The problem with web development is support for browser versions. It takes time which costs money. Now you can normally cover most of your bases by developing for FireFox. If you do there is a good chance it will work in safari and chrome as well, IE on the other hand is another issue.

Ill emit that IE8 is a huge step up but its still not perfect. Web apps should only support the latest version of browsers. I say we stop supporting old versions and make those users get with the times!!! Come on who is with me

For info on browser usage check this out

© can be created with this:

©

® can be created with this:

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™ can be created with this:

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Sentia is looking for a 2 x Junior / Mid level Rails developer to join our team. Min 12month contract or perm available with good rates dependent on experience.

You will be working out of our office on George Street in the heart of the Sydney CBD. You will have access to the latest technology and resources not to mention our foos ball table.

You will be working on a long term project for the Music industry with some fantastic technology and people.

You will need to have the following skills and experience.

• A passion for development
• 12+ months experience in rails
• TDD experience
• Git
• Good HTML/CSS skills
• Javascript
• Good communication skills
• Keen to learn with a great attitude
• iPhone development skills a plus

Experience with agile methodologies and design skills a bonus.

So if you think you have what it takes email us at jobs@sentia.com.au

PayFlow is Paypal’s payment gateway and you need to setup a PayFlow account.
IMPORTANT! This is separate from Paypal’s development sandbox. Follow these steps to setup a Payflow testing account

1. Go to https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_payflow-get-started-outside
   and fill in the details for an account.
2. When you get to the page where you need to enter your payment information, hit Save and Exit. This will create a testing PayFlow account for you.
3. You will be sent an email with your partner ID and your vendor login. Take note of your partner ID as this will be important later.
4. You should now be able to login at https://manager.paypal.com/

Now that you have a PayFlow account, you can use ActiveMerchant to setup payments. For now we will muck around in irb to test that methods out.

So lets open up irb and start by including the active merchant gem and setting ActiveMerchant to test mode

kongy@Deadpool: $ irb
irb(main):001:0> require 'rubygems'
irb(main):002:0> require 'active_merchant'
irb(main):003:0> ActiveMerchant::Billing::Base.mode = :test

Now lets setup the gateway.

gateway = ActiveMerchant::Billing::PayflowGateway.new(:login => 'PAYFLOW_LOGIN', :password => 'PAYFLOW_PASSWORD', :partner => 'PARTNER_ID')

This creates the gateway that we will be using to request purchases. By default ActiveMerchant passes PAYPAL as the partner value if you leave it out. I believe that this is the default for US PayFlow account. For my Aussie one, I received a VSA partner_id. I would suggest putting it in there anyway.

PayFlow Testing only accepts testing credit cards numbers.  You can grab them from the PayFlow recurring billing documentation found here. Here is a quick list which I can’t guarantee will be up to date.

So lets create a Mastercard credit card.

irb(main):004:0> credit_card = ActiveMerchant::Billing::CreditCard.new( :number => '5105105105105100', :month => '9', :year => '2007', :first_name => 'Mal', :last_name => 'Reynolds', :verification_value => '123', :type => 'master' )

Now we are ready to start billing. If you want to setup a one time payment it is quite easy.

irb(main):007:0> response = gateway.purchase(1000, credit_card)
irb(main):008:0> response.success?
=> true

If you go into your Paypal Manager and search for transactions you should see it appear.

To setup a recurring billing we need to use the recurring method of the gateway. The recurring method accepts the amount in cents, the credit card object and the time intervals to charge the card, at a minimum. There are other options available which you can find here. Lets charge $10/month

irb(main):009:0> response = gateway.recurring(100, credit_card, :periodicity => :monthly)
irb(main):010:0> response.success?
=> true
irb(main):011:0> response.profile_id
=> "RT0000000002"

You can view the recurring billings in your Paypal Manager by clicking on Service Settings > Recurring Billings > Manage Profiles. You will probably want to store the profile_id in your database for when you need to edit details of the recurring billing. You can do it quite simply by calling the recurring method again. Let’s change the amount we want to bill to $20/week.

irb(main):0012:0> response = gateway.recurring(2000, nil, :profile_id => "RT0000000001",  :periodicity => :weekly)
irb(main):013:0> response.success?
=> true

You can see here that we no longer need to pass in the credit card since we have the profile_id. We update the amount, and change the periodicity of the billing.

And that’s it.

To get your app looking cool and having a loading image come up as the application is loading simply add a file called “Default.png” size 320 × 480 to your xcode project and it will automatically show up as the application is loading.

Tip #2: Network Activity Icon

So your application connects to the internet and you want to add those little touches to let the user know its connecting. Well the simple option is to show the network activity indicator. To do that its as simple as setting a variable like so

   [UIApplication sharedApplication].networkActivityIndicatorVisible = YES;

Then to hide it its simply

   [UIApplication sharedApplication].networkActivityIndicatorVisible = NO;

Now you can wire it up to be a little more logical in that way it determines if its working or not but ill leave that to you. Keep an eye out as more tips are on the way

Tip #3: Detect if running in iPhone simulator

What to run different code depending if you running in the iPhone simulator or not. Just use the following if statement.

  #if TARGET_IPHONE_SIMULATOR
    // simulator code
  #else
    // production code
  #endif

Remember people iPhone app icons must be 57×57 exactly and if your image looks wrong at those sizes well bad luck fix it

So thats what we are going to do for this example.

Step 1. Create your admin controller

You can use whichever process works best for you, but for this we are going to use script/generate:

 ./script/generate controller admin

Step 2. Create your user controller

You can use whichever process works best for you, but for this we are going to use script/generate:

 ./script/generate controller admin/users

Step 3. Check to ensure proper inheritance

The nested users controller should look something like so:

class Admin::UsersController < ApplicationController
end

Step 4. Create the Routes

The nested users controller should look something like so:

map.namespace :admin do |admin|
  admin.resources :users
end

Before rails 2+ you had to do like like we have below. Personally l don’t mind it makes it a little easier to read but either option works fine

map.resource(:admin) do |admin|
  admin.resources(:users, :controller => 'admin/users')
end

Step 5. Wait there is no step 5 your done

Now when you need to link to any of these actions its very simple keeping in mind that users is nested under the admin controller so all you have to do to create a link that goes to the index action on the nested users controller is add the admin prefix before

 link_to "Users", admin_users_url

The same applies when you are wanting to link to the show action of users all you do is loose the “s” on users as you would normally

 link_to "View User", admin_user_url(@user)

You can see a list of all the routes you have available to you by going to the root directory of your project in terminal and typing

rake routes

Assuming you subdomain names come from an Account model, add this line of code.

   class Account < ActiveRecord::Base
   authenticates_many :user_sessions
end

In your UserSessionController you can now scope your user sessions to the account.

class UserSessionsController < ApplicationController

    def create
       @user_session = @current_account.user_sessions.build(params[:user_session])
       if @user_session.save
          flash[:notice] = "Login successful!"
          redirect_back_or_default dashboard_path
        else
          render :action => :new
        end
    end
end