We have just pushed a small update to the production servers. the fixes include:

• Internet Explorer 6,7 and 8 rendering issues on the Dashboard
• Internet Explorer 6,7 and 8 Gantt Chart didn't always show
• Create Milestone button on the Planning Tab didn't work

As always your feedback is greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

Floyd

Hi Guys,

This is a quick post to let you know that we have introduced a new payment option, PayPal!

You go through the same process as normal but select the PayPal option on the payment page, everything else is the same.

Cheers

Floyd Price

Code Spaces

If your new to the concept of Version Control check out this great article over at betterexplained.com

For all your graphic designers our there, this on is for you.

If like me you do a lot of your SVN work in the command line you will be familiar with the SVN status codes, you know when you do an svn status you see a list of files, some have been modified (M), some have been added (A), and other are well in a state of limbo (!).

This is a quick explanation of most of the codes and what it means to your the user if you see them

For those of you who use a nice GUI to manage your working copies, Look Away Now

>svn status
  ? file1.txt
  ! file2.txt
  A file3.txt
  M file4.txt
  A+ file5.txt
  G file6.txt
  C file7.txt
  D file8.txt
  U file9.txt
  ...

  svn add file1.txt

  svn propedit svn:ignore

  svn delete file1.txt

  svn delete file1.txt --force

  -Just buy a sandwich.
  +<<<<<<< .mine
  +Go pick up a cheesesteak.
  +=======
  +Bring me a taco!
  +>>>>>>> .r32
  blah blah blah
  ...

As well as the super extensive API we offer you can also enable Work Item creation by email.

Getting Started

In the project setting tab you will see a check box labeled "Email In Work Items" once checked your project email address will become active.

Usage

Using the email address displayed in the project settings tab you can email work items directly in to your project, this is a great way to give your users mechanism to send in bugs.

You can also get notification messages when this happened if you have check the the appropriate options in your user profile

As always we are really keen to here your thoughts about this, so please Contact Us

We have had an API in Code Spaces for about a year now, but until now have neglected to tell a single soul... about 100 of you have spotted it and asked for details so finally here is a fancy guide.

We will be creating sample code for Ruby, C# and Java developers (and any other language you guys ask for) in the coming days.

Getting Started

In the Code Spaces admin section select the project you want to work with and select the API Settings tab.

You will notice a brief list of available functions and a check box to enable the API for this project.

Check the Enable API box and the functions you wish to use.

Now you have enabled the API you will need to use the API Key.

The Api is a simple RESTful service and uses the following URL conventions:

https://[your_account].codespaces.com/api/[resource].xml

When you hit this URL you will be prompted for a username and password, the username is your API key and the password is blank.

Resources

List Work Items - Retrieve a list of work items.
URL (GET) : https://[your_account].codespaces.com/api/work_items

Edit Work Items - Update existing work items.
URL (PUT) : https://[your_account].codespaces.com/api/work_items/wi_id/

Create Work Items - Create a new work items.
URL (PUT) : https://[your_account].codespaces.com/api/work_items/

Project Details - Retrieve information about the current project.
URL (PUT) : https://[your_account].codespaces.com/api/work_items/

List Project Components - Retrieve a list of Project Components.
URL (GET) : https://[your_account].codespaces.com/api/project

List Project Milestones - Retrieve a list of Project Milestones.
URL (GET) : https://[your_account].codespaces.com/api/project_milestones

List Project Users - Retrieve a list of Project Users.
URL (GET) : https://[your_account].codespaces.com/api/users

List Work Item Priorities - Retrieve a list of Work Item Priorities
URL (GET) : https://[your_account].codespaces.com/api/work_item_priorities

List Work Item Statuses - Retrieve a list of Work Item Statuses
URL (GET) : https://[your_account].codespaces.com/api/work_item_statuses

List Work Item Types - Retrieve a list of Work Item Types
URL (GET) : https://[your_account].codespaces.com/api/work_item_types

Further to Adrian’s recent announcement about v2.6 I would also like to add that the SVN Backups tab is now available via the Admin tab, which gives you direct access to your SVN backups.

Please let us know if you have any feedback for any of these enhancements?

Cheers,

Floyd Price
Code Spaces

We are pleased to announce the availability of Code Spaces v2.5, this is the first in a series of updates that will bring us to v3.0 over the coming months.

This update includes many foundational enhancements, performance updates and extra scaling options, including:

• Infrastructure Update
  All the Code Spaces SVN, App and database servers are now running on Amazon EC2 and as such we have updated all components to take advantage of the almost limitless scaling opportunities.

• Changes to Plans
  With our new found abundance of space and processing power we have updated the Code Spaces Plans, in a nut shell all plans now have unlimited projects and repositories and the FREE plan now has 500MB of disk space (10x what it was).

