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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Testing your Machinist blueprints
I just published an article about a little spec I wrote to ensure my blueprints stay in shape.
ANSI 1.2 Ruby Library
The ANSI library keeps getting better. I just launched version 1.2.1. The GitHub repo is here. Probably the most useful new feature is the addition of the String#ansi method which makes it even easier to add ansi codes to output. For usage documentation be sure to check out the QED documents.
ActiveRecord vs. Core Data
As a relative newcomer to Core Data (and long-time Ruby coder), I felt compelled to compare the end-user experience with ActiveRecord.
How to make ActiveResource 34x faster
Scott Wheeler explains how he wrapped some ruby around C++ with Qt and libcurl to gain a nice performance boost. Code and figures on github.
Mercury 0.9.12 - A simple framework designed to create mockups.
Mercury is a simple framework that combines haml, sass, faker, jquery, jquery-ui, 960.gs, and coffeescript. Built on top of Sinatra, this simple framework allows you to create mockups using the same technology you use every day to build web apps.
Released swf_file v1.0
Just released swf_file v1.0. SWF File is a Ruby Gem based on Dennis Zhuang’s swfutil lib that provides you with the ability to access SWF file headers, such as duration, width and height, from within your Ruby application.
yard-struct documents your Struct subclasses.
I just released a gem, yard-struct, which sneaks into YARD and documents your Structs for you. Previously, classes using Struct.new went undocumented. Get it at github or at rubygems.org.
Resque-Unit - Test your Resque-queueing code
resque_unit provides assert_queued and assert_not_queued assertions for testing that your code is queueing your Resque jobs correctly. It also gives you direct access to your queues from your unit tests, and a run! command for executing your jobs, so they can also be tested.
Cinch IRC Microframework
Cinch has had a lot of interest as of late. We have contributors and work has started on a website to house more information. Please keep feature requests coming in! For those of you who follow Cinch on GitHub, you may notice you’re no longer following. This is because I accidentally made the repository private and public again, meaning all watchers were removed. Sorry guys! Click here and start watching again. We also have the #cinch IRC channel on Freenode.org for testing your bots, and support. We don’t have many users in there, so come say hello!
Bond - Improving Irb's Autocompletion
Bond 0.2.0 is able to autocomplete arguments for any method, comes with argument autocompletions for 80+ ruby-core and rails methods, fixes irb’s incorrect autocompletions and can have additional custom completions defined in ~/.bondrc. This screencast demonstrates most of these features in action.
The Anatomy of a Ruby Gem
I spent some time having a look at the anatomy of a ruby gem and though I’d share my findings. Might be a good resource for newbies.
Switch between multiple Ruby interpreters with no hassle and no dependencies
If all you need is to switch your default Ruby interpreter between different versions, you don’t need RVM; all you need is optional package installations and four-line shell script.
LazyGem 0.0.5 Released
I just launched LazyGem 0.0.5 and this includes a complete rewrite of the gem and how it pulls and installs your subscribed gems from RubyGems.org. Tests are needed and feedback is welcome.
monster_mash - makes writing parallel HTTP code easy!
I just released version 0.1.0 of monster_mash, a library that provides a super-simple DSL for consuming HTTP resources, wrapping Paul Dix’s excellent Typhoeus library. You implement your API method code once, and get both serial (blocking) and parallel (evented) client methods for free! [more inside]
Simple database backups using a nightly CRON job and Capistrano
I recently posted a really simple but effective way to do cheap and easy backups. Check the post out here.
New Rails Dispatch Post: Secure by Default!
Yehuda Katz walks us through all there is to know about security in Rails 3. Check it out!
Host Static Sites in the Cloud
Kite is a tool for hosting static websites in the cloud. More specifically, you use kite to sync your site files up to a cloud-based datastore, like Amazon’s S3, and then use Kite’s tiny Sinatra webapp to serve the files. [more inside]
Why Rails asset caching is broken in your app and how you can fix it
The problems with using timestamped query strings for managing asset caching and how it can be fixed with the new AssetFingerprint plugin: Why Rails Asset Caching is broken and how you can fix it.
New gem for the Facebook Graph API
facebook_oauth is a ruby client library to access the new Facebook Graph OAuth API. [more inside]
Monty, a Rack based authorization system.
This is the first release of Monty, a Rack based authorization system.
contributing to rails using vagrant
With the Rails Bugmash around the corner, getting your machine ready could not be simpler. Read about how to use vagrant (with a base box all ready) for the simplest and quickest way to start contributing to rails.
awesome_print 0.2.0
Pretty print your Ruby objects with style – in full color and with proper indentation. The latest version provides transparent logger integration, so you can use [logger.ap object] in Rails. Check out http://github.com/michaeldv/awesome_print
Barista - Coffeescript + Rail 3 Love
I very recently released Barista - an alternative to bistro_car for handling coffeescripts in Rails applications. You can read why I wrote it and what it offers - namely, simple framework support like compass does for Sass.
[ANN] resque-retry & resque-lock-timeout plugins
I have just released two resque plugins: resque-retry v0.0.2 - Adds retry, delay and exponential backoff support for resque jobs. resque-lock-timeout v0.2.0 - Adds locking, with optional timeout/deadlock handling support to resque jobs.
RSpec Subjects Video - Teach Me To Code
Here’s a video on a terrific feature of RSpec that allows you to write concise and readable tests.