An iPhone/iPod Touch program to learn to read the time has been approved by the app store. It shows a fun and colourful clock with multiple levels of difficulty that is fine for beginners and more advanced learners. The child must move the hands of the clock to the correct time. More details can be found here and it is available on the app store.
I have released a couple of iPhone/iPod Touch apps recently but have yet to create a space for them on this website. It has been an interesting experience developing for the platform even if I haven’t quite go my head around Objective-C. It certainly isn’t the same as programming for BeOS or Ruby on Rails (or C# & .net) but it is a decent language.
If anyone has any suggestions then please feel free to contact me at kumo@kumo.it with any ideas. Also I am looking for translations for my Roman Numerals application (external link to itunes) so if anyone would like to help out I would be most grateful. I have Italian, Korean, and Chinese (Traditional and Simplified) so far.
acts_as_confirmable is a Ruby on Rails plugin that is useful when you want to know who ticked a check box and when they did so. It can be found on GitHub.
This plugin treats a datetime attribute and an integer attribute as a boolean. This boolean can then be used as normal attribute in a check box (or in any part of the program) and when it is checked, the datetime records the moment and the integer records the id of the current user.
It is assumed that there is a Users table and that the current user can be found at User.current_user. If the current user cannot be accessed then 1 is used as the id.
$ cd vendor/plugins
$ git checkout git://github.com/kumo/acts_as_confirmable/treeX_confirmed_at datetime and X_confirmed_by integer.acts_as_confirmed :Xcheck_box :X)$ rails confirm
$ cd confirm$ script/generate scaffold user name:string
$ script/generate scaffold item name:string \
started_confirmed_by:integer started_confirmed_at:datetime \
finished_confirmed_by:integer finished_confirmed_at:datetime \
ready_confirmed_by:integer ready_confirmed_at:datetimeclass Item < ActiveRecord::Base
acts_as_confirmable :started, :finished, :ready
end<p>
<%= f.label :started %><br />
<%= f.check_box :started %>
</p>
<p>
<%= f.label :finished %><br />
<%= f.check_box :finished %>
</p>
<p>
<%= f.label :ready %><br />
<%= f.check_box :ready %>
</p><td>
<%=h item.started? %>
<%=h item.finished_confirmer.name if @item.finished? -%>
</td>class User < ActiveRecord::Base
cattr_accessor :current_user
end
class ItemsController < ApplicationController
before_filter :load_user
def load_user
User.current_user = User.find(:first)
end
endIf a model has the attributes fields started_confirmed_at and started_confirmed_by, then the plugin provides:
started?
true if it has been confirmed by someone on a specific datestarted
same as above but is normally used by a check box tagstarted=
the assignment method that is used by the check box when postingstarted_confirmer
the user that confirmed itstarted_at
when it was confirmedOver the next couple of posts I thought that I would like to discuss the redevelopment of my hiragana and katakana quiz software. This software originally started out as a command-line Perl script, became a PHP web script, before turning into a Ruby on Rails web application. Unfortunately, although the development language changed and possibilities increased, the overall functionality remained very much trapped in the original design. As I have started in other posts, I have plans for my quiz software, but it remains rather static, so perhaps it would be a good idea to talk about user stories as a way of providing clarity and focus.
I tend to prefer to use development tools that simplify the tasks that I have come to find routine, but perhaps more importantly provide me with a fresh and powerful way of looking at new problems that I need to solve. The latest tool to find me is user stories with RSpec. Now, I must say that I was already using RSpec to ‘test’ other Ruby on Rails applications and I think that everyone should try and play around with it for a bit, but user stories—in particular the plain-text flavour of them—are what currently occupy my notebook scribbles.
Let me show a somewhat simplistic and incomplete example of a user story:
Story: starting a quiz
As a visitor
I want to start a quiz
So that I can hopefully learn something
Scenario: quiz doesn't exist
Given a quiz named hiragana
When I start another quiz
Then I should see the 404 error page
And I should see a link to the list of quizes
Scenario: quiz does exist
Given a quiz named hiragana
When I start the quiz
Then I should see the quiz
And I should see a questionWe have a story with two scenarios: when the quiz exists and when the quiz doesn’t exist. It is not very interesting, but at least we know that the user should see an error page if they try and start a quiz that doesn’t exist, and that they should also see a list of quizes that are available instead. If the quiz does exist then they should see a question.
This might be useful if we want to ensure that the 404 page is shown when the requested quiz doesn’t exist, but it is not very satisfactory to write down and seems a bit pointless. It also doesn’t help us understand what happens when a user starts a quiz.
One of the main thing that I like about plain text user stories is that I can easily scribble them down on a piece of paper. I can focus on describing my goals without worrying about the implementation details and afterwards even use this “pseudotestcode” directly. The plain text user story also is nicely separated from the implementation code that is needed to make it work and because of this, it is easy to fit an understandable and detailed story in a manageable page or two.
I think I will use the following story in my quiz redevelopment and next time I will discuss other stories, and also how to test these stories.
Story: starting a quiz
As a visitor
I want to start a quiz
So that I can hopefully learn something
Scenario: quiz doesn't exist
Given a quiz named hiragana
And a quiz named katakana
When I start another quiz
Then I should see the 404 error page
And I should see a list of quizes
And the list of quizes should have 2 items
Scenario: default configuration
Given a quiz named hiragana
When I start the quiz
Then I should see the quiz
And I should see a question
And I should see the text "Question 1 of 5"
And there should be 3 textboxes
Scenario: 10 questions
Given a quiz named hiragana
And the quiz has been configured for 10 questions
When I start the quiz
Then I should see the quiz
And I should see "Question 1 of 10"
Scenario: 5 hiragana per question
Given a quiz named hiragana
And the quiz has been configured for 5 hiragana
When I start the quiz
Then I should see the quiz
And there should be 5 textboxesUPDATE: well the old quiz should be back online so if there are any problems please let me know! I am going to start documenting my work on the new version of the quizes so let’s see how it goes.
Hello, I am sorry to say that I am putting the quizes temporarily offline. The reason being that they are in definite need of changes and I haven’t updated the code for a long time; mainly because it was too awkward deploying new versions. I am starting to take the steps to simplify the whole process, but it may take a couple of days to return.
As I want to go to Japan this summer I think this will be a good opportunity for me to sort out the quizes and make them more useful for me which in turn should be more useful for you!