Using plugin (because I have to), but how?

[Jim James]

Hi Fernand (and other MOlers),

I am using a hosting provider that does not give me access to the
machine (morph - love it, by the way) so I can't install the gem. I
installed the plugin from the svn trunk, and moved the migration into
the migrations folder. Works great - I am getting rows written to the
mole_logs table nicely.

Now I'm trying snitch. However it is written to use the MOle gem. I
tried installing the plugin into snitch and cleaning up some of the
requires so they work. However I am running in to snitch looking for
methods that I don't think are in the plugin (eg,
find_moled_application_names). I tried unpacking the gem into the
snitch application, also with no luck.

Before I dig deeper to reinvent snitch, do you know if the current
trunk of snitch is compatible with the MOle plugin? Or does it require
the advanced technology of the gem?

And, in your infinite wisdom, should I be approaching this effort in a
different way?

Best regards, Denver (derailed) Jim.

[Fernand Galiana]

HI Jim,

    Thank you for the kind words !!
    Hum... Interesting scenario. I have not tried this before but I think this might work for you ?

    I think you might be able to add the gem and make
    it into a rails plugin by changing the init.rb and put in the code that I have bundled in the
    examples.

    For the Snitch you will need to copy the models ie mole_logs and mole_features
    from the gem. if you can not install the gem locally. Or do the same trick using the gem
    as a plugin.

    Please keep us posted...

Best Regards,
Fernand

[Jim James]

Thanks Fernand.

I've added gems like that before but I kept running into problems with the MOler. I think only because it was so cleverly written! After thinking about it for a while, I realized that the functionality in the plugin was just fine for me so I continued with the plugin. Then after some more time, I also realized that snitch was written for a different use case than what I was looking for, so I wrote my own snitch. I ended up changing the models so that I could filter quickly on some additional primary keys (tour_operator, session_id). Just rolled the first version into production this morning. Looking good! Next thing is to get the session-story feature working (click on a row and filter just the actions within that session, nicely annotated).

I really like the gem because it can be applied in so many environments, and combined with snitch I'm sure I'll use it for an enterprisy-app before long. In the meantime, the custom version I did is better suited to this particular application.

I'll post about the session-story when I get it working, too.      Jim.

[Fernand Galiana]

Hi Jim,

  Very Cool, application of the MOle...
  I have not thought on using the it that way...

-Fernand