Open Source Software

Gattica

http://github.com/cannikin/gattica

Gattica is a small Ruby library that is used to talk to the Google Analytics API.

gasohol

http://github.com/cannikin/gasohol

gasohol is a Ruby library for running searches against a Google Server Appliance.

validator.js

http://github.com/cannikin/validator

A small Javascript library for client-side validation of forms on a website. Simply let it know what fields you want to validate, and what you consider a valid field, and it does the rest!

Alfred

http://github.com/cannikin/alfred

This is a Ruby on Rails app that controls other Ruby on Rails apps. I built it to help in my role as a UI architect and rapid prototyper. I’m constantly creating small apps to test out a concept or flesh out a Photoshop comp. Using Alfred I can easily start and stop those mini-apps and send links to others.

Backpack API CFC Wrapper

http://ridingtheclutch.com/assets/2008/2/9/Backpack.cfc

When 37signals released a RESTful API for their popular Backpack personal trapper-keeper. ColdFusion simulates “real” objects with CFCs – ColdFusion Components. This component lets a programmer simply instantiate the CFC and start making calls to it like any other CF object and receive back a CF XML object in return.

Rubyweaver

http://rubyweaver.gilluminate.com/

An extension for Macromedia/Adobe Dreamweaver. This was the first, and may still be the only, syntax coloring and hinting package for Dreamweaver.

ColdFusion on Wheels

http://cfwheels.com

A port of the Ruby on Rails framework and methodologies to ColdFusion. It is currently in version 0.7 and has several core committers, an active Google Group and several examples of usage in production environments. My goal was to bring the speed, quality and just plain fun of programming in Ruby and Rails to the CF community. I also created high-quality PDF documentation for the project because I believe lack of docs is what often causes many open source projects to stall (see the Files section below for a sample chapter).

Writing a framework (and documentation) for the CF community is an interesting challenge – most developers building ColdFusion apps today are doing so because they “sort of know HTML” and wanted the quickest way to get database content to their sites. CF is a tag-based language so it’s very familiar to those who are comfortable with HTML-like syntax. Talking about MVC to these developers is not going to make you any friends. So the documentation assumed nothing and brought users up from installing CF and Wheels to their first, database and model-driven application.

Wheels has since been taken over by others in the community and I no longer actively contribute to the development.