Editorial
Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails is a leading web application development framework, based on the Ruby programming language. It is designed to eliminate much of the drudgery of writing typical web applications by providing default settings that eliminate most configuration code ("convention over configuration") and by providing a rich set of utility functions that make most common tasks simple. It uses a model-view-controller design pattern.New Crop of Rails 2.0 Books
In 2007, more than a dozen Ruby on Rails books debuted — only to be almost instantly made out-of-date by the release of Rails 2 toward the end of the year. There are now some great Rails 2.0 books out, making life a lot easier for new and experienced Ruby on Rails programmers. continue...
Setting up Rails on Windows Vista
This guide walks you through setup instructions for preparing a Windows Vista development machine to be used for general Ruby on Rails coding. This baseline setup is what we use for our LearningRails online course. continue...
Articles
New Articles
from around the Web
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Q/A: What Thread-safe Rails Means
Discusses the upcoming Rails 2.2 changes around thread-safety and some of its implications.
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Rails 2.1: Now With Better Integrated Caching
Great walkthrough of the new support in Rails 2.1 for Memcached as a first class caching solution.
- TinyMCE WYSIWYG Text Editor on Rails
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WOW! Very Huge List of UpComing Ruby/Rails Books in 2008
Like the title says, this is an amazingly long list of Ruby books coming up in the second half of 2008.
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Code Between Lines: A RSpec matcher for ActiveRecord validation
Handy matchers to make checking for Active Record errors in specs even easier.
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Installing Sphinx on OS X Leopard
Building latest Sphinx on Mac OS 10.5.
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Ruby on Rails expert: Rails scales; Twitter shouldn't taint Ruby
Interview with Ezra Zygmuntowicz discussing where typical scaling problems really occur (in the database layer) and that the Twitter blame game is a red herring.
- June 2008 Ruby Security Advisory: A Summary
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Patch your rubies
How to apply back-ported security patches to Ruby 1.8.6 p111 so Rails still works.
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acts_as_ferret not working at all
Work-around for using STI with acts_as_ferret and ferret Gem
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AUTO_INCREMENT MySQL
Work-around to problem of adding an alternate starting value for auto increment if IDs in your tables. Bug exists in MySQL.
Books
Related Books
Ruby in Practice
A cookbook of a variety of techniques and solutions to common development problems.
List: $39.99 Amazon price: $29.19 Buy
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Statistics, 2nd Edition
If your knowledge of statistics is a bit rusty (or you missed the topic the first time around), this book, title aside, is a good primer ...
List: $18.95 Amazon price: $12.32 Buy
Links
Links by Type
Documentation (73)
- Skipping ActiveRecord Callback Methods
- Riding Rails: Rails 2.3: Templates, Engines, Rack, Metal, much more!
Rails 2.3 Release Notes - Code works in development but not in production - II - thoughts on ruby, rails and other technical stuff
Discussion about Rails 2.1 and 2.2 differences in loading classes - Rails 2.2: i18n, HTTP validators, thread safety, JRuby/1.9 compatibility, docs
Announcement of Rails 2.2 release and notes on new features/fixes. - The Great Ruby Shootout (December 2008) | Zen and the Art of Programming
Comparison of all of the current Ruby implementations with basic performance info. - WYMeditor - web-based XHTML editor
A new alternative for WYSIWYG editors. Uses JQuery. - the { buckblogs :here }: Inspecting a live Ruby process
Discussion on using GDB to explore a running Ruby (1.8) process. - The Fully Upturned Bin
Why's discussion of some of the Garbage Collector's behavior in the Ruby 1.8 code. - Bleak House
Memory leak detection - Installing Sqlite3 on Windows for Rails
A guide for getting SQLite installed on windows. Important as the default Rails DB is currently set to sqlite3. - Rails performance tip - using YSlow
