Pedro Pimentel

Ultrasphinx bug?

It seens Ultrasphinx plugin for Ruby on Rails doesn’t know how to deal with Decimal data type from MySQL.

You can use a Decimal column for indexing, but when you need to make thecolumn sortable it comes the problem. As you know, faceting is on for numeric and date fields and to add the sortable feature to it, we need to pass a hash with

{:sortable => true}

Ok, then you run rake tasks to rebuild your configuration file and indexes and try to sort the search by the Decimal column and we got an error saying our column isn’t sortable.

You can check isn’t generating the _sortable sufix by looking the ultrasphinx configuration file. All other sortable fields have their _sortable sufix added to ti, except by the decimal field.

I’ll report it as soon as possible to Evan Weaver, the plugin’s owner, or maybe try to fix it by myself.

Updated: June, 16

I fixed by adding  ‘decimal’ => ‘float’ in the TYPE_MAP inside the fields.rb file of ultrasphinx plugin.

GSoC inicia oficialmente!

Google Summer of Code começou oficialmente neste 26 de maio. Após um período de community bound, com os mentores e outros estudantes selecionados, tivemos a oportunidade de nos inteirarmos a respeito da Christmas Future, organização a qual vamos trabalhar em conjunto pelos próximos 3 meses.

Esse período de aproximação com a comunidade do Christmas Future serviu para definirmos melhor nosso objetivos. No meu caso, meu objetivo principal foi alterado, não sendo mais o desenvolvimento da funcionalidade de doação múltipla. Agora serei responsável pela implementação do motor de buscas do sistema de doações. Espera-se que a busca seja fácil de usar a ponto de facilitar e incentivar as doações através do sistema do Christmas Future.

O segundo objetivo a ser alcançado é a melhoria da interace com o usuário na parte sobre informações de projetos. Aqui espero poder aplicar as melhores técnicas de usabilidade possíveis. Isso é parte de meu segundo entregável, previsto para o final do evento em torno de final de agosto.

Boa sorte a todos que participam e para mim também ! eheheh

Google Summer of Code

I have some good news for today. I’ve got accepted to participate in Google Summer of Code. I know many of you didn’t knew i was applying, but i thought it could be better to stay quiet, as last year attempt wasn’t successful even with my proposal being well done and focused. It was a proposal do include social interaction in the Moodle software.

This year i applied to Christmas Future Organization and for those who wants to know about it here is how they described themselves on GSoC website:

“Christmas Future is an NGO using technology to help alleviate extreme poverty through integrated community development. Through our open source donation engine called DonorTrust, we connect donors with on-the-ground implementing partners to add transparency and feedback to the development process. DonorTrust helps people to see that their choices impact the world. Our technology also allows people to give what amounts to an online gift card, which recipients can use to support development projects. Because DonorTrust is open-source, the development of this engine will help many NGOs to more effectively raise money for their good causes. “

My project’s purpose is to make easier the donation process using the future versions of the DonorTrust system, using the best practices in the world of the HCI ( human computer interaction)

Initially, i plan a research about the existing share tools and gift-cards (like the ones found at facebook). The interface definition came after, because the user interaction with the system will be my main focus.

Its easy of use will ensure the best user experience, acting transparently. To achieve this, we need a clean interface and take care to not abuse of ajax interaction, ensuring a smooth interaction and with guarantee to run everywhere.

This was excerpted from my proposal’s abstract, but I thought it would be good to share it here. Now it’s time to community bonding with my organization and do some hands on with their software.

I’d like to thanks Google who is funding my participation and also James Lee from Christmas Future who is going to be my mentor during the project.