Ruby, Rails, Rails Plugins, Mac OS X

Ruby

• Five Ruby Addictions
• What is three-equals (===)?
• Accumulators in Ruby

Rails

• Seeing Rails Resources Clearly
• Troubleshoot your rails deployment – Short term problem analysis and resolution
• will_paginate – view testing tutorial
• How will openID change your site?Ruby, Rails, Rails Plugins, Mac OS X
• A fair proxy balancer for Nginx and Mongrel
• How do those ActiveRecord dynamic finders and attributes work?
• Using call stack information at runtime
• PDF generation with Ruby, Rails and HTMLDoc
• Database optimization tips for your Rails Application
• How to find unused code in Rails
• How to view gem documentation
• CruiseControl.rb Growl notifier plugin

Rails Plugins

• Query stats plugin – a Rails plugin for tracking database queries.
• Smooth Migrations – allows database migrations to continue running instead of aborting on failure.
• QueryTrace – is a great Rails plugin for pinpointing where in your Rails application that slow query is running.

Mac OS X

• Rake command completion in the Bash shell

Technorati Tags: Ruby, Rails, Rails Plugins, Mac OS X

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Ruby, Rails, Rails Plugins, JavaScript, HTML, CSS

Ruby

• Time::is – s useful for freezing time at a certain point and executing a block of code.
• Enumerable#sum – Sum the elements of the array.
• Structural Duplication – Taking DRY to the next level

Rails

• Caching makes your brain explode
• The secret to Memcached
• Visualize your Rails model associations
• Setting up multiple asset hosts in rails
• Synching your Amazon S3 asset host using Capistrano
• Security, Security, why the heck – Cheatsheet
• Star Rating System – Using Ajax and CSS
• Mocking and Stubbing in Rails

Rails Plugins

• Email Veracity Plugin – in addition to checking the format, the email domain is checked for MX records.

JavaScript

• prototypers – common mistakes and how to avoid them
• JavaScript Method Overloading – the ability to run different code depending on the number of arguments passed into the same function name.

HTML

• HTML5 Media Support – video and audio tags and scriptability

CSS

• Hip to be square – Are you baffled to find square brackets in other peoples CSS code? If so, you might find this of interest.
• CSS for Programmers – and anyone else who appreciates clean, approachable CSS
• Essential CSS Code – Some pointers on what you should start with in a ready made CSS file that contains some code to make the actual coding of the layout easier.
• CSS Png image fix for IE
• Create an image pre-loader with CSS only
• Fancy form design using CSS

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Ruby, Rails, Rails Plugins, Mac OS X, JavaScript

Ruby

• Hash#diff – helpful for determining the difference between two hashes.
• String#each_char – Yields a single-character string for each character in the string.
• Integer#even – helpful when adding zebra striping to views.
• Enumerable#index_by – Convert an enumerable to a hash.
• Enumerable#group_by – Collect an enumerable into sets, grouped by the result of a block. Is helpful for grouping elements of an Enumerable by an attribute or an arbitrary grouping.
• Synonyms vs Aliases
• Testing private methods in Ruby
• Keyword-based message sending (Ruby compared to Smalltalk and Objective-C)
• A crash course in Ruby
• main.rb – a class factory and dsl for generating command line programs real quick.
• Reading an Excel file with Ruby

Rails

• Ruby on Rails 101 Presentation (pdf) – Very comprehensive and informative
• Use JQuery on Rails
• Map IP address to latitude and longitude part 1 & part 2
• HasFinder - is an extension to ActiveRecord that makes it easier than ever to create custom find and count queries.
• Pagecaching Highly personalized web pages – making rails wicked fast.
• Rails has and belongs to many (habtm) gotcha – solving slow queries
• Using Paypal with Rails

Rails Plugins

• Lessjsroutes – Have you ever wanted to use named routes in your JavaScript?
• model_stubbing – create in-memory versions of models for testing.
• candy – a rails plugin which adds some ruby candy to your app.