Handy guide looking at the results of the Yahoo yslow FireFox plugin and how to handle some of the performance issues using Ruby on Rails or web server (nginx) configuration tricks. - AJAX In Place Rich Editor: In place AJAX-powered WYSIWYG editor
Using the great libraries Prototype 1.6, Script.Aculo.Us 1.8 and TinyMCE 3.1, IPRE provide a really easy way to implement an in place AJAX-powered editor using WYSIWYG. - Ryan's Scraps: What's New in Edge Rails: Shallow Routes
Now you can access your nested routes directly or through the complete nested resource path without specifying multiple manual routes. - Hack to Learn : Workaround the Memcached 'undefined class/module' Bug
If you are experiencing the error: "undefined class/module MyClass” when fetching data from memcached, be assured that you are not alone… - FiveRuns and Seattle.rb's memcache-client
Replacement for older memcache-client that deals with disconnecting memcache server issues. - Ruby on Rails Guides
- Top 100 Rails sites by Alexa ranking
- APIdoc
Rails Doc morphed into APIdock. Collects various versions of Rails, Ruby, and Rspec documentation into one place. - The Rails Documentation App - Rails-doc.org
- Yahoo! UI Library: Rich Text Editor
Rich Text Editor built within the Yahoo Javascript Library. - Textile Reference
A comprehensive guide to Textile markup syntax. - Browser-based Textile renderer
Want to try out a textile expression? Enter it on this page and it will show you the resulting HTML markup. - Textile 2.0
Quick reference and a web-based Textile-to-HTML converter for testing. - RubyCocoa
Home page for the RubyCocoa project on SourceForge. - acts_as_ferret
acts_as_ferret plugin enables simple integration of the Ferret search engine into a Ruby on Rails project. - SolRuby - Solr Wiki
Solr is an open source enterprise search server based on the Lucene Java search library. SolRuby is dedicated to information about integrating with Solr from Ruby. - Noobkit
Documentation site for Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and select Gems. - Ruby Standard Library Documentation
- the fabulous spider fuzz plugin
SpiderTest is an automated integration-testing script that iterates over every page in your application. - test/spec Official Documentation
test/spec layers an RSpec-inspired interface on top of Test::Unit, so you can mix TDD and BDD (Behavior-Driven Development). - test/spec RubyForge Home Page
Official RubyForge home page for project. - Reserved Words in Ruby on Rails
- Watir - Overview
Watir is a simple open-source library for automating web browsers. It allows you to write tests that are easy to read and easy to maintain. It is optimized for simplicity and flexibility. - RSpec Homepage
RSpec is a Behaviour Driven Development framework for Ruby. It provides two frameworks for writing and executing examples of how your Ruby application should behave: a Story Framework for describing behaviour at the application level; and a Spec Framework for describing behaviour at the object level. - Building Ruby, Rails, Subversion, Mongrel, and MySQL on Mac OS X
Step by step instructions for installing a full Ruby and Rails stack (with Mongrel and MySQL) on a Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) system. These instructions have you compile almost all of the code and install a copy of the applications into /usr/local. This process does not disturb Apple installed software. - Active Record -- Object-relation mapping put on rails
The official API documentation for Active Record as implemented in Rails. - Raaum's Rails Reader: ActiveRecord
- MacOS Forge Ruby Homepage
Official home page for the MacOS X Ruby on Rails default installation by Apple. Contains many pointers to useful articles using the environment, resource lists, FAQs, and information about related software (such as RubyCocoa). - Robby on Rails : Installing Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL on OS X, Third Edition
Walks through installing Ruby and Rails, as well as Postgres, via ports on Mac OS X Leopard. This is an alternative to using the default Leopard installation. - OSX Leopard mysql gem for ruby
How to compile the mysql gem when using the Mac Ports install of MySQL and the native Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) Ruby and Rails (and gems) installs. - test/spec, a BDD interface for Test::Unit
test/spec layers an RSpec-inspired interface on top of Test::Unit, so you can mix TDD and BDD (Behavior-Driven Development). - Log4r - Manual
