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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[Tutorial] Cloud Foundry's User Token Generation
We take a look at how Cloud Foundry’s Cloud Controller generates a user token for authentication.
Low hanging fruit for Ruby performance optimization in Rails
We’ve been looking into Ruby performance optimization after noticing our site response time increasing in New Relic. While there may be many causes for slow performance, looking into your garbage collection performance is an easy way to impact response time by > 20%. It also helps us identify actions that have especially expensive memory allocation.
Rack 1.3.0 & Serving Static Files
A quick how-to on setting a simple config.ru file to use new features in rack to serve static files.
ChiliProject 2.0.0RC2 released
The second release candidate for ChiliProject has been released. ChiliProject is a Rails project management system that forked from Redmine in January 2011.
Ruby scripts to manage Kindle notes
I just released a set of scripts I use to manage my Kindle notes. They started out as a late night hack and grew into an important tool I use to review all of the books I read (over 40 books in 6 months already).
Automated Heroku Database Backups to Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud Files, or Google Storage
I wrote a blog post about a gem I released called heroku_cloud_backup. This gem utilizes fog and the Heroku PG Backups addon to automate Postgres database backups to your favorite cloud storage provider. Since it stores the same dumps the PG Backups addon does, restoring is a breeze.
Sayonara Sony - why I left the "suit people"
In this blog post I explain why I left Sony PlayStation to join LivingSocial and I explain my own reflection on career choices, drive and passion.
XDG 2.1.1 - New API
New release XDG is out. The 2.x series has brand new API (and thus is not compatible with the previous versions). The new API is more intuitive in that it resembles access to the environment variables, e.g. ENV['XDG_CONFIG_HOME'] -> XDG['CONFIG_HOME']. Have a look at the QEDs.
SQL Server 10xs Faster with Rails 3.1
This article on what the SQL Server Adapter does to leverage ActiveRecord 3.1’s prepared statement support should be interesting to anyone interested in DB performance. Specifically SQL Server’s plan cache.
Sweeter Rspec experience in MacVim
I just created SweetVimRspec a sweeter way to run Rspec specs in MacVim.You can launch a spec run with a key-chord and get formatted output in a Quickfix buffer.
Metior 0.1.2 released – A Ruby API for source code statistics
Metior is a source code history analyzer API that provides various statistics about a source code repository and its change over time. Currently, it provides access to Git repositories using either file system access or directly on GitHub using GitHub’s HTTP API. Take a look at the source code on GitHub. The first Metior gem has been released and can be installed using gem install metior .. This is a bugfix release and fixes two show-stopper bugs from the first release. Sorry for the inconvenience.
RailsInstaller for Windows 2.0.0 Preview Release
Blog post from Wayne E. Seguin on new features included in the RailsInstaller for Windows 2.0.0 preview release.
Kyatchi - Catch the Mail!
I just launched Kyatchi. It’s essentially a nodejs clone of Mailcatcher. I’ve wanted to build something like Mailcatcher so I built Kyatchi. I think Node is a perfect platform for it, however, it really made me realize how awesome the Mail gem in ruby is (especially after the Rails 3 rewrite). So some parsing and feature set is not quite there yet, but its a fun and clean project so far. Check it out and contribute back if you can.
Rails core_ext and IRB
I just published a tiny post about Rails core_ext and IRB.
Resuable Steps: The True Benefit of Cucumber
In response to a post advocating custom cucumber steps, I wrote a rebuttal arguing for reusable steps.
ScaffoldHub: a community driven gallery of Rails scaffolds
Hi… I’m looking for some feedback on the idea behind this site: http://www.scaffoldhub.org [more inside]
Eventable: Easily add garbage collection safe events to any class
Eventable is an easy to use and understand event model; it’s the simplest way to add fine-grain events to your classes. [more inside]
Event Bubbling in Widgets (Apotomo Screencasts of Glory, Episode 3)
The third episode of the Apotomo screencasts explains how Ruby widgets can use event bubbling for building decoupled view components.
TaskJuggler III starts beta test
After almost 5 years of development the rewrite of TaskJuggler in Ruby is heading for the first stable release. TaskJuggler is an advanced project planning and tracking application that goes far beyond the commonly known Gantt chart editors. It used to be a large C++ application that has been rewritten in pure Ruby. The TaskJuggler III code had become pretty stable, but the project is now looking for a broader user and developer base to iron out the project description syntax before it freezes for the first stable 3.0 release. For coders, the source code can be found on GitHub. For users, the manual can be found here and an example project can be found here.
GemAWeek Episode 2 - Active Admin
I posted Episode 2 of GemAWeek focusing on Active Admin, a highly configurable framework for creating admin interfaces in your Rails application. Check it out and send me feedback!
RubyGems + Bundler Integration
I just released rubygems-bundler integration gem. No more calling bundler install --binstubs or bundler exec .... Install it by calling gem install rubygems-bundler and follow the on-screen instructions. Current version 0.1.5 allows recreating executables wrappers for all gems in GEM_PATH (include @global gemset for rvm). Note: This gem allows to use binaries in version specified by Gemfile ;)
Managing and monitoring your Ruby application with Foreman and Upstart
Every application you deploy should be monitored and managed by some type of process monitor to ensure your processes are up and running at all times. See how this is done using the Foreman RubyGem and the Upstart utility.
Understanding Rack : middlewares
I just launched a blogpost about Rack middlewares. { :Language => :french }
Get 10-30% Faster Rails 3.0 Booting in Ruby 1.9.2 With RVM Now
A few days ago I wrote about how ruby-edge (and Ruby 1.9.3) got a faster file loading patch giving a boot speed improvement of 30-40% on Rails 3.0 apps. Well, someone’s made up a similar patch for Ruby 1.9.2 and I explain how to get it running on Ruby 1.9.2-p180 right now. Want your Rails 3.0/Ruby 1.9 specs to fly a little faster? Here’s your ticket.
JillPaginate and Jaminari - Pagination from Ruby in JavaScript
I already posted about a JavaScript WillPaginate implementation but we had some technical trouble and reset the GitHub repository. I’ve now re-released the Fiji project which contains two well known pagination solutions implemented in Javascript using the jQuery UI framework, Jaminari and JillPaginate. I guess you know on which extensions these are based on ;-) (if not, see our README). [more inside]