JIRA and Campfire Integration
Posted by Ben in JIRA, Technology on January 21, 2012
I have been working on migrating my company’s Pivotal Tracker to JIRA. We love most of the features of JIRA, but we were really missing the nice updates to our Campfire room to tell us what is going on with our issues.
Sure, we could use an RSS feed plugin for Campy, but that is not real-time enough.
I didn’t want to write a huge plugin just to send messages to Campfire (it seems like such a simple thing to do!). I was poking around for solutions, and came across this plugin. It’s a plugin that runs scripts written in the Groovy dynamic language for Java. One nice thing about this plugin is that it lets you execute Python (Jython) or Ruby (Jruby). The only problem is that you can’t write a listener using Python, so I ended up having to learn Groovy.
Here’s what I came up with. It requires you to install the HTTPBuilder libraries for Groovy, and this script will require some customization to fit your environment. Right now it only supports sending messages when new issues are created and when a new comment is added to an existing issue, but other issue events would be easy enough to add – this is meant as an example.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 | import com.atlassian.jira.event.issue.AbstractIssueEventListener import com.atlassian.jira.event.issue.IssueEvent import com.atlassian.jira.ComponentManager import org.apache.log4j.Category import groovyx.net.http.RESTClient import static groovyx.net.http.ContentType.JSON import static com.atlassian.jira.event.type.EventType.* class CampfireListener extends AbstractIssueEventListener { @Override void workflowEvent(IssueEvent event) { def Category log = Category.getInstance("com.onresolve.jira.groovy.PostFunction") def campfire = new RESTClient('https://CAMPFIREID.campfirenow.com/room/ROOMID/') def issueBaseUrl = "http://yourjirahost:8080/path-to-jira/browse/" campfire.auth.basic 'CAMPFIRE AUTH TOKEN', 'X' switch (event.getEventTypeId()) { case ISSUE_COMMENTED_ID: def resp = campfire.post( path: 'speak.json', body: [ message: [ type: "TextMessage", body: String.format("%s added a comment to %s (%s%s):", event.getUser().getDisplayName(), event.issue.getKey(), issueBaseUrl, event.issue.getKey())] ], requestContentType: JSON) resp = campfire.post( path: 'speak.json', body: [ message: [ type: "PasteMessage", body: String.format("%s", event.getComment().getBody()) ] ], requestContentType: JSON) break case ISSUE_CREATED_ID: def resp = campfire.post( path: 'speak.json', body: [ message: [ type: "TextMessage", body: String.format('%s created a new issue: "%s" (%s%s):', event.getUser().getDisplayName(), event.issue.getSummary(), issueBaseUrl, event.issue.getKey()) ] ], requestContentType: JSON) resp = campfire.post( path: 'speak.json', body: [ message: [ type: "PasteMessage", body: String.format("%s", event.getIssue().getDescription()) ] ], requestContentType: JSON) break } } } |
Problems with IPv4/6 hosts in OSX Lion
If you’re like me, you end up doing a lot of testing in virtual machines. I run several VMs that do various different tasks for me so that I don’t have to sully my Mac with packages I rarely need, etc. So what I do is create a VM and give it a local hostname defined in my /etc/hosts file.
Recently, after my upgrade to OSX Lion, I started running into an issue where it would take over 5 seconds to connect to any of my VMs using any protocol (SSH, HTTP, etc). After several hours of troubleshooting, and several Wireshark sessions later, the truth of the matter was plain:
OSX is now doing IPv6 by default with no way that I have found to disable it yet, and so that means that if you have hosts that you want to reference with locally defined hostnames, you are going to have to create an IPv6 entry for them as well.
Here is a great site that I found that helps with the conversion: SubnetOnline.com
I am sure that there are better ways to do this, but I just wanted to share this quick little hack that I found with you. If you have a better way, please let me know!
Re-enabling Key Repeat in OSX Lion
Posted by Ben in Apple, Technology on July 23, 2011
I have recently upgraded to OSX Lion, and I have to say that I love everything about it. Except for one thing. In many apps, the key repeat has been disabled in favor of the new press-and-hold popup for getting alternative characters.
This is fine for most apps, but for apps like PyCharm where I use vi key maps, it becomes very, very frustrating.
I came across this little tip to re-enable the key repeat, and my life is measurably better (first world problems, I know…).
Run the following in your Terminal.app:
1 | defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false |
Then reboot, and you should be good to go!