Log4r is a comprehensive and flexible logging library written in Ruby for use in Ruby programs. It features a hierarchical logging system of any number of levels, custom level names, logger inheritance, multiple output destinations, execution tracing, custom formatting, thread safteyness, XML and YAML configuration, and more. - $ cheat rdebug
No-frills, full cheat-sheet for ruby-debug. - Action Cache plugin >> CRAZ8
A Rails plugin that is a drop-in replacement for Rails Action Caching. Adds many useful features including: last-modified header usage, storing response headers in cache, custom cache key implementations, conditional caching, and more. - Content-only caching for Rails
Introduces a new level of caching for Rails in which content that doesn’t include layouts is cached. Similar to action caching, but more granular. - Rails Cache Test Plugin
The cache test plugin adds assertions to Test::Units::TestCase to check for cached and expired pages, actions and fragments in your tests. - better rails caching
Plugin for high performance caching. From the site description: “Interlock uses memcached to make your view fragments and associated controller blocks march along together. If a fragment is fresh, the controller behavior won’t run. This eliminates duplicate effort from your request cycle. Your controller blocks run so infrequently that you can use regular ActiveRecord finders and not worry about object caching at all.” - RubyGems Manuals
Reference manual for RubyGems - Installing RMagick on OS X using MacPorts
Instructions for installing RMagick on Mac OS X, including how to use MacPorts to get ImageMagick running. Part of the larger documentation set for RMagick. - RailsLodge - Rathole plugin
Rathole is a fixtures oriented Ruby on Rails plugin that makes working with foreign key relationships much easier. It also removes the need for separate join table fixture files. Rathole is available for Rails 1.2.x and is now part of the official Rails 2.x distribution. - Raaum's Rails Reader
Very useful set of tutorially-oriented documentation for Rails. - The Rails Documentation Project
An ambitious effort to develop better documentation for Rails, including improvements to the API documentation, an open-source ebook for beginners, and minidocs on specific topics. - Merb
Merb is a new, light weight MVC framework optimized for simplicity and performance. From the site intro: “Like Ruby on Rails, Merb is an MVC framework. Unlike Rails, Merb is ORM-agnostic, JavaScript library agnostic, and template language agnostic, preferring plugins that add in support for a particular feature rather than trying to produce a monolithic library with everything in the core. In fact, this is a guiding principle of the project, which has led to third-party support for the ActiveRecord, DataMapper, and Sequel ORMs.” - Backgroundrb
From the README: BackgrounDRb is a ruby job server and scheduler. It main intent is to be used with Ruby on Rails applications for offloading long running tasks. Since a rails application blocks while servicing a request it is best to move long running tasks off into a background process that is divorced from the http request/response cycle. - Rails CHM Documentation - Version 1.2.1
Rails docs in Windows help file format. Unfortunately, as of this writing the version is rather behind. - Rails Edge API documentation
- Ruby on Rails API
Searchable Ruby on Rails documentation - RubyBrain.com: Javascript enhanced Ruby API docs
AJAX-based viewer for Ruby API documentation. - Debugging with ruby-debug
Documentation for the SVN (latest) version of ruby-debug. - Hpricot HTML Parser
- RailsBrain: Javascript-Enhanced Rails API Documentation
A Rails API viewer using Ajax. Can also be downloaded to run locally. - Ruby Standard Library Documentation
- Programming Ruby
The first edition of the primary Ruby reference work is available for free online. The print version is in the second edition. - Ruby Core Reference
The Ruby language RDOCs. - Ruby Garden Wiki
Wiki with extensive set of information about Ruby. - Libxml-Ruby API
- Ruby on Rails API
The official API site for Ruby on Rails documentation. - GotAPI
Searchable API documents for Rails, as well as for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. - Raaum's Rails Reader
An extensive reference to Ruby on Rails, and a large set of links to other resources. - Ajax In Place Editor
Scriptaculous in-place editor widget documentation. - Noobkit Docs - Ruby On Rails API... on Rails.
