Albuquerque Ruby Group

Ruby and Rails programming problems

May 2007

html graph generator

• Ruby/Rails library
• display a bar graph (horizontally or vertically)
• allow an arbitrary number of data points and labels
• require the user to specify a destination directory
• allow the user to specify 'copy' or 'move'
• adjusts each bar to that data point's percentage of the total

• optionally display the each data point's percentage of the total
• optionally display the each data point's value
• optionally display the total of all data points

April 2007

backup script

• Ruby app
• require the user to specify a source filename or directory
• if the user specifies a source directory, create a tarball of the directory
• require the user to specify a destination directory
• allow the user to specify 'copy' or 'move'
• perform the copy or move of the tarball (or file) to the destination directory

• automatically add the current date to the tarball, if a tarball is created

March 2007

no assignment this month!

With our group's one year birthday celebration in March, we decided to skip the programming problem and eat cake at Flying Star Cafe!

February 2007

file encrypt/decrypt program

• Ruby app
• allow the user to specify a filename
• allow the user to specify the operation (encrypt or decrypt)
• allow the user to specify a secret passphrase
• read in the specified file
• write the file’s contents to stdout (encrypted or decrypted)

• allow the user to optionally specify a salt phrase
• allow the user to optionally specify the security protocol (from among your supported protocols)

January 2007

ad-hoc query app

• Rails app
• allow admin users to define named queries, specifying required criteria fields
• allow non-admin users to select a query by its name

  app will present criteria fields required by the selected query
  user enters criteria and runs the query
  data returned is presented in a table

• allow users to 'save' criteria for queries
• allow users to define 'queues' of queries
• allow users to run their query 'queues'

December 2006

message log server

• Ruby application
• runs as a server (using a TCP socket, XML-RPC service or whatever you like)
• messages can be text, a Ruby stack trace or whatever
• with each incoming message, display the following:
  
    hostname of the caller
    date and time, nicely formatted
    message
  
  
• build a client piece as a Ruby module
• demonstrate calling the log server from a Rails app

• allow only specified hosts to connect and leave messages
• write the messages to a database
• email the messages to a predetermined email address
• write a simple Rails app to view/clear the messages

November 2006

system monitor

• Rails application
• display the local hostname
• have links to the following reports...
  
    ps (process status)
    uptime (system uptime)
    users (list current users)
    df (free disk space)
  
  
• for each link above, call the corresponding unix (or cygwin) program from Ruby and display the results, formatted nicely

• allow the system to monitor remote machines

October 2006

photo website creator

• Ruby or Rails application
• require the user to give the path to a directory of image files
• let's say the directory structure looks something like this...
  
  My pics/
  
    New York City/
      Empire State building.jpg
      Lady Liberty.jpg
      Brooklyn Bridge.jpg
      Central Park.jpg
  
    Latest baby pictures/
      IMG_001.jpg
      IMG_002.jpg
      IMG_003.jpg
      ...
      IMG_024.jpg
  
    Santa Fe hike/
      Lost in the aspens.jpg
      Mountaintop clouds.jpg
      Best buddies!.jpg
  
    (for simplicity, only allow one level of sub-directories)
  
  
• create a home page with a link to each 'thumbnail' page
• in the example above, the home page would have three links, one link to each of the three thumbnail pages ('New York City', 'Latest baby pictures', 'Santa Fe hike')
• create thumbnail images corresponding to each image file
• create thumbnail pages that will display the thumbnail images for that sub-directory's image files
• each thumbnail page contains a link back to the home page
• each thumbnail will be a link to a page that contains the full size image that corresponds to that thumbnail
• each full size image page contains a link back to the thumbnail page and a link back to the home page

• jazz it up with some CSS
• have the program create a zip file of the resulting website files

September 2006

file upload/download app

• Ruby on Rails application
• access to the website is controlled via a login page
• allow users to upload files to the server
• keep each user's files private - accessible only by that user
• list all files that have been uploaded by the user
• allow users to download their files

• allow users to mark uploaded files as 'public'
• allow any user to view and download 'public' files

August 2006

zip program

• zip all files in the specified directory (recursing the dir tree) to the specified zip filename

• unzip an existing zip file
• build a GUI that allows user selection of the files to zip (could be standalone GUI or Rails app)

July 2006

simple grep program

• search a text file for the specified criteria text
• accept the file name and criteria text as command line arguments
• display the line number(s) where the criteria text was found
• display the line(s) of text within which the criteria text was found

• support searching all files in a directory tree
• allow specific files to be searched by providing a regular expression for the file name argument
• allow criteria text argument to be a regular expression

June 2006

line count program

• count and display the number of 'lines of code' in a text file
• count the number of 'comment lines' in the text file
• display both the number of 'lines of code' and 'comment lines'
• accept the file name to be analyzed as a command line argument

• support analyzing all files in a directory tree with a display that includes file type counts, lines of code and comment counts
• categorize file, line and comment counts by file extension