Common choice of environments I see everyday is development, integration, certification (or staging) and production. Possibilities are almost endless, and depend on creativity of  your enterprise architects Suppose we want adapt light web framework to heavyweight corporate standards:

Adding custom environment is simple. Open Config.groovy and add new section id Grails' DSL:

environments {
    production {
        grails.serverURL = "http://localhost:8080/${appName}"
    }
    staging {
        grails.serverURL = "http://localhost:8080/${appName}"
    }
    development {
        grails.serverURL = "http://localhost:8080/${appName}"
    }
    test {
        grails.serverURL = "http://localhost:8080/${appName}"
    }
}

You can do exactly the same thing in DataSource.groovy and add database url for new enviroment:

environments {
    //    ...
 
    integration {
        dataSource {
            dbCreate = "update"
            url = "jdbc:hsqldb:file:intDb;shutdown=true"
        }
 
    }
}

Finallly, run grails application with usual command line option:

grails -Dgrails.env=integration run-app

or, even better, add this command line switch to your favorite servlet container environment options.

I want more

Adding custom environment with just another database setting is trivial use case. You may want to have additional per-environment configuration settings, different for each environment. For example, while developing eBay auction sniper, you would like to publish production like instance, but connecting to "sandbox" API. Thanks to Grails' flexibility it is plain simple. Go back to Config.groovy and add anything you with to environment blocks:

environments {
    production {
        grails.serverURL = "http://localhost:8080/${appName}"
        ebay.url = "http://open.api.ebay.com/"
    }
    staging {
        grails.serverURL = "http://localhost:8080/${appName}"
        ebay.url = "https://api.sandbox.ebay.com/"
    }
    development {
        grails.serverURL = "http://localhost:8080/${appName}"
        ebay.url = "https://api.sandbox.ebay.com/"
    }
    test {
        grails.serverURL = "http://localhost:8080/${appName}"
        ebay.url = "https://api.sandbox.ebay.com/"
    }
}

You can access variables defined inside braces via ConfigurationHolder singleton:

ConfigurationHolder.config.ebay.url

Telling current configuration from code

You may want to show running environment name somewhere on page, to make sure application your testers are playing with is not connected to production ebay environment Grails offers a way to obtain current running configuration:

Environment.getCurrent()

Environment is actually enum type and getCurrent() returns value for current configuration. There is one catch: this is enum, so it lists only factory-defined configurations: PRODUCTION, DEVELOPMENT, TEST, and for everything else: CUSTOM. Casting this enum to string will effectively return "CUSTOM" for all custom configuration. However, if you make call like this one:

Environment.getCurrent().getName()

You will find that getCurrent() method is smart enough to alter CUSTOM enum's name property and set it to right value.

This is why people love Grails: it is simple, yet flexible. Have fun!

I'm happy to annouce update of my little Phocus! app. Version 1.1 brings a cool new feature: calculating optimal aperture and focus point to achieve given depth of field. Everything else (including delicious UI is left unchanged.

• Phocus in App Store
• Phocus! website.

Phocus! Depth of field priority.

Phocus! Depth of field

There is simple solution for that: and there's again nice, but obscure feature that is included in the box, but just not activated. Let's edit the .hgrc in your home directory, and make sure there is something like this:

[extensions]
purge =

and once it is, just type

hg purge

to send unwanted files to /dev/null.

Just key in a magical command:

defaults write com.macromates.textmate AppleScrollAnimationEnabled -bool NO

And scrolling is back sraight!

[via http://lists.macromates.com/textmate/2011-January/032098.html]

It's still an EAP, but it is quite impressive. It fills the gaps in places I missed so much: refactoring, quick fixes, and on-the-fly code analysis. I played with it just a little, but definitely:

• rename works
• extract method works
• change method signature works
• @class and #import is added automatically when class is used
• you can generate ivars and @properties

and many more. Great job, JetBrains!

I only wish Apple not making some stupid decision about banning or blocking other IDEs. I hope I'm paranoid in that case.

echo '{ "Japko.net" : "Rulez" }' | python -mjson.tool

vim ~/.hgrc

And add some magical lines:

[extensions]
color =
highlight =
graphlog =

color and highlight enable colored output of diff and stat. graphlog adds new command, glog, which will just try to draw revision graph using ASCII-art alongside with normal log output. There's a lot of extensions to be discovered, I just started with bringing some life to dull default interface.

Unfortunately it came true. Obvious truth has been proved once more: you may know the programming language, and even API, but software design is left behind. Main app controller class was almost 3000 lines long, and below you can find one of my favorite pieces.

The morale is short and simple: stop thinking in Turbo Pascal. Objective-C, as name suggests is object-oriented language, so for God's sake, use it!

Masterpiece example is to be seen below...

for (int i=0; i<8; i++) {
   // ... (few lines omited)
 
switch (i) {
  case 0:
  {
    btn.tag = 0;
    if (_selectedDay != nil) {
      int ab = 60 * [[_selectedDay valueForKey:@"hour"] intValue] +
        [[_selectedDay valueForKey:@"minute"] intValue];
      if (ab == 0) btn.selected = YES;
    }
  }
    break;
  case 1:
  {
    btn.tag = 5;
    if (_selectedDay != nil) {
      int ab = 60 * [[_selectedDay valueForKey:@"hour"] intValue] +
        [[_selectedDay valueForKey:@"minute"] intValue];
      if (ab == 5) btn.selected = YES;
    }
  }
    break;
  case 2:
  {
    btn.tag = 15;
    if (_selectedDay != nil) {
      int ab = 60 * [[_selectedDay valueForKey:@"hour"] intValue] +
        [[_selectedDay valueForKey:@"minute"] intValue];
      if (ab == 15) btn.selected = YES;
    }
  }
    break;
  case 3:
  {
    btn.tag = 30;
    if (_selectedDay != nil) {
      int ab = 60 * [[_selectedDay valueForKey:@"hour"] intValue] +
        [[_selectedDay valueForKey:@"minute"] intValue];
      if (ab == 30) btn.selected = YES;
    }
  }
    break;
  case 4:
  {
    btn.tag = 45;
    if (_selectedDay != nil) {
      int ab = 60 * [[_selectedDay valueForKey:@"hour"] intValue] +
        [[_selectedDay valueForKey:@"minute"] intValue];
      if (ab == 45) btn.selected = YES;
    }
  }
    break;
  case 5:
  {
    btn.tag = 60;
    if (_selectedDay != nil) {
      int ab = 60 * [[_selectedDay valueForKey:@"hour"] intValue] +
        [[_selectedDay valueForKey:@"minute"] intValue];
      if (ab == 60) btn.selected = YES;
    }
  }
    break;
  case 6:
  {
    btn.tag = 120;
    if (_selectedDay != nil) {
      int ab = 60 * [[_selectedDay valueForKey:@"hour"] intValue] +
        [[_selectedDay valueForKey:@"minute"] intValue];
      if (ab == 120) btn.selected = YES;
    }
  }
    break;
  case 7:
  {
    btn.tag = 180;
    if (_selectedDay != nil) {
      int ab = 60 * [[_selectedDay valueForKey:@"hour"] intValue] +
        [[_selectedDay valueForKey:@"minute"] intValue];
      if (ab == 180) btn.selected = YES;
    }
  }
  break;
}
}