Packing & Unpacking: A Guide to Reading Binary Data in Ruby

How do you read binary files like PNG, EXE & ZIP? What is the best way to handle binary data in Ruby?

Is Ruby dead? Hell no! - Analysing RubyGems stats for 2016

Another year is behind us and many things have changed in the web development world. We did a little research on the use of Ruby gems and created some stats for 2016 which prove that Ruby is doing very well! Check out our blog post for more detail.

Rails v5 SQL Server Adapter Ready for Business

Sorry for the long delay, but the SQL Server adapter is now Rails 5 ready. This includes support for the latest SQL Server on Linux. Tons of Rails 5 work is coming including better contributor Docker support, schema dumping, JSON type support, and more.

DeepDive for deep controlled cloning of your Ruby objects

DeepDive has been around for a while, and is quite stable. You can specify which variables in your object NOT to clone. So for instance, if you have a back-reference to a “god-object” that you would not want cloned, you would put [more inside]

Passenger 5.1 released with major improvements in robustness, security, efficiency

Passenger 5.1 contains various improvements for minimizing and preventing down time, introduces more secure defaults and defense in depth, has become faster and uses resources more efficiently, improves developer productivity and updates various ecosystem integrations to stay ahead of the curve.

Complex Sorting in ActiveRecord

The thought process behind creating a simple object to help deal with complex ActiveRecord ORDER BY queries with a strong focus on the Single Responsibility Principal. [more inside]

Roar 1.1 and Roar JSON API 0.0.1 released!

Roar, the library for consuming and rendering REST API documents, has reached version 1.1! The new release includes compatibility with Representable 3.0 and various bug fixes. [more inside]

Ruby Survey Results (January 2017)

Here are the results from a Ruby survey I posted a couple of weeks ago.

Keep track of your #100DaysOfCode progress with 1hdoc

Are you joining #100DaysOfCode? 1hdoc makes easy to register and sync your progress. [more inside]

Listing the status of your migrations in Rails

db:migrate:status is a hidden treasure for checking the status of your migrations. It gives you an overview which migrations are applied, and which are still missing.

Code reviewing as a mindset

I wrote this post about why I love code reviews, and my approach to them. I wound up taking the Ruby-specific stuff out, but hopefully you still find it useful.

[Screencast] Client Side Encryption

Add an extra level of security to your application with client side encryption. Even over an SSL connection, there are attacks which could expose your users’ sensitive information. Using JSEncrypt, learn how to encrypt on the client side and decrypt on the server side. https://www.driftingruby.com/episodes/client-side-encryption

tty-command v0.3.0 release

Newest tty-command adds ability to enumerate over the command standard output.

schemadoc - document your database schemas (tables, columns, etc.) w/ Jekyll

Hello, I’ve updated the schemadoc-theme that lets you document your database schema, that is, tables, columns, etc. using a github pages (jekyll) theme / site. See the /schemadoc github org for more. Questions and comments welcome. Happy publishing (and documenting) w/ Jekyll. Cheers.

WrenchMode, a simple maintenance page gem and Heroku add-on

WrenchMode allows you to create a hassle-free and customizable maintenance page for your rails app with live updates and ip whitelisting. You can read about Heroku implementation here: A Better Heroku Maintenance Mode

Hello, Pages! Theme - Easy 1-2-3 Publishing w/ GitHub Pages (and Jekyll) Live Sample

Hello, I’ve put together a (simple) sample (static) website called Hello, Pages! (Source) using the latest and greatest built-in Jekyll plugins e.g. Optional Front Matter, README Index, Default Layout, and Titles from Headings that let you publish pages on GitHub without any configuration or front matter blocks e.g. just add some pages in plain text with markdown formatting. That’s it. Happy publishing w/ Jekyll. Cheers. PS: Bonus: I’ve added the Hello, Pages! V2 (Source) sample w/ custom layout, github banner, footer (w/ build time) and more.

NoMethodError `silence` On Logger Instance

How we've used Segment with Solidus ecommerce

We’ve currently integrated Segment in Solidus (fork of Spree) and wrote about what we’ve learned. Have a read there

How I fixed my biggest mistake with implementing background jobs

Rails 5 and ActiveRecord before_destroy callbacks

I recently stumbled in one of Rails 5 new breaking feature that somehow flew under my radar. It’s not a very recent change, still it’s the case that many others (at least at my company) missed it. I think that’ a good reason for talking a bit (more) about it: How requirements shaped my code, AKA Rails 5 and ActiveRecord before_destroy callbacks.

Re: What is the splat operator doing here?

This is a response to a question I received on a Ruby macro I wrote which uses the splat operator heavily. Here I describe the two different behaviors of the splat operator and detail how the macro works. Re: What is the splat operator doing here?

FXRuby Enhancement

If you need a quick and powerful way to put together a Ruby GUI application, here’s an enhancement to the FXRuby FOX Toolkit wrapper. It’s been reworked to make it more appealing for Rubyists. [more inside]

Rescue's Elegant Trick for Knowing Which Exceptions to Catch

You probably know how to ask Ruby to rescue specific exceptions. But how does Ruby know if a particular exception meets your criteria? In this article, we’ll walk through Ruby’s simple exception matching mechanism and see how we can use it to our advantage. - http://blog.honeybadger.io/ruby-rescue-elegant-trick-for-knowing-which-exceptions-to-catch/

Ruby wrapper around REST Countries API http://restcountries.eu

Basic API implementation for REST Countries API http://restcountries.eu [more inside]

binding.irb now available in Ruby 2.4

binding.irb similar to binding.pry is now available by default in Ruby 2.4