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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ActiveRecord migrations outside of Rails
Sometimes you are working with a database that is not used in the full rails context. This blog post describes how I accomplished using ActiveRecord migrations to build and manage my database.
Quick and Cheap Usability for Programmers (Episode 84 from the SD Ruby podcast)
Megan O’Rorke introduces the general concept and goal of usability, and shares some quick and cheap usability resources for Ruby developers. Watch episode
Text and Mate
A bunch of hopefully useful TextMate features and tips for Rubyists.
Customizing a Toto blog site
Last month I migrated my blog from Mephisto over to Toto, which has been a lot of fun to use. I took some time to write up 4 tips for how to customize a Toto blog site and Customizing Toto to support blog post categories… in case anyone else decides to try the same thing.
Rails Tips: form_tag and PUT method
If you are having problems getting form_tag to use a PUT method on submissions, this might help.
Github Trends
Github Trends provides you with rss feeds of what’s popular on Github. See the blog post for background.
Improved ways to use SQL Server with Rails apps.
EngineYard blog post about SQL Server Adapter for Rails
Interview with Anil Wadghule
Read the interview with Anil Wadghule on . Read more
gem install shuber-interface
implementable interfaces in ruby -
"Vendor Everything" Still Applies
That’s right. This post about application dependencies with Bundler and RVM is a homage to the (now defunkt) err the blog. Keep application dependencies in check with Bundler and RVM.
Modern SQL Server & Rails
My guest blog article for Engine Yard on the latest news for those using SQL Server with their Rails applications. It introduces a new connection mode called TinyTDS that replaces our dependence on ODBC.
Copycopter Client
thoughtbot open sourced copycopter_client a few minutes ago. It’s the client library to a corresponding service for editing copy in your live Rails app.
Testing Philosophies (Episode 83 from the SD Ruby podcast)
In this latest episode from the SD Ruby podcast, Rob Kaufman discusses common testing philosophies and methodologies in use by the Ruby community. Watch episode
Improving your tests with Capybara custom selectors
Hugo Baraúna from PlataformaTec explains how to improve your tests using Capybara custom selectors.
A Mashup for Inspiration
A small Ruby script to create an inspiration portfolio (in our case for webdesign) from Delicious bookmarks. It takes a Delicious tag feed, creates a screenshot for each feed url with webkit2png.py, resizes with ImageMagick, uploads to Amazon S3 then generates HTML. Source code at Github, blog post here.
Overview of define_method, method_missing, and instance_eval
I just threw together a short writeup talking about define_method, method_missing, and instance_eval. Have a read and let me know what you think.
Interfaces & Abstract Classes in Ruby
Mark Bates of MetaBates.com made an interesting blog post yesterday: Building Interfaces and Abstract Classes in Ruby.
Ruby API/DSL for ElasticSearch
“You know, for search”: the slingshot-rb gem for ElasticSearch, the ultimate RESTful HTTP/JSON/distributed/flexible search engine/database.
Agile is an adjective, not a noun!
There’s a growing tendency to treat the word “Agile” as a noun. This post discusses what an agile software developer should do: .
A New Rails 3 Positioning Library: RankedModel
Harvest looked for a simple row sorting solution, but the traditional plugin ActsAsList is showing it’s age with old ActiveRecord conventions and naive logic. Rising to the challenge, we rolled up our sleeves and built our own ordering solution, that we have dubbed RankedModel. Check it out!
Screencast - Faster Testing with Parallel Tests
Run your tests faster with parallel_tests gem using all the cores you have on your computer. Link to video
Testing class methods via rspec explicit subjects
I explore a trick for testing methods via the use of rspec’s explicit subject syntax. Some may consider it hacky, but it gives you a clean declarative way to test a class method under variation of it’s arguments. Read more
Ruby Modules: How Do They Work?
Most Rubyists know what modules are for, and many know they work by fiddling with inheritance. Come read how module inclusion works at an even lower level, learn why it is the way it is, and look at GraphViz-generated images.
Creating A Simple Rails Engine
In this post, we’ll create a simple gem with the aid of the Enginex gem. Our gem will be a Rails Engine that uses the MailForm gem to allow a user to send us an email.
Capybara ate Swinger
Remember Swinger, the Capybara RSpec driver swapper? Capybara can now swap drivers out of the box.