Recently, I was looking deeper into how we could add some automated acceptance tests to our Ruby on Rails based website. We're using RSpec since quite a while now for TDD, but doing some high level acceptance tests was not on our agenda so far. DRY Cucumber Scenarios The new cool kid on the block … Continue reading webrat: Automated Acceptance Testing with RSpec or Cucumber
Category: Tools & Technology
Seed Data In Ruby On Rails
To run automated tests for your Ruby on Rails webapp, not only do you need your latest database structure deployed to the test database (created by rake db:test:prepare), but you also need some seed data for lookup tables, e.g. like zip codes. Common approaches like adding seed data through rails migrations are discouraged, and plugins … Continue reading Seed Data In Ruby On Rails
Using SiteSucker For Testing Redirects
My boss threw down the gauntlet Monday morning during our weekly meeting. In relaunching one of our decade old platforms, we couldn't afford to get bashed by fickle finger of Google Search Results and I needed to take extra care in ensuring all redirects were properly made. With over twenty thousand pages, it was no … Continue reading Using SiteSucker For Testing Redirects
Acceptance Testing with Cucumber
After watching a Pivotal Labs Tech Talk Making a Case for Cucumber, I decided to give it a try. Especially the seamless integration with rails and webrat made me curious. Webrat is a headless browser simulator, which can execute UI tests for you. You even can use the same syntax to drive a real browser … Continue reading Acceptance Testing with Cucumber
Getting a Quick Overview of your Site’s Response Times
I promised you a couple weeks back to share some more code for building your own XFD (extreme feedback device). Embedding Munin graphs is child's play, so I thought I'd give you a head-start with the Pingdom API. And we all know how critical site response times are to the success of your online business. … Continue reading Getting a Quick Overview of your Site’s Response Times
Splunking for Spikes
We had a short load spike on our application servers a couple weeks back. A load of 28 on a 4-core machine is more than uncomfortable - it's downright dangerous. Luckily, it only lasted for 2 minutes and, just as suddenly as it came, vanished again without a trace. Well, that's not quite true, because … Continue reading Splunking for Spikes
ZFS vs LVM For Dummies
Warning: This article is an over-simplified and absolutely incomplete view of ZFS vs LVM from a user's point of view. I'm sure, LVM works great for a lot of people, but, well, for me it sucked. And ZFS simplifies my life. Honestly. Here's why. Providing Disk Space To Virtual Machines Ok, I have to admit … Continue reading ZFS vs LVM For Dummies
Data Mining Apache Logfiles
This is a guest post by Thomas Eisenbarth. Thomas studied computer science at the University of Augsburg, currently works at BINconsult GmbH, Berlin and co-founded makandra GmbH in Augsburg. He and his teams develop and operate web applications. Everybody knows those tools for analyzing logfiles written out by your favorite httpd: awstats, WebAlizer (yes, this … Continue reading Data Mining Apache Logfiles
Monitoring tools essentials: Munin vs. Nagios
When you're running any business critical application, you need to know what's going on with it. Is it up? Does it cause extended load on your servers? Does it have enough disk space left, how fast is the data on the disk growing, etc. To know all that, you need a tool which a) monitors … Continue reading Monitoring tools essentials: Munin vs. Nagios
Designing Code Structure for Server Deployment
I'm not sure when our offshore team decided to start using subversion. Was it at the start of (or during) their current project with us or have they always used it? One thing's for sure, they certainly never considered using it as a deployment tool and that's causing me one helluva headache today. The 'data/' … Continue reading Designing Code Structure for Server Deployment
