Robert Evans

Working on the Mac, I’ve really become found of using Safari. One thing I wish is that it had the web developer toolbar like firefox has. Firefox is still a great browser, but on the Mac, it just doesn’t look or feel like Mac software. Version 2 of Firefox is a great improvement, but it isn’t quite there and won’t be until version 3.

Another aspect of Firefox that I like is the ability to create customized searches with keywords. Well, Safari can do the same thing with two different plugins – you only need one.

I’ve been working with Ryan over at Moral Metric for about 2 months now. It is a great project and one that I am becoming more and more passionate about. Not only is it a great idea, but we get to code it in Ruby on Rails. And let’s not forgot that I get to work with my friend Ryan to boot!

We have a fairly sophisticated rights and roles management for our users on Moral Metric that keeps a tight control on who can do what. It is heavily based on the CRUD principle. We needed this because we have 6 levels of access that all vary in what the user can or cannot do. The problem that we found with this is that we are hitting the database pretty hard to check if they user has permission to do this or that. So, the obvious choice was to implement caching which became my job to implement, something I have not done before in Rails – till now.

NOTE – This article has a space between the percentage sign and the greater than sign at the end of the code samples. This is so that it can be rendered correctly in TXP. If you are copy and pasting the code, remove the space between these two symbols.

I was recently asked how one could use Rails to create a static site, so that later, they could then change it to be dynamic or parts thereof to be dynamic. Even though Rails isn’t designed for this, it can be done quite easily.