Another viewer for Rails API documentation, with some unique features. - How to use collection_select with HABTM
Documents the simple but obscure syntax to make a multiple-select select widget work properly with a HABTM association. - Ruby on Rails Manual TMail::Mail
Links (1)
Events (12)
- Silicon Valley Ruby Conference
Dates: 04/18/08– 04/19/08 - 2008 Web 2.0 & Technology Conference Calendar
An excellent list of web-related conferences. - The Pragmatic Studio | Ruby on Rails Training
Three-day introduction to Ruby on Rails. Dates: 03/10/08– 03/12/08 - The Pragmatic Studio | Ruby Training
Learn to program in Ruby from two real experts in the field, Dave Thomas and Chad Fowler. Dates: 02/27/08– 02/29/08 - Dr Nic Academy
Ruby on Rails training - RailsConf
The primary U.S. conference for the Rails community. Dates: 05/29/08– 06/01/08 - RailsConf Europe
Primary Rails conference for Europe. Dates: 09/17/07– 09/19/07 - The Pragmatic Studio | Advanced Rails Studio
Three-day advanced Rails training designed for experienced Rails developers. Dates: 04/16/08– 04/18/08 - Advanced Rails Studio
Three-day seminar for Rails developers. One of the few Rails seminars that is aimed at experienced Rails developers. Dates: 10/24/07– 10/26/07 - Test-Driven Development with Rails
Three-day seminar in Columbus, OH on using test-driven development for Rails applications. Dates: 10/17/07– 10/19/07 - Ruby on Rails Development Bootcamp
Four-day seminar on building Ruby on Rails applications, led by the author of the well-regarded Ruby for Rails book. Dates: 10/09/07– 10/12/07 - Essential Rails Seminar
Two-day seminar for new Rails developers, from the authors of the “Softies on Rails” blog (former .net developers). Dates: 09/21/07– 09/22/07
Groups (11)
- acts_as_community - ruby together
- Ruby Forum on DaniWeb
- Ruby on Rails: Security
Announcement-only list for issues relating to Rails security. - Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP)
- Ruby on Rails: Spinoffs
Forum for discussion of Prototype, Scriptaculous, and other Rails spinoffs. - Ruby on Rails: Talk
The primary discussion group for users of Ruby on Rails. Very high traffic, lots of noise, but a good place to look for advice and to search for tips. - Ruby on Rails: Core
Discussion group for the Rails core team. This is not a place to ask questions about Rails, but rather for those working on the framework itself to discuss ongoing work. - Rails Deployment
Group for discussion of Rails application deployment. - Ruby on Rails meets the business world
Discussion group for issues surrounding the business of Rails, including consulting, hosting, and project management. - Freelancers on Rails
Discussion group for freelance Rails developers. Focuses on client and business issues. - Ruby Forum
Primary discussion group for users of the Ruby language. Very high traffic.
Screencasts (121)
- Rails Lab .:. Expert advice on tuning and optimizing your Rails app
A collection of screencasts and interviews about Rails application performance. Put together by New Relic, but focused on the general issues, not on their monitoring solution. - Rails Illustrated: How to Create a File Upload Progress Bar in Rails, Passenger, Prototype and Low Pro - Rails Ill.
- Rails Illustrated: An Endless Page in Rails and Prototype
- Rails Illustrated: Hover Content in Rails and Prototype (Part 1)
- Envycasts -- Advanced Active Record
A new entrant in Rails screencasts, Gregg and Jason bring their wit and creative production skills to an advanced Rails screencast. No doubt the most entertaining Rails screencast yet, and also full of great information. Priced at $9. - Introducing merb-slices
Merbunity
- Introducing merb-slices
A quick runthrough of merb-slices, showing how to create a slice and then do some overrides from the main application. Merb-slices are like mini-applications that can be connected to your router. Akin to Rails Engines. - ThinkRefresh
- Railscasts - Tracking Attribute Changes
- Railscasts - Migrations in Rails 2.1
- Gem Dependencies
- Railscasts - Time Zones in Rails 2.1
- Tracking Attribute Changes
- Railscasts - named_scope
- Gitting Rails 2.1 RC1
- Agile Development Screencasts
- Ruby on Rails Videos
- RubyPlus Free Ruby and Rails Screencasts
- Railscasts - Filtering Sensitive Logs
Are you accepting sensitive user data? Passwords, credit card numbers, etc. By default, Rails stores all submitted parameters in plain text in the logs. This episode will show you how to filter this sensitive input so it doesn’t show up in the log file. - Railscasts - Generate Named Routes
