A growing list of things I don’t want to forget…

Disclaimer:

This is still very beta! AFAIK there are no errors on this page, but a lot of stuff is still incomplete.

Sections

• General
• Ruby
• Rails
• Model
• View
• Features
• Books

General

Setup for debian

Install the following packages:

• ruby – An interpreter of object-oriented scripting language Ruby
• irb – Interactive Ruby
• ri – Ruby Interactive reference
• rdoc – Generate documentation from ruby source files
• libmysql-ruby – MySQL module for Ruby

For the first few steps I highly recommend toying around with irb, an interactive ruby shell.

apt-get install ruby irb ri rdoc libmysql-ruby

Useful gems

• actionmailer – Service layer for easy email delivery and testing.
• actionpack – Web-flow and rendering framework putting the VC in MVC.
• actionwebservice – Web service support for Action Pack.
• activerecord – Implements the ActiveRecord pattern for ORM.
• activesupport – Support and utility classes used by the Rails framework.
• db_structure – [Rails] Database utilities.
• localization_generator – [Rails] Localization generator.
• rails – Web-application framework with template engine, control-flow layer, and ORM.
• rake – Ruby based make-like utility.
• salted_login_generator – [Rails] Login generator with salted passwords.

gem install actionmailer actionpack actionwebservice activerecord activesupport db_structure localization_generator rails rake salted_login_generator

Ruby Developer Tools for Eclipse

• Help->Software Updates->Find and Install
• “Search for new features to install”, click Next
• “New Remote Site”
• name: whatever you like, “Ruby Developer Tools” would be sensible, URL: http://rubyeclipse.sf.net/updatesite, click OK
• select RDT, click Next
• select RDT again, click Next

Online documentation

• api.rubyonrails.org/
  read these:
  • ActionController:Base API Doc
  • FormHelper API Doc
  • UrlHelper API Doc

Support

• Rails Mailinglist
• #ruby-talk
• #rubyonrails

Ruby

attr_accessor :name
attr_reader   :name
attr_writer   :name

Rails

Rails configfiles

• config/boot.rb: don’t touch
• config/database.yml: database config for all environment
• config/environments/(development|production|test).rb: config which differs between environments
• config/environment.rb: global config
• config/routes.rb: configure mapping of urls to controllers and actions

Environments

Start server for the different environments:

ruby script/server -e development|test|production

script/generate

ruby script/generate controller $controller
ruby script/generate controller $controller $action1 $action2 $action3
ruby script/generate scaffold $model $controller
ruby script/generate model $modelname

Model

• Module ActiveRecord::Associations

Naming conventions

• Class names: CamelCase, MyEntry
• Table names: lowercase_underscores_plural, my_entries

finder

User.find(:all, :conditions => ["login != ?", user.login])

table joins

user table with user table in friends table (columns user_id and friend_id)

has_and_belongs_to_many :friends, :join_table => 'friends', :class_name => 'User', :foreign_key => 'friend_id'

has_and_belongs_to_many :friends_of, :join_table => 'friends', :class_name => 'User', :foreign_key => 'user_id', :association_foreign_key => 'friend_id'

creates for example for friends the following methods:

• add_friends
• friends
• friends=
• friends_count
• has_friends?
• remove_friends
• validate_associated_records_for_friends

View

ERb

• <%= returns value %>
• <% just execute this %>
• no newline afterwards if closed with -%>

render

render :action => "goal"
render :action => "short_goal", :layout => false
render :action => "long_goal", :layout => "spectacular"

# partials always start with a '_' e.g.  _win.r(html|xml)
render :partial => "win"
render :partial => "broken", :status => 500
render :partial => "win", :locals => { :name => "david" }

# render partial for every item in collection
render :partial => "win", :collection => @wins
render :partial => "win", :collection => @wins, :spacer_template => "win_divider"

form helpers

form_tag :controller=>"user", :action=>:login

text_field(:variable, :attribute, :size => 16)
hidden_field(:variable, :attribute, :maxsize => 16)
password_field(:variable, :attribute)

size and maxsize are optional parametes for *_field

other helpers

stylesheet_link_tag "main", :media => 'all'
stylesheet_link_tag "main","second", :media => 'all'

create one / two stylesheet <link>s.

Features

Login

• the original LoginGenerator
• newer, better: SaltedHashLoginGenerator
• even newer and even better LoginEngine

Books