Mindfire has deep experience developing Perl, Python and Ruby applications (including Ruby on Rails - RoR). We describe some of these Perl, Python and Ruby/RoR project experiences below, and will be glad to share our expertise in detail with you.
Data Exchange between DMZ and LAN
Data exchange and data management solutions provider
Industry:
Automobile Manufacturing
Technologies:
Python, Windows 2003 server Active Directory, SOAP, XML, Webservices
Implemented several windows services from scratch. The purpose of the services is to allow exchange of data between the supplier portal, which resides on the DMZ, and the LAN in a secure and restricted manner. The Supplier Portal is defined as an external gateway to the internal application server.
Key features include Active directory integration for user authentication, synchronization of user attributes and sending notification email to administrators, SOAP web service API calls to synchronize the two systems, Secure FTP transfers. Advanced logging system which logs errors, warnings, information and debug messages to a log file or windows event viewer based on user settings. The services are fully customizable using ini files for configuration.
Web portal application
engineering data management and data exchange solutions
Industry:
Automobile Industry
Technologies:
Python, JavaScript, HTML, ASP, MSSQL server 2005, Windows 2003 server, IIS 6.0, SOAP, XML, Webservices
This application provides a secure and simple environment which allows authenticated Supplier Users (i.e. customers and suppliers) to exchange (upload and download) files with users on the manufacturer's LAN.
Key features implemented were Excel and .csv report generation based on user defined filters. Export and import data facilities for specified file formats. Implemented a SOAP server to expose API to the communicating systems. Added CMS system for administrator to set preferences, manage users and define file types for export and import.
Data exchange software support
Data exchange and data management solutions provider
Industry:
Automobile Industry
Technologies:
Linux, Apache, Postgre SQL, OO Perl, HTML, CSS, Javascript, GIT, Bitkeeper
Implemented multiple web forms as an additional module to an existing secure data exchange application that allows for suppliers to upload form data from a csv file and/or enter data and download it in csv format or save to the server. The forms are dynamic and implement dynamic creation/deleting of rows using Javascript.
Customized entire application look and feel so that it can be customized for new clients that purchase the product. We provide software support for the product.
URL scraper for movie trailers, upcoming movies
Web/Mobile Applications Development
Industry:
Information Technology
Technologies:
Ruby on Rails, Linux
Implemented several ROR scripts to extract URLs from pre-defined set of websites. The data collected allows creation of several tab separated adn csv files containing a list of trailers, now playing, in theaters and upcoming movies. Used csv, open-uri and net/http to implement parsing URLs. The scripts are scheduled as cronjobs on a Linux server.
Online Consumer Survey and Opinions gathering system
Web Application Development
Industry:
Advertisement and Marketing
Technologies:
Linux, Webrick/Mongrel, PostgreSQL/MySQL, Ruby on Rails (ROR), HTML, CSS, JavaScript, GIT, GitHub, Heroku, RunCodeRun, HopToadApp, Google Maps API, Rspec, Cucumber
Designed and implemented an online survey and opinions gathering system that allows different Organizations/Individuals to create customized focused to a set of smart phone users group. The surveys can be taken by these users from their iPhones and by answering the survey questions the users get paid by the website.
The application allows the survey creators to create customized surveys with dynamic number of questions and also allows the user to add certain demographical restrictions such as race, gender, age etc. to target a particular user group as per their needs. The application also allows organizations to select a specific geographical area to restrict the survey for that particular area while returning the surveys list to iPhone user by getting their current co-ordinates.
To allow survey creator to mark the geographical restrictions we used Google Maps API which allows marking multiple geographical points on the map and highlight the selected area as a Polygon to save the area coordinates which can be used while validating with the coordinates posted by iPhone to the server.
The application also allows the iPhone users to donate certain percentage from their earnings for any charity organizations that are registered with the site. The application has an administrator panel allowing the site administrator to manage the site content and review the site activities as well as exporting the statistics data of different areas of the site in an Excel or PDF format. The iPhone and the ROR application communicates using JSON which makes the communication faster between the iPhone and ROR as it reduces the amount of data transfer while sending request and getting response back from server.
The application uses Amazon S3 to store the files and uses the paperclip gem to upload the files to S3 and also allows the users to manage the uploaded files on S3 server. The application uses cloud computing technology and is hosted on Heroku. We used GitHub as the central code repository which was also setup to run the unit test cases and features written using Rspec and Cucumber gems by the help of RunCodeRun.

Online Interviewing Portal
Web Application Development Company
Industry:
Web Application Development
Technologies:
Linux, Apache/Webrick/Mongrel, PostgreSQL/MySQL, Ruby on Rails (ROR), HTML, CSS, JavaScript, GIT, GitHub, Heroku, RunCodeRun, HopToadApp, Google Maps API, Rspec, Cucumber
Designed and implemented an online interviewing portal for employers and candidates. The application allows employers to create a set of questions for the interviews which the candidates can attempt by selecting the interview and its corresponding questions including the functionality for selecting optional questions if there are any and record their response to be reviewed by the employers. We used the Rails framework considering the MVC architecture and Rails rules. We wrote the unit test cases and features for the application using Rspec and Cucumber.
The application uses Amazon S3 to store the files using the paperclip gem and allows the users to manage the uploaded files on S3 server. The application uses cloud computing technology which is hosted using Heroku which is used for hosting ROR applications. We used GIT to manage the codebase. Some of the features included conversion of video files recorded/uploaded by candidates/employers to desired format like .flv, h264 (.mp4) formats using FFMPEG, MENCODER, LAME, FLVtool2, qtfaststart for video streaming. We also configured and set up lighttpd for streaming and provided the client with a flash video player that uses external interface to support JS calls and supports streaming.