- Railscasts - YAML Configuration File
- Railscasts - Simplify Views with Rails 2.0
- Railscasts - Fixtures in Rails 2.0
- Railscasts - Logging Variables
- Railscasts - Generating RSS Feeds
- Railscasts - HTTP Basic Authentication
- Railscasts - Migrations in Rails 2.0
- Railscasts - Cookie Based Session Store
- Railscasts - scope_out
- Railscasts - Destroy Without JavaScript
- Railscasts - Complex Forms Part 1
- Railscasts - Complex Forms Part 2
- Railscasts - Complex Forms Part 3
- Railscasts - Testing Controllers
- RSpec User Stories
- rSpec Controllers and Tools
- Railscasts - Adding an Environment
- Railscasts - Generating PDF Documents
- Railscasts - Custom Routes
- Railscasts - Markaby in Helper
- evang.eli.st Story Runner top to bottom screencast
- Railscasts - OpenID Authentication
- Railscasts - Shortcut Blocks with Symbol to_proc
- Railscasts - Move Find into Model
- Railscasts - Refactoring User Name Part 2
- Railscasts - Refactoring User Name Part 1
- Railscasts - Dangers of Model in Session
- Railscasts - Layouts and content_for
- Railscasts - All About Layouts
- Railscasts - Refactoring User Name Part 3
- Railscasts - Filtering Sensitive Logs
- Railscasts - Using with_scope
- Railscasts - Find Through Association
- Railscasts - Dynamic find_by Methods
- Railscasts - Caching with Instance Variables
- Railscasts - Where Administration Goes
- Railscasts - Counter Cache Column
- Railscasts - Virtual Attributes
- Railscasts - Performing Calculations on Models
- Railscasts - HABTM Checkboxes
- Railscasts - group_by Month
- Railscasts - Looping Through Flash
- Railscasts - in_groups_of
- Railscasts - The Stack Trace
- Railscasts - Formatting Time
- Railscasts - Super Simple Authentication
- Railscasts - Restricting Access
- Railscasts - Cross Site Scripting
- Railscasts - Hackers Love Mass Assignment
- Railscasts - SQL Injection
- Railscasts - Pretty Page Title
- Railscasts - Eager Loading
- Railscasts - Fun with Find Conditions
- Railscasts - Custom REST Actions
- Railscasts - Two Many-to-Many
- Railscasts - Conditional Validations
- Railscasts - Customize Field Error
- Railscasts - Multibutton Form
- Railscasts - Simple Search Form
- Railscasts - Blocks in View
- Railscasts - RJS Tips
- Railscasts - Debugging RJS
- Railscasts - AJAX with RJS
- Railscasts - Contributing to Rails
- Railscasts - Reading the API
- Railscasts - with_options
- Railscasts - Console Tricks
- Railscasts - Time in Text Field
- Railscasts - will_paginate
- Railscasts - Catch-all Route
- Railscasts - Named Routes
- Railscasts - Making a Plugin
- Railscasts - Debugging with ruby-debug
- RESTful Rails
- Railscasts - Optimistic Locking
- Railscasts - Create Model Through Text Field
- Railscasts - Hacking ActiveRecord
- Railscasts - Cleaning Up the View
- Railscasts - Update through Checkboxes
- Railscasts - Custom Helper Modules
- RJS Templates
- Railscasts - Testing without Fixtures
- Test-First Development for Rails
- Railscasts - Stopping Spam with Akismet
- Railscasts - How to Make a Generator
- Railscasts - The Logger
- Railscasts - Handling Exceptions
- Railscasts - Sending Email
- restful_authentication
- Railscasts - Model Name in URL
- Rails from Scratch Part I
- Rails from Scratch Part II
- rSpec Mocks and Models
- rSpec Basics
- Benchmarking with httperf
- Page, Action, and Fragment Caching
- coderpath
- PeepCode
Excellent screencasts on many aspects of Rails development (and some other topics as well). They cost $9 each but are well worth it. Come with sample code and other notes. - Better Web App Development
An experienced web developer, now at the Jet Propulsion Lab, explains in detail why he has moved from J2EE to Rails. Along the way, he compares Rails to Zope, TurboGears, and Django as well by showing the creation of a “hello world” example using each platform. - Railscasts - Free Ruby on Rails Screencasts
A large collection of short, focused, and free screencasts on Rails techniques. - Clickable Bliss -- Building the Store
Walks through Mike’s reasons for building his own online store, the Rails code he developed, and the alternatives for online payments. - TechScreencast Directory
A listing of screencasts on Ruby on Rails (and other topics)
Podcasts (4)
- Rails Envy Podcast
- Rubyology
- sd.rb Podcasts
- Ruby on Rails Podcast
Interviews with members of the Rails community.