Mac OS X

• Installing RMagick on Leopard
• Installing ruby, mysql in Leopard

JavaScript

• ProtoType vs JQuery – Your Momma’s so fat
• Scripteka – Site specializing in Prototype extension libraries and scripts
• Pseudo-custom events in Prototype 1.6
• Lightbox JS – is a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page.

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Ruby, Rails, TextMate, JavaScript, CSS, Web Usability, Mac OS X

Ruby

• String#constantize = tries to find a declared constant with the name specified in the string. It raises a NameError when the name is not in CamelCase or is not initialized.
• How to build a drawing application using shoes, OS X and ruby

Rails

• RSS in Rails 2.0 how to
• Writing custom validators
• Rails fixtures – tips and tricks
• Partial flash messages in Rails
• Rake task to remove css selectors not in use (needs Dust-Me Selectors firefox add-on)

TextMate

• Tasks (ToDo) bundle
• Minimize parentheses in TextMate

JavaScript

• Prototype 1.6.0, script.aculo.us 1.8.0 and Pragprog book released in three way whammy

CSS

• How to design a website – A fully comprehensive step by step tutorial, from design to HTML & CSS.
• CSS Image Replacement, The how to
• CSS rounded corners generator

Web Usability

• clickdensity – analyse the user experience and identify usability and information architecture issues

Mac OS X

• Installing Freeimage/ImageScience on OS X 10.5 (Leopard)

Technorati Tags: Ruby, Rails, TextMate, JavaScript, CSS, Web Usability, Mac OS X

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Ruby, JRuby, Rails, Rails Plugins, RSpec, JavaScript, CSS, SEO & Subversion

Ruby

• String#classify – Create a class name from a table name like Rails does for table names to models
• RDDB – RESTful ruby document-oriented database

JRuby

• An introduction to JRuby

Rails

• How to upgrade your RESTful routes to Rails 2.0
• Sending mail with Rails

Rails Plugins

• auto_complete – add auto complete to a input field
• restful_open_id_authentication – provides both OpenID based authentication AND regular restful auth against the local databasej

RSpec

• New RSpec callbacks – before_action & after_action

JavaScript

• Prototype & Scriptaculous – tips #1
• Extend DOM elements with custom methods in Prototype
• Prototype-based context menu solution
• Detect idle state with custom events – the idea is to capture the moment when user has been idle for certain period of time.
• PopBox – an image magnification javascript solution for dynamically moving and resizing images on your web page.

CSS

• Understanding CSS floating
• CSS color generator using images

SEO

• The Website Health Check tool – aims to provide a simple and intuitive interface to seeing if your site has any major SEO issues.

Subversion

• Pretty SVN commit emails

Technorati Tags: Ruby, JRuby, Rails, Rails Plugins, RSpec, JavaScript, CSS, SEO, Subversion

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How to solve a domain object problem with Object Orientation.

This article shows how you can solve a domain problem, with several different solutions. You’ll find six different solutions where I have explored each solution using exactly the same problem. I’ve always said that there is no wrong way to develop code. What do I mean by that? Well, you could solve a problem in several ways.

read more | digg story

Ruby, Rails, Rails Plugin

Ruby

• String#singularize – returns the singular form of a word in a string.

Rails

• Use rescue_from effectively to recover from exceptions
• Write your own custom validators
• RSpec snippets & templates for RadRails
• Rails Api with Ajax lookup (include multiple versions and downloads)
• Another Api website for multiple languages

Rails Plugin

• make_resourceful – reduce the repetitive code within your controllers when using REST as a design.

