Ruby on Rails Resources

Lunawebs.com is looking for immediate contract, part-time and/or full time ruby on rails developers to support existing clients and build new enterprise level applications. LunaWebs.com is sponsoring the Mountain West Ruby Conference event. Attendees at the Mountain West Ruby Conference who are interested should look for Shad Vick who is also attending or call 801 755-9966.

Here are some of the blog feeds that I subscribe too.  I’ve gotten a lot of value from these

• http://duncan-cragg.org/blog/atom/
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/height1percent
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/buckblog
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheRailsWay
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/RyansScraps
• http://www.rubyonrailsblog.com/xml/rss20/feedburner.xml
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/RidingRails
• http://redhanded.hobix.com/index.xml
• http://www.railsweenie.com/questions?format=rss
• http://nubyonrails.com/xml/rss20/feed.xml
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/hasmanythrough
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/errtheblog

Tim

Here’s a simple but elegant solution to handling file uploads with the marvelous Ajax Scaffold plugin. It seamlessly extends (not replaces) the ajax-scaffold plugin so posts can be made via an iframe, allowing the possibility of file uploads. Because it extends, and not replaces, you can continue to update your copy of ajax-scaffold-plugin without having to back and redo anything!

install via script/plugin install svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/timcharper/ajaxscaffoldp_upload

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We’ll be one of the sponsors at the upcoming MtnWest RubyConf 2007. You should be there if you haven’t planned already.

Registration is $50 and includes access to all conference session as well as a nifty t-shirt.

Details:
March 16-17, 2007
Salt Lake City Library
For more information, contact mtnwestruby at gmail dot com or go to Mt West Ruby Conference

To register directly go to Mt. West ruby registration page
See you all there.

I have a fresh copy of fedora core 6 installed on my own server which I use for personal projects (like my brother-in-law’s piano website). Recently, I wanted to install RMagick on the server for a image-uploading gallery I put on (using the wonderful file-column plugin). I used the distro version of ruby from the rpm repositories, and the rpm specifically compiled for fedora core 6 from the website, and the gem command line to install rmagick.
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I am a windows rails developer, and I love rad-rails. However, it has a big gap when it comes to debugging features. But, when using the ruby-debug gem in tandem with the external tools feature of rad-rails (eclipse), debugging can become surprisingly pleasant. In this article I will show you how to set up various “External Tools” shortcuts to aid you debug rails applications (and do other things).
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I often get asked - ‘What’s a good editor for Ruby?’

The votes are in - I’ve asked around and received a few responses from folks on their favorite Ruby editors.

Here’s the short list without commentary or reviews. Will take a peek at these and a longer list when we have time.
Vim on Windows
PSPad
Eclipse
JEdit
Textmate on OSX
Dreamweaver (some tweaking to config files required to color code)

Does Rails run so slower in the Development environment?
Rails allows you to setup 3 environments each with its own database, error loggin etc. So you have Production, Development and Testing.

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I’ll admit - I’ve been a fan of the LAMP for a long time. When I started out, like many new web designers I needed ways to do things dynamically. I remember my first form to capture data to a text file using PERL. It didn’t take long before I got sick of the picky uploading requirements and file permssion setting that PERL required. I was looking for a faster, easier plug and play way. Ah at last - PHP. I could pretty much copy and paste code snippets as a newbie and scripts were working immediately. Now and then an error would pop-up - but delightfully followed with a tip to “go to line…” whatever to fix my “parse errors”. Yes I was and still am a huge fan of PHP.

It wasn’t until some of the best PHP developers I knew wondered why I was doing things so “inneffeciently” that I started probing RoR. Now I’ll admit - I’m far from conversant in Rails as I’m a webmaster/designer type, but I have learned a few things that have influenced me and our organization to switch over to the rails framework for new applications. Here are a few reasons we made the (95% of the time) switch. I say 95% of the time because there are still cases when we find the framework may not be the best option - but that’s for a later post.

I’ll admit - I’ve learned these benefits from the pros I work with who write the language. Adrian Madrid of HyperX first introduced me and I’m glad he did. Others have had to force the logic into my brain - but I’m starting to ‘get’ it.

1. Rails has an interactive shell that lets you write and execute code directly. No queries…just simple code.
2. Database abstraction. Being able to loop through rows with just one simple command rocks. Remember php while … In rails the same thing would be something like this: table.each do |column| is pretty cool. Of course you can still run queries, but the most common ones are taken care of. It also understands relationships if you let it.
3. Working with databases as objects is a great time saver.

So there you have it - yes it is better then PHP. Where is it headed? I’m not sure - but folks around here cringe if I mention doing new projects in PHP, and smaller projects are typically finished in half the time - so I’m sold.