FAQs & Resource Lists (16)
- Top 50 Ruby on Rails Websites
Good list of high-profile Rails sites. - Morph AppSpace and Rails
A selection of tutorials on Rails in general, and deploying on Morph’s AppSpace. - Ruby on Rails Flashcard Set
- Development resources on Rails and social site building
- MacOS Forge FAQ Ruby on Rails
Discusses the default installation of Ruby on Mac OS X, particularly Leopard’s default environment, how to override, etc. - WebLink - Home
A wiki for web developers to share information. - Ed Ruder's Rails Page
- railsbookmarks' bookmarks on del.icio.us
- List of Ruby on Rails Sites, Editors, Tutorials, Cheat Sheets and More
- Ruby, Rails, and 3rd Rail Resources
- Best of Google Tools & Tips for Internet Marketing Resource Center
Great list of tools for analyzing and optimizing your site’s search engine rankings, and for learning more about how search engines see your site and how people search for it. - Ruby on Rails Resources
- Mr. Neighborly: A Ruby and Rails bibliography of sorts
- tlbox -- Ruby Tools
Nice list of Ruby and Rails tutorials and other resources. Rated by how many users have added a given item to their “toolbox.” - 74 Quality Ruby on Rails Resources and Tutorials
- rubyonrails-talk List FAQ
Software (113)
- BBRails Toolkit: Enhanced Ruby on Rails Development in BBEdit
Handy tools that remove the need for trips to terminal for things like Rake, Capistrano, Git, etc. - #haml
A nice replacement to ERB - iPhone on Rails and ObjectiveResource; Making communication between the iPhone and a Rails web-service pain-free.
Objective C port of ActiveResource. Handy for connecting iPhone apps to RESTful Rails sites. - request-log-analyzer
Simple gem/script that helps analyze Rails log files for hotspots. - Ruby Enterprise Edition
Very fast, Ruby 1.8.6 compatible fork of Ruby. Very good memory handling. - Debug View Helper
This plugin adds easily accessible debug information into your views. It adds a button that will pop up a new window that displays request parameters, session variables, flash variables, and assigned template variables. - httperf
Httperf is a tool for measuring web server performance. It provides a flexible facility for generating various HTTP workloads and for measuring server performance. The focus of httperf is not on implementing one particular benchmark but on providing a robust, high-performance tool that facilitates the construction of both micro- and macro-level benchmarks. - RubyRun Performance Diagnostic Tool
A stand-alone performance diagnostic tool from Rubysophic, which plans to introduce a hosted service to complement the software. - Liquid Templating Language
Official homepage for Liquid Templating engine (originally extracted from Shopify). “Ruby library for rendering safe templates which cannot affect the security of the server they are rendered on.” - Spree -- Open Source Commerce Plaform for Ruby on Rails
- Map Rails Kit
A $199 package the provides all the code for incorporating maps into a Rails application - ActionMailer with optional TLS
github home of the action_mailer_optional_tls plugin. Use this plugin to connect to Google GMail from your Rails app. Pay attention to Googles TOU, as there are limits to the number of email messages you can send in one day. - jRails -- jQuery on Rails
jRails is a drop-in jQuery replacement for Prototype/script.aculo.us on Rails. Using jRails, you can get all of the same default Rails helpers for javascript functionality using the lighter jQuery library. - Railsbench
Set of scripts for doing benchmarking and performance analysis of Rails apps. - ruby-prof
ruby-prof is a fast code profiler for Ruby. - ZiYa
Rails plug for creating Flash-based charts. - CCRedit: Project Info
Open-source Ruby on Rails application for managing Continuity of Care Records embedded in PDF-Healthcare files for use in new patient registration. - tarantula
Ruby on Rails plugin that crawls your site, exercising all the URLs and checking things as it crawls along. - Rack: a Ruby Webserver Interface
- Plugems Runtime
A gem that supports using enhanced gems to replace Rails plugins. - Improved in_place_editor
- In_place_controls
- super_in_place_controls plug-in for Rails 2.0
- in_place_editing plugin does not work with CSRF protection and does not evaluate the RJS response
Rails Trac ticket describing the CSRF problem with the existing in_place_editor and a proposed patch. - /plugins/in_place_editing
The “official”, but currently flawed, in-place editing plugin for Rails. - Official Rails plugins
These are the plugins that live in the official Rails repository. Some are in serious need of updating, however, and in some cases there are better alternatives elsewhere. - RedCloth [Textile Humane Web Text for Ruby]
Ruby gem for translating Textile markup to HTML. - Community Engine | A Social Networking Plugin for Ruby on Rails
- Insoshi: open-source social networking platform in Ruby on Rails
