Ruby on Rails Resources

Easy MySQL replication

AgileWebDevelopment.com — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 16:09:29 GMT

Take a look at the mysql_replication_adapter gem to get easy access to slave MySQL servers in a master-slave replication setup.

OpenID with Rails

AgileWebDevelopment.com — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 19:18:50 GMT

Check out Bernie Thompson's great summary of the OpenID world from the Rails point of view. It has everything you could want to know about implementing OpenID in your Rails application.

Simple deployment with Pound

AgileWebDevelopment.com — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:35:33 GMT

Theron Parlin, who created the HappyCodr Rails application showcase, has put together a quick walkthrough of deploying your Rails application using Pound. It's simple and to the point -- perfect for anyone who's never done it before.

Implementing Search: Acts as Ferret tutorial

AgileWebDevelopment.com — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 17:06:54 GMT

A great introduction to using the Acts as Ferret plugin to add search to your Rails application.

CachedModel

AgileWebDevelopment.com — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 21:39:41 GMT

Use seattle.rb's gem to add some caching goodness to your models.

Apache2 + Mongrel Deployment

AgileWebDevelopment.com — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:56:36 GMT

Coda Hale has a great write-up on deploying your Rails applications using apache2 + mongrel. I'm using lighty + mongrel to go easy on my VPS, but this combo seems to be pretty strong.

RSpec on Rails

AgileWebDevelopment.com — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 04:31:31 GMT

RSpec is a framework for implementing Behavior Driven Development (BDD), a kind of successor to Test Driven Development. RSpec provides a Ruby DSL for specifying how your objects, applications, etc. should behave and testing for that expected behavior. Now there's a gem for making it easy to do BDD with Rails, and there's even a tool converting your Test::Unit code to RSpec.

Debugging Javascript with Firebug

AgileWebDevelopment.com — Fri, 12 May 2006 13:16:01 GMT

Firebug is an excellent plugin for Firefox that makes it easy to see what's going on with your javascript. It's especially handy when trying to debug AJAX issues. Justin Palmer offers some advice on how to use Firebug effectively during your javascript development.

Deploying Rails on Windows

AgileWebDevelopment.com — Thu, 11 May 2006 20:53:52 GMT

Brian Hogan has written up some informative articles on various ways to deploy your Rails apps in a Windows environment, using Apache or IIS. The articles take you step-by-step through setting up Rails and Mongrel to serve your app, then how to proxy to your app via IIS or Apache.

Ruby on Rails quick reference

AgileWebDevelopment.com — Fri, 05 May 2006 03:19:14 GMT

Jens-Christian Fischer has put together a PDF that condenses a lot of the Rails API documentation into a portable (pun intended) reference.

RSpec for Rails

AgileWebDevelopment.com — Wed, 03 May 2006 04:11:25 GMT

Stanislav Karchebny has whipped up a way to integrate RSpec (an implementation of Behaviour Driven Development) with Ruby on Rails. Now Railers can easily take TDD to the next level. :)

Dead Simple Deployment

AgileWebDevelopment.com — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 14:06:51 GMT

Ezra Zygmuntowicz has put together a great tutorial on deploying your Rails application behind a load balancer (pen in this case) without using a web server like Apache or Lighttpd. Mongrel is used behind the balancer to serve the application, and it's a speedy and solid performer. Deployment doesn't get much easier than this. :)

Quick reports

AgileWebDevelopment.com — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:17:21 GMT

Here's a great simple way to generate reports for Excel

Readable functional test errors

AgileWebDevelopment.com — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 04:51:54 GMT

Ah, this is great... Here's a simple way to get all the layout stuff stripped from the output when you are doing functional testing. This way you are only left with the actual page content.

Selenium on Rails

AgileWebDevelopment.com — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 01:46:19 GMT

After reading the IBM developerWorks article on integrating Selenium with Ruby on Rails (http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-selenium-ajax/), I thought it would be cool to have a plugin that kept the public directory free of selenium files, but I didn't really have the time to do it myself. Apparently, Jonas Bengtsson had a similar thought and actually did something about it...