O'Reilly Media: Ruby and Rails

Announcing O'Reilly Answers - Clever Hacks. Creative Ideas. Innovative Solutions.

2009-11-04T21:27:33-08:10

We're launching the beta of O'Reilly Answers, and I'm inviting you to be part of it. In brief, O'Reilly Answers is a community site for sharing knowledge, asking questions, and providing answers that brings together our customers, authors, editors, conference speakers, and Foo (Friends of O'Reilly). O'Reilly is at the center of an amazing exchange of knowledge sharing and idea generation, and we want you to join us in changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.

Testing Rails Partials

2009-08-03T16:28:13-08:11

Test Driven Development works best when each test case targets one aspect of a class's interface. So this post will demonstrate a simple and direct way to test a partial without testing the Views, layouts, and Controller actions surrounding it. On very complex projects, this technique keeps your partials decoupled.

Programming Cocoa with Ruby

2009-07-31T23:50:16-08:12

Programming Cocoa with Ruby brings together two enthusiastic development communities. Ruby programmers will tell you how productive they are with just the right amount of code. Cocoa developers know the importance of a clean, intuitive interface.

Now, through Programming Cocoa with Ruby, the joy of Cocoa meets the joy of Ruby.

Ruby Best Practices

2009-06-16T23:50:43-08:13

Increase Your Productivity - Write Better Code

Regular Expressions Cookbook

2009-05-27T23:50:59-08:14

Detailed Solutions in Eight Programming Languages

Dreaming of Rails as the Next Microsoft Access

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

2009-05-15T20:50:56-08:20

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

2009-05-15T20:50:56-08:21

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

2009-05-15T20:50:56-08:22

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

2009-05-05T11:50:40-08:23

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

2009-04-21T23:47:33-08:24

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.