• Card Walls
  A new tab has been introduced to Code Spaces between the Dashboard and Work Items called “Card Wall”. A Card wall is a visualization of Work items, and allows work items to be displayed as cards in virtual swim lanes that represent categories such as Work Item Status, or Assigned To. Within the context of a milestone Card Walls give Agile teams the ability to plan, estimate, do Stand Ups, etc all from the Code Spaces UI. The Card Wall section also allows for convenient dragging and dropping between swim lanes, so re-allocating or prioritizing work items couldn’t be easier.

• Browser Rendering Issues
  All known IE6, 7 and 8 rendering issues have been resolved. Firefox 3+ exhibited rendering issues on the Code Spaces Dashboard where the timeline would bleed through any components above like menus or dialogs. This has been resolved.

• Email Notifications
  Users can now receive email notifications from activity in the Code Spaces forums. Admins can now specify user notification preferences in the User Admin section.

• Return URLs
  Previously the Code Spaces application would redirect to the login page when an login was required which is great, however the context of the request was lost and the user would not be returned back to the page they requested after a successful login, this has now been resolved.

• Backup Changes
  We now use the snapshot feature of Amazons Elastic Block storage to take block level backups every 10 minutes, we are also taking actual backups of each repository as a commit occurs meaning we have a much greater capacity to respond to failure.

A few other not so noteworthy bugs have been fixed and many performance improvements have been applied.

As i mentioned this is one of many updates that we will be applying over the coming months, v2.6 is scheduled to go live in exactly one month from now ;-)

As always please Contact Us if you have any suggestions ;-)

Many Thanks,

Floyd Price
Code Spaces

Quite often when building a web application you need to store and send Documents, with ruby on rails, streaming files from your application to the browser is simple.

def download_file
    @document = Document.find(params[:id])
    # this is where the magic happens...
    send_file @document.file_location
end

This single line of code will stream a file from your servers filesystem directly to your browser.

The simple use described above is often enough but you have even further control over the file with the following options:

Options:

• :filename – suggests a filename for the browser to use. Defaults to File.basename(path).
• :type – specifies an HTTP content type. Defaults to ‘application/octet-stream’.
• :disposition – specifies whether the file will be shown inline or downloaded. Valid values are ‘inline’ and ‘attachment’ (default).
• :stream – whether to send the file to the user agent as it is read (true) or to read the entire file before sending (false). Defaults to true.
• :buffer_size – specifies size (in bytes) of the buffer used to stream the file. Defaults to 4096.
• :status – specifies the status code to send with the response. Defaults to ‘200 OK’.
• :url_based_filename – set to true if you want the browser guess the filename from the URL, which is necessary for i18n filenames on certain browsers (setting :filename overrides this option).

Pay particular notice to the :disposition option, changing this from its default to ‘inline’ will enable you to display the contents of the file in the browser window rather than downloading it as an attachment.

def download_file
    @document = Document.find(params[:id])
    # this is where the magic happens (inline)...
    send_file @document.file_location, :disposition => "inline"
end

This is especially useful for things like word or excel documents when you know you target audience can read these in the browser.

EDGE RAILS

If you are brave enough to live on the Edge with Edge Rails you will get an extra treat for free, on Edge Rails the send_file method passes the correct information to your balancing server to allow it to stream the file rather than blocking your mongrel server.

Many Code Spaces users have asked my which Subversion Clinets are the best for a given platform so I a have compiled this list of Subversion Clients and grouped it by Operating System, I know this list is not complete so let me know if i have missed any really good ones ;-)

• TortioseSVN is the de-facto standard when it comes to Subversion clients, on windows that is, TortoiseSVN is OPEN SOURCE, and FREE and is a complete implementation, featuring visual Diff and Merge and really good integration with the windows shell.

• Rapid SVN is a Cross Platform stand alone client. It sports a Simple interface that is familiar to most source control clients, and is OPEN SOURCE and FREE.

• SmartSVN is a commercial Subversion Client, which includes all the standard SVN features, with some nice additions like a fancy Revision Graph. SmartSVN costs $79.99 per user but for those of you who don’t do Open Source, it’s a good alternative to TortioseSVN and RadipSVN.

• SVN.exe is the command line Subversion client that comes with the standard Subversion install and for 90% of your subversion work is more than good enough to accomplish what you need, It isn’t a GUI and you have to learn all the commands, but once you have you will also have a much better understanding of the Subversion internals. SVN.exe is OPEN SOURCE and FREE.

Mac OS X

• SCPlugin is an open source project that is building a Mac version of TortoiseSVN (see above), and although its far from being complete it does give you the shell integration and the basic SVN commands. it is OPEN SOURCE and FREE.

• RapidSVN (See above) being cross platform is also a good client for Mac OS X, however the look and feel is not really what most Mac users expect. (Java tut).

• SmartSVM (See above) being cross platform is also a good commercial Subversion client on Mac OS X.

• The SVN command line client again is a great utility on the Mac.

Linux

• RapidSVN and SmartSVN also run on Linux systems (java required) and are both great on this platform.

• Svn command line is probably the tool of choice for most Linux developers. Linux users are generally more comfortable in the command line.

In my next post i will highlight some of the IDE’s and IDE Extensions that enable Subversion Integration.