In app/controllers/sessions_controller.rb:

  def demo
    params[:login] = 'demologin'
    params[:password] = 'demopassword'
    create
  end

In config/routes.rb:

  map.demo '/demo', :controller => 'sessions', :action => 'demo'

My next AJAX step was to get in_place_editing working. The first problem was the InvalidAuthenticityToken and the second issue was that I use a different controller, but now it works fine!

  def print
    @thing = current_user.things.find(params[:id])
    render :layout => "print"
  end

My routes.rb contains something like:

  map.print_thing '/things/:id/print',
    :controller => 'things', :action => 'print'

The print layout is currently bare-bone HTML with this script snippet right before </body>:

<script type="text/javascript">javascript:print()</script>

Now I’m learning about layouts in Ruby on Rails. As suggested in the Midnight Oil blog (Beds are burning?) article SimpleSidebar – If you have sidebars, you need this plugin I now use SimpleSidebar in The Project. At first it didn’t work at all, but updating config.plugins in config/environment.rb was an easy solution! :-)

I lookup things in the Rails 1.2 book but as I’m using Rails 2 I’m browsing the web quite a bit too. One very useful resource I’ve found so far is Akita’s tutorial. So far I have restful_authentication working (from the restful_authentication gem), a “welcome” controller and two domain-specific models. I’m working on two related controllers.

A few words about using an activation step when registering a new user. I started out with the Restful_authentication & Activation instructions but I thought that having a HOST global variable was really silly so I found the retardase_inhibitor plugin and now I can properly generate URLs in the ActionMailer.

I’ve promised myself to write the project in Ruby on Rails (not a PHP hack like folkmun.se) and do my best to use TDD or maybe even BDD. If I go for BDD there’s an RSpec plugin for Ruby on Rails and I’ve found some interesting reading, for example Developing a Rails model using BDD and RSpec, Part 1.

So, will it fly? Evan Williams lists a number of questions for evaluation of product ideas:

• Tractability: How difficult will it be to launch a worthwhile version 1.0?
• Obviousness: Is it clear why people should use it?
• Deepness: How much value can you ultimately deliver?
• Wideness: How many people may ultimately use it?
• Discoverability: How will people learn about your product?
• Monetizability: How hard will it be to extract the money?
• Personally Compelling: Do you really want it to exist in the world?