Open-source social networking application written in Ruby on Rails. From the author of RailsSpace, this application is derived from the sample application presented in that book. - Opera Dragonfly
Browser Debugging tool (like Firebug), but runs on any device that Opera runs on. - Firebug - Web Development Evolved
Comprehensive debugging and in-browser development tool for Firefox. - Multiple File Upload with Flash and Ruby on Rails
Tutorial on uploading multiple files to a Rails application using a Flash-based UI. - Auto Tags
Auto-generates tags based on text content. - in_place_editor for rails2.0 - EnjoyRails
A modified version of the in_place_editor plugin code so that it works with Rails 2.0 - RubyForge: Acts As Ordered Tree: Project Info
- Software as a Service Rails Kit | Rails Kits
Rails software bundle for creating recurring billing using the Braintree gateway. This is commercial software, not open source. - Put Flexigrid on Rails
Plugin for Flexigrid JavaScript library, which enables grids with “click on header” sorting, pagination, and more. - Spree Online Commerce for Ruby on Rails
Spree is distributed as both a Rails plugin as well as a Ruby gem (requires Rails 2.0.2). You use the gem to create your application which automatically installs the plugin in your project. The newly created project is actually a fully functional store. All that remains is for the developer to customize and style to taste. - FlexImage2 Image Upload and Rendering Plugin for Ruby on Rails
- Better Partials Plugin for Ruby on Rails
A nice simplification for rendering partials. - Radiant CMS
- glTail.rb: An Open-Source Rails Log Analyzer
- Log Juicer - Squeeze something from your Rails logs
- Preview Releases: Net::SSH and friends
Announcin preview releases of Net::SSH, Net::SFTP, and Net::SCP - Lovd By Less -- Who loves you, baby?
Open-source social network application in Ruby on Rails. Download the code and use it as the basis for your own social network site. - Dojo Toolbocks
Plugin for using the Dojo JavaScript libraries with Ruby on Rails applications. - MOle: Project Info
Mole is a gem that instruments your application and stores usage and performance information in the database. - /plugins - Rails Trac - Trac
Here’s where to find all the plugins that used to be in Rails but were pushed out for Rails 2, such as acts_as_list, acts_as_tree, and scaffolding. You’ll also find other plugins that were never in the framework but have come from the core team, such as exception_notification and ssl_requirement. - PullMonkey Projects: Open Flash Chart Plugin for Ruby on Rails - Graphs
- eigenclass - rcov: code coverage for Ruby
- Active Merchant
The most widely used payment processing library for Ruby on Rails. Provides interfaces to more than 30 gateways with a single, abstracted API. Extracted from the Shopify hosted service. - Mocha
Official Mocha Readme - Flex Mock
FlexMock is a simple, but flexible, mock object library for Ruby unit testing that integrates easily with Test::Unit. - RubyForge: ActiveRecord
If you want to access the ActiveRecord source code independently of Rails, you’ll find it here. (And yes, you can use ActiveRecord in non-Rails projects.) - Ruby Facets
Facets is a huge collection of Ruby libraries. Before you write something that addresses a common problem, look here to see if it has already been done for you. - Prince: What's New
A high-quality, but not inexpensive, package that translates HTML/CSS files into PDF. - Rails PDF Plugin
Plugin that provides a cleaner interface to the PDF::Writer gem. - XSendFile
Rails plugin to support the X-Sendfile protocol, which enables you to use Rails to do authentication while having the web server deliver the file. - mod_xsendfile
Apache 2 module that enables your application server to tell Apache when to send a static file. Use with Rails Xsendfile plugin. - Rails Analyzer
Doesn’t appear to have been updated in a while, but still lots of logging/analysis tools to check out. - ZenTest: Automated test scaffolding for Ruby
The ZenTest collection includes a full test coverage suite of tools (including the extremely useful autotest). - How to Stress or Load Test in Ruby on Rails
Listing of stress and load testing tools that are useful with Ruby on Rails (and other) web applications. - Rubricks - CMS on Rails
An open-source content management system written in Rails, developed in Japan. - El Dorado: A full-stack community web application
A complete open-source Rails application that includes a forum, calendar, and files area. - comatose-plugin
A “micro-CMS” (content management system) Rails plug-in. - XLsuite
Open-source CRM and ERP system written in Rails. - Announcing Princely Rails Prince XML PDF Wrapper
- IBM Sharable Code
IBM Sharable Code is a platform for building, sharing, and managing Web 2.0 API mashups - Announcing acts_as_taggable_on
- BitNami :: RubyStack
This is a “one-click” installer for Ruby, Rails, and MySQL on Windows. It is the successor to the widely-used InstantRails installer, which is no longer being maintained. - