Tonight, I found the need to provide a way for our members to list their social networks should they choose to do so. The obvious way was to add a list of anchor tags. I found this to be rather distasteful. I mean, we are dealing with Ruby here, right? So, I started by considering what I wanted the UI code to look like. Would do I want to have to work with on a weekly basis. I came up with the following:

This would allow me to add as many usernames and networks as I desired. Perfect! So I began to work on the code that would make this function as intended. I came up with the following:

So, basically, I list all of the networks I want to use. This list not only includes the URL (and a place holder for the username), but any prefix or suffix for the displayed username for which I might find a need (i.e.: Twitter's "@" in "@slant") Next, the script iterates through my list, catching each network as it does so. Each time the script reaches a network, it proceeds through each username in the list, building an appropriate anchor tag for each one.

In the end, you have a beautiful categorized list of usernames, each linking to their respective page.

Luckily, I walked out of the installation process unscathed for the most part with only a few minor issues to deal with.  One example would be that Phusion Passenger was no longer working – but mongrel was – so that was livable.  Realizing that I'd not yet setup a decent database for development since getting my new MacBook Pro, I set to work on basically reinstalling the entire Rails stack to ensure that everything would be ready to roll when I get back to work on Monday.

I found a few fantastic resources to guide me through the majority of what I was looking to do including Hivelogic's guide on Compiling Ruby, RubyGems, and Rails on Snow Leopard as well as another guide on Compiling Git on Snow Leopard.  I also found some great information on installing PostgreSQL on Snow Leopard. Lastly, I discovered a very short guide on compiling the PostgreSQL RubyGem for use on Snow Leopard (enabling 64bit compatibility).

Equipped with these guides, I successfully got everything upgraded and am now waiting for all of the other 10.6 bugs to pop up!

edit: A definitive guide in deed. I just found a guide for those of you who want to install things like MySQL and SQLite as well.