Campy: the Python Campfire Bot
We use a Campfire at Needle for our day-to-day communication between our tech team members and other business members. We really like Campfire’s ability to store files, conference call and keep transcripts even when you are not logged in. We get GitHub commit messages, Pivotal Tracker story updates and more scattered in our conversations.
These one-way updates are very nice, but I thought it would be nice to be able to have a bot that sat in the channel and could take commands from anybody and do more complex tasks for us without us ever having to leave Campfire. To solve this problem, I wrote Campy, a pure Python Campfire bot with an extensible plugin system.
The first plugin I wrote as a proof of concept is a Google image search plugin. You tell the bot some search parameters that you would like it to search for, and you get back an image inline in your chat transcript. Don’t worry, safe search is on by default so you don’t get any NSFW images back.
The second plugin I wrote was the all-important Pivotal Tracker plugin. This plugin lets you do the following:
- pt story create “Title” “Description” bug|feature|chore|release — Create a story
- pt getmine started|finished|delivered|accepted|rejected|unstarted|unscheduled — Get a list of all stories that belong to you
- pt start #story_id — Start a particular story.
- pt start|tell next bug|feature|chore [mine] — Start or tell the next story of a given type. Optionally supply ‘mine’ at the end of the message to only work on your own stories.
The plugins system is very extensible, so you can create a plugin to do pretty much anything!
You can get Campy here: https://github.com/bbelchak/campy
Ergotron WorkFit-S Standing Desk Review
A few months ago, I started investigating the health benefits of standing while I work at my computer. The benefits are myriad, and include:
- More calories burned. Standing at a desk while you work can actually burn around 300 calories per day more than sitting.
- Standing at a desk helps people with back problems. Humans were not made for sitting, and doing so for long periods of time can be really hard on your hips and lower back.
- Improved posture. Standing can help improve your posture, which can relieve pain in your lower and upper back, and neck.
- More breaks. I find that I take more breaks, which makes me happier and healthier. While standing, it is easier to just walk away instead of hauling yourself out of a chair.
After my research, I decided to convert my cheap IKEA desk into a standing desk by raising the legs up as far as they could go and then stacking books and Rubbermaid bins to get the height on the keyboard and monitors right. Here’s what I ended up with:
Old standing desk setup
As you can see, it is less than ideal. It forced me to stand 100% of the time, and in order to take a break from standing, I needed to disconnect my laptop from everything and take it to a chair. Not awesome.
I reverted back to a sitting desk, and kept wishing for a standing option that would allow me to quickly change to a sitting position if I got tired, without having to deal with completely rearranging my work area.
Then, I discovered the Ergotron WorkFit-S while searching around for standing desk options. I loved the youtube video I found here:
I bought the WorkFit-S Combo (laptop + LCD) on Amazon with overnight shipping with my Amazon Prime account, and it arrived very quickly. I was a bit worried because the tech specs indicated that the maximum monitor size is 20″ while using a laptop. I spoke with one of their marketing people on Twitter, and they were very helpful, checking with their support staff and product managers to provide me with any tips that they could dig up while I anxiously awaited the FedEx delivery guy.
When I received it, I immediately installed it on my desk. It took approximately 15 minutes to get it built and installed on my desk. My 24″ LCD fit perfectly on the right, with my laptop on the left. I think the concern with the size of the monitor is not necessarily the size, but the weight. I could probably fit a 27″ on here without a problem if it was light enough. My LCD and laptop are probably right on the edge of the maximum weight. Since the up and down motion is achieved with a pulley system, I had to adjust the tension a bit to get the balance right.
WorkFit-S in "sitting mode"
I did have to move it after I’d installed it in the center of my corner desk because the mouse tray kept hitting the desk where it curves.
The thing will attach to virtually any surface, but they also make a wheeled cart that has similar features.
WorkFit-S in "standing mode"
I am very happy with it so far, and I look forward to reaping the benefits of standing, while having the option to sit!
The Ergotron WorkFit retails for around $399 and you can find them on Amazon.com or elsewhere.
Unit Testing Django with a NoSQL Backend
Posted by Ben in django, NoSQL, python, Technology on February 7, 2011
In my previous post about unit testing for django, I laid the groundwork for how to unit test any django application. One nice feature that django includes with its test framework is the test database syncing. Even better is if you are using South to do database migrations – it will run the migrations in your test environment for you.
However, what if you are using a NoSQL database backend like MongoDB, Cassandra, CouchDB or something similar and you aren’t using the Django ORM? How do you handle setting up and tearing down the database environments?
