7deeds » utilities

Ruby helper classes for barcodes

Petros — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:06:32 +0000

In my day job, I work a lot with barcodes. We develop Windows Mobile software for devices with barcode readers. From time to time, I need to do file manipulation chores. That is: colleagues give me text files that contain barcodes and ask me to transform these.

Yesterday, a colleague of mine asked me to take as input a file with 12 characters long barcodes and add a check digit assuming the barcodes are EAN13. I decided to do it and also start maintaining a set of barcode helper classes written in Ruby. I haven’t created a gem yet, cause the functionality is … lets say limited , but I plan to do so later.

You can go to

http://github.com/amiridis/rbarcode

and just download the barcode.rb file.

Here is how I used the barcode.rb file in order to transform the file:

require "barcode"

file = File.open("apog.txt")

file.each do |line|
  bc = line.slice(0..11)
  bc13 = Barcode.new(bc).get_ean_13
  puts bc13 + line.slice(12..line.length)
end

file.close

The file had the following format:

520532435284;1;09
520532435285;1;09
520532463580;1;09

and for the three lines above it produces:

5205324352841;1;09
5205324352858;1;09
5205324635807;1;09

Update: I have changed this project to a gem. You can read about it in my PAbarcode gem post.

Using Jing while working remotely

Petros — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:07:27 +0000

One of the tools I really appreciate because it helps me enhance my communication is Jing. Jing has a free edition that supports both screen captures with annotations and video captures with voice!

What I really like about this tool is the ease of use and the lack of unneeded options and clicks to get your job done.

I use Jing whenever I want to create a new case using FogBugz. For example whenever I want to report a bug or ask for an enhancement, I may capture the part of the screen of the application, annotate and save it to attach it then to a new case in FogBugz or send it directly using Skype to the remote programmer.

Sometimes, I even capture a video showing how to reproduce a bug. Capturing a video with Jing is very easy because it does exactly what you need, nothing more and nothing less.

Here is an example FogBugz case with a Jing screen capture with annotations for one of our internal projects. We develop this application using DevExpress XAF which is a very good framework for developing intranet applications.

FogBugz Case

This way, I can write fewer words than if I hadn’t prepared the screen capture. I will also try to post a video capture example in the future.

Regular expression online tool

Petros — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:22:44 +0000

I think regular expressions is something every programmer should be familiar with. I am not saying, every programmer should write three lines of regexp strings, in three seconds without a cheat sheet. I am just saying that we should all know at least that they exist and what they are useful for.

The truth is, if it is the first you encounter regular expressions, you might have some difficulty remembering all those hieroglyphic expressions. There are cheat sheets and they can be handy, but I found something today that in my opinion is quite better: Online Regular Expression Testing Tool

Do you know any similar offline/online tool?