The Ruby and Rails community linklog
Made a library? Written a blog post? Found a useful tutorial? Share it with the Ruby community here or just enjoy what everyone else has found!
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How to extend the Redcarpet 2 Markdown library?
Redcarpet is a nice lib for parsing Markdown and rendering HTML (or other formats) from it. I explained how to extend it to generate an HTML tailored for your special needs.
Mutation testing with Mutant
I just released a new version of Mutant, a mutation tester for Rubinius, and blogged about it.
Command line Pow wrapper
I just launched pow-client, a simple command line wrapper for simplifying Pow workflows.
RailsApps starter app with Devise "Confirmable" and "Invitable"
Not such a big thing, but the rails3-devise-rspec-cucumber example app is popular and now it offers an option for including the Devise “Confirmable” and “Invitable” modules when you use the application template to create a starter app. Devise once included the “Confirmable” module by default; since it was removed there have been questions about how to set it up. The starter app does it for you and includes Cucumber tests as a bonus. It’s all in an update to the rails_apps_composer gem that I use to build the application templates.
Yahoo Placemaker
I just launched yahoo-placemaker which is a gem that simplifies the process of interacting w/ the Yahoo Placemaker API so you don’t have to!
Documentation: ARel with ActiveRecord
I really like ARel, but I find its lack of documentation an unreasonably high barrier to using it… And since no one I work with was willing to read their code and tests, to figure out how to use it, I wrote a coupla things about it. For a nice cutsey scenario see this post or for a simple reference see this slideshare.
Add some spell check to your view tests
I just created merimee, a gem that gives you some nice macros to add automatic spell checking to your view specs… Make your specs red if there’s a spelling error in your views ! Full tutorial available there.
AJAX Pagination - The easy way to add AJAX to site navigation
I just launched AJAX Pagination. It is specifically designed to make it easy to add AJAX functionality to your site, so that when navigating pages with AJAX, only the specific content will reload. It is so easy to use, you don’t have to touch a single line of javascript. [more inside]
Restivus - REST APIs for the rest of us
I just launched Restivus. It helps you expose CSV data as a REST API, with a self-generating docs page that has example requests and responses that actually work.
Muse - A Ruby DSL for making music
Muse is a Ruby DSL for creating music. Unlike MIDI, Muse scores actually create WAV files and are also executable Ruby scripts to boot. You can write your own songs or dynamically create them based on input data, embed Muse within other applications and generally have lots of fun with it!
Custom RSpec matchers for blocks, and the Ruby magic behind their inner workings
In RSpec it is possible to define special custom matchers that enable us to test, with a neat syntax, what happens when some code is executed, while also helping reduce duplication. [more inside]
Autosmusher gem for Paperclip
Hi you all, I’ve just published paperclip-smusher gem. It is useful to compress JPEG and PNG images during paperclip image upload process. I hope you like it, and feel free to contibute!
Rails and CanCan: Authorization for Specific Fields
Over on the Highgroove blog, I posted about Rails and CanCan: Authorization for Specific Fields.
Active Record without inheritance
ActiveRecordComposition is a gem that allows you to easily use ActiveRecord without inheritance of ActiveRecord::Base. It dynamically creates an aggregate that holds the association for you and delegates your interactions with ActiveRecord to the delegate. Come check it out! [more inside]
Tuning Apache and Passenger
Ever wonder how to measure and tune your application’s performance? In Performance Tuning Apache and Passenger, I show how we used httperf, htop, iftop, and a handful of other tools to measure, tune, and identify performance hotspots in your application. While this deals a lot with Rails, Apache, and Passenger, what I cover about the use of the tools apply to any http server-side process.
rails_best_practices 1.8.0 released
I just released rails_best_practices 1.8.0, it adds not use time_ago_in_words check, provides better foreign key and routes analyzer, etc., check out the changelogs here
Quick dive into Ruby ORM object initialization
If you ever wondered what’s going on when you initialize an ActiveRecord model, and if you aren’t scared of pretty graphs, then checkout my latest blog post on this topic.
New Ubiquo screencast - How to create a store with Ubiquo in 2 minutes
Check it out: How to create a store with Ubiquo in 2 minutes
Simple Form 2.0 released
Simple form 2.0 has been released and its main features are: new wrapper api and bootstrap integration. Check out the release blog post for more information about it.
Let's write a gem: Part 2
I’ve just posted Let’s write a gem: Part 2 to rakeroutes.com. The second of a two part series on how to write a Ruby gem.
markdown-rails: Markdown for Rails views
Writing prose in HTML is icky. I wrote a markdown-rails gem that enables static .html.md views (and partials) written in Markdown.
sending faxes via sipgate from ruby
I just launched rsipgate - refactored version of sipgate gem to proper sending faxes via sipgate from ruby.
A project to send files using DNS, and some questions from a beginner
You can find it at http://sendtodns.github.com. The project that I created allows people to share files using DNS. A file is pushed to an authoritative name server and can be pulled back down with a file key. If it’s pulled back down from someone’s normal name servers, it will (depending on DNS server settings) be cached on that name server. Subsequent pulls from that name server won’t need to hit the authoritative name server for records as long as it’s cached (usually TTL, sometimes not). [more inside]
Don't let your Heroku apps fail silently
@logentries, We’ve put together a blog post on how to get automatic notifications on Heroku error codes, so that you find your problems before your users do. Check it out, and feel free to leave any relevant feedback, good / bad / indifferent :)
High Quality and Affordable Shared Hosting for Rails Apps: WebFaction
I just finished writing a new post about WebFaction. They are a great service, and you can read my review of it here.