The good news is that Python’s unittest framework makes this easy. You can override the setUp() and tearDown() on each TestCase that you build. Here is a snippet to get you started:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 | import pymongo from django.test import TestCase # It would be best to define this in a utility class somewhere def get_db(db_name=None): """ GetDB - simple function to wrap getting a database connection from the connection pool. """ return pymongo.Connection( host=settings.MONGO_HOST, port=settings.MONGO_PORT)[getattr( settings, "MONGO_DBNAME_PREFIX", "") + (db_name or settings.MONGO_DBNAME)] class MyTestCase(TestCase): fixtures = ['test_data.json'] def setUp(self): self.db = get_db('test') self.db.create_collection('mytestcollection') def test_doc_published(self): # Set up a document to save doc = dict(text="test", user_id=1) self.db.mytestcollection.save(doc) self.assertEqual(self.db.mytestcollection.find_one( {'user_id':1})['text'], 'test') def tearDown(self): self.db.drop_collection('mytestcollection') |
What this does is setUp() a collection in the mytestcollection collection, runs the my_doc_published test and then tears down the test database environment by dropping the mytestcollection collection.
Things to remember for setUp() and tearDown():
setUp()is called before every test method in your TestCase class.tearDown()is called after every test method in your TestCase class.tearDown()is called even if your test methods fail or error out.
And there you have it! Django makes testing even non-ORM datasources a snap, if you know how to wire it up.
UPDATE: Some would say that database fixtures and setting up/tearing down database environments as part of your unit tests is not “unit testing”. This is not entirely accurate, because in order to do unit tests that rely on backend data, you must instantiate and tear down pristine database environments.
Unit Testing Your Django Application
Posted by Ben in django, python, Technology, Uncategorized on February 5, 2011
Unit testing is a very important part of any software project. It helps you know that the new code you are deploying works, and isn’t going to blow up in your face. It also helps you feel good about changing large chunks of code without destroying everything you’ve done for the last 3 years.
Unit testing with django is as simple as pie. The documentation is very good, and you can learn a lot about more advanced testing methods from the python documentation. In this blog post, I aim to show a quick way to get up and running with testing your django application.
First, if you are just starting out, make sure you put a high emphasis on testing your application, otherwise you are going to end up with a bunch of code that has never been tested and you will find yourself writing code for weeks just to get partial coverage on the code you’ve already written. Starting off on the right foot is a much better approach, and you will find life much more enjoyable.
Let’s get started…
Read the rest of this entry »
Code Completion (IntelliSense) in VIM
Posted by Ben in django, python, Technology, vim on January 31, 2011
VIM has been my editor of choice for at least 15 years. I love how fast I can edit files, perform menial tasks, and wreak general havoc on any code project I am working on at any given moment. One of the things that I have missed about VIM from an IDE perspective has been code completion (a.k.a. “IntelliSense”). I have spent a lot of time on websites and man pages trying to figure out syntax and function names for several types of languages, and just recently discovered a long-included feature of VIM called omni completion, or Omnicomplete.
Since my life is mostly centered around django these days, I will discuss how I’ve benefited from omnicomplete and how I’ve set it up in my own environment.
First, since django is a web development framework, I want to make sure that I can get omnicompletion for HTML, Python, JavaScript and CSS. Omnicompletion works for almost any programming language that VIM has syntax highlighting support for, and these languages are no exception.
Django database migrations with South
Posted by Ben in django, python, Technology on January 27, 2011
I have been using django for web development for almost a year now, and I just recently started using South to do database migrations. To be fair, most of the work that I have been doing with databases has centered around MongoDB and schema-less document stores instead of a traditional RDBMS. Since Django does not come with any database migration tools, my standard approach was to make sure that my models are completely thought out before running the manage.py syncdb command. The lack of a good database migration tool was one of the things that originally had turned me off to django.
Enter South. South lets you manage your database in a way very similar to how Ruby on Rails works.
Removing old ssh fingerprints from your known_hosts the quick and easy way
Posted by Ben in *NIX, Technology on January 27, 2011
Ever have this problem? You just rebuilt a machine, and when you go to SSH into it, you get the following message:
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @ WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Many people just go edit their ~/.ssh/known_hosts file and carry on. But there is a faster/better way!
OpenSSH comes with a command called ssh-keygen that allows you to generate and manage all your keys, including your ssh fingerprints.
Simple usage for this would be:
1 | ssh-keygen -R HOSTNAME |