuff the failed row in a buffer (including the line number and error message) that you could then display to the user after the batch has completed, so they could see each of the failed lines and why they failed. This has the advantages of 1) not having to explicitly check the array length each time and 2) catching other errors that you might not have anticipated beforehand (maybe a value is too long for your field, for example).

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