O'Reilly Media: Ruby and Rails

Ruby Best Practices

2009-06-16T23:50:43-08:10

Increase Your Productivity - Write Better Code

Regular Expressions Cookbook

2009-05-27T23:50:59-08:11

Detailed Solutions in Eight Programming Languages

Dreaming of Rails as the Next Microsoft Access

2009-05-15T20:50:56-08:12

Rails? Microsoft Access? Aren't those from different planets? Well, they may have different origins, but their similarities give me hope.

Using Helpers and Blocks to easily add design to your site

2009-05-15T20:50:56-08:13

I bought the program Coda by Panic software. It is a pretty cool app, even though it is not my preferred editor. One thing that I love about Panic software is they make beautiful interfaces. In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to create a 'sheet' similar to those found in Coda.

You ain't gonna need what?

2009-05-15T20:50:56-08:14

One of the defining characteristics of the Rails movement has been its willingness to throw out the rules by which software developers and consultants have typically worked. Those rules typically produce big, overblown projects laden with features that no one ever uses--but which sounded good during the project specification phase. Build the simplest thing that could possibly work, and...

Using multiple SMTP accounts with Rails & ActionMailer

2009-05-15T20:50:56-08:15

Recently I ran into a problem where I needed to be able to send emails via two different SMTP accounts within the same Rails application. Here's a way to get around this fairly easily using YAML.

How to upgrade to the latest version of Rails

2009-05-15T20:50:56-08:16

I have upgraded several Rails 1.2.x programs to 2.x. This can be quite a leap, and some of the steps are counterintuitive, so this post attempts to put everything together, like a recipe. I'd also like to hear more stories about upgrading platforms; such stories may indeed emend my suggested hacks and tweaks. Yet the point of unit tests, and TDD, is to make the smallest changes possible, and relentlessly test each change. Upgrading a major version tick is a big change, so you must force the upgrade to work incrementally, as a series of small changes.

ISBN adventures

2009-05-15T20:50:56-08:17

For most people, ISBNs are random noise on the backs of books, helpful mostly for barcode scanning at the register. For publishing folk, ISBNs can actually be memorable, magic keys for jumping from one system to the next. Of course, there are now two different flavors of ISBN, the obsolete (I prefer 'classic') variety with 10 digits, and the new version with 13 digits. Working with two sets of magic keys can be complicating.

A Conversation with the Authors of JRuby Cookbook

2009-05-15T20:50:56-08:18

Henry Liu and Justin Edelson authors of the just released JRuby Cookbook talk about JRuby, the current state of the Java platform, and some of the compelling benefits of integrating a language like Ruby with the Java platform.

The Present and Future of Ruby and Rails

2009-05-15T20:50:56-08:19

Chad Fowler and Rich Kilmer discuss where Ruby and Rails have gone in the past year, whether RESTful composition obviates the need for ORM, what's interesting in the upcoming world of Ruby and Rails, and how Maglev, Rubinius, and other new Ruby implementations contribute to the world of dynamic languages.

Personalizing the Learning Conversation

2009-05-05T11:50:40-08:20

Twenty years of change are shifting technology from top-down broadcast-model documentation and training to a more conversational approach that shrinks the social distance between teacher and learner, personalizing our experience.

Programming Ruby 1.9

2009-04-21T23:47:33-08:21

Would you like to go from first idea to working code much, much faster? Do you currently spend more time satisfying the compiler instead of your clients or end users? Are you frustrated with demanding languages that seem to get in your way, instead of getting the work done? Are you using Rails, and want to dig deeper into the underlying Ruby language? If so, then we've got a language and book for you!

Ruby 1.9 is the latest version of Ruby. It has many compelling features, including multinationalization support, new block scoping, and better performance. At the same time, the current Ruby 1.8 is still being maintained and is widely used. We're therefore releasing both the Ruby 1.9 version of the PickAxe (this book) alongside the 1.8 version of the PickAxe. Readers can choose the book that matches their environment.

Choosing your application's version of Rails

2009-03-30T08:51:13-08:22

Rails updates versions frequently. There are a few different ways to make sure your application is running the version of Rails you think it should be, and to make sure you can run it under the version it expects.

Learn to Program

2009-03-25T10:47:35-08:23

For this new edition of the best-selling Learn to Program, Chris Pine has taken a good thing and made it even better. First, he used the feedback from hundreds of reader e-mails to update the content and make it even clearer. Second, he updated the examples in the book to use the latest stable version of Ruby, and also to use code that looks more like real-world Ruby code, so that people who have just learned to program will be more familiar with common Ruby techniques.

Not only does the Second Edition now include answers to all of the exercises, it includes them twice. First you'll find the "how you could do it" answers, using the techniques you've learned up to that point in the book. Next you'll see "how Chris Pine would do it": answers using more advanced Ruby techniques, to whet your appetite as well as providing sort of a "Rosetta Stone" for more elegant solutions.

What Is Enterprise? Dan Chak Explains

2009-02-19T10:20:33-08:24

With Enterprise Rails, author Dan Chak's gives you the tools to develop applications for the enterprise world for websites with global scale. In the book, Chak, who has worked for Amazon.com, shows you how to make good architectural choices from the beginning of a project. Read on for an excerpt, "What is Enterprise."