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Ruby, Rails, Rails Plugin, JavaScript, CSS, TextMate

Ruby

• String#pluralize – Returns the plural form of the word in the string.
• String#cemelize – converts strings to Upper or Lower CamelCase string.
• Hash#asset_valid_keys – gives you the ability to verify that each of the keys in the Hash are expected.
• Renum – a ruby enum gem
• Advanced Ruby Tips & Tricks – You want to include some small class which has dependencies the rest of
  your library does not have, and whose use is only optional, but you
  don’t want the end user to have to require the files manually.
• IRB – Using IRB to find methods on objects (grep_methods)
• Presentations by the San Diego Ruby users group Podcast
• Use ruby and atompub to post to WordPress

Rails

• Preparing for Rails 2.0
• Validatable 1.6.6 released – replace custom validation assertions with the newly introduced validate_only instance
• Active Record – A few tips & tricks working with callbacks (after_create)
• Pagecaching highly personalized web pages in rails
• Theme your Rails application
• Unobtrusive Autocompletion

Rails Plugin

• response_visualizer – open the response body in the default browser allowing easy visual inspection of the page content or pass :html symbol to open content in default text editor.
• calendar_maker – Calendar helper plugin for rails
• auto_migrations – making your migrations kick-ass

JavaScript & CSS

• Faster Page Loads – minimize your javascript and css files
• Brilliant list of tips & techniques for better CSS, totally awesome

TextMate

• “Open in Textmate” in Leopard – I need to upgrade

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Friendly url’s in my rails application within minutes

To get search engine friendly urls in my rails application, all I had to do is the following 5 steps:

1. Install the acts_as_urlnameable plugin using one of the following command:

   script/plugin install http://code.helicoid.net/svn/rails/plugins/acts_as_urlnameable/

   or if you’re using svn for your project, install with -x:

   script/plugin install -x http://code.helicoid.net/svn/rails/plugins/acts_as_urlnameable/

   or alternatively you could use piston.

2. Next you need to add the call to acts_as_urlnameable to your model class:

   class Advert < ActiveRecord::Base
   
   acts_as_urlnameable :title
   
   end

3. Now we need to add the migration for the urlnames table where we’ll store our new url names:

   class Urlnames < ActiveRecord::Migration  def self.up
   
   create_table :urlnames do |t|
   
   t.string  :nameable_type
   
   t.integer :nameable_id
   
   t.string  :name
   
   t.auto_dates
   
   end
   
   enddef self.down
   
   drop_table :urlnames
   
   end
   
   end

4. Next we need to override the to_param method in the model class, this will allow us to control what rails use in the urls:

   def to_param
   
       urlname
   
   end

5. Lastly, we need to update the ActiveRecord.find(params[:id]) calls to use the acts_as_urlnameable find_by_url method:

   # GET /adverts/1
   
   # GET /adverts/1.xml
   
   def show
   
   @advert = Advert.find_by_urlname(params[:id])
   
   respond_to do |format|

And there you have it, friendly urls…

Normally your show url for your model would look as follows (if you’re using RESTfull design)

http://localhost:3000/adverts/1

but now the url looks pretty….

http://localhost:3000/adverts/awesome_macbook_pro_17

There is much more you can do with the acts_as_urlnameable plugin, but I’d suggest you read the README file that does a good job of explaining how to use the plugin.

There are also other plugins you can use for friendly urls, here is a list of other plugins:

• acts_as_slugable
• permalink_fu
• acts_as_friendly_param

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CSS, JavaScript, Rails, Ruby, Rails Plugins, TextMate

CSS

• CSS Layout – Working with divs, floating elements, positioning, layering.

JavaScript

• Accelerated DOM Scriptiong with Ajax
• JavaScript code in a CSS file
• Shorthand tips and tricks
• Extending the limits – exploring prototype by example
• $ – Now with more magic!
• Validation Libraries
• JSValidate
• TinyMCE
• Really easy field validation (works with prototype & scriptaculous)

Rails

• Production maintenance and backups

Ruby

• Array#to_sentence

Rails Plugins

• Full text searching using Ferret
• User authentication with acts_as_authenticated tutorial

TextMate

• Setup Tutorial
• Basics Tutorial

Technorati Tags: CSS, JavaScript, Rails, Ruby, Rails Plugins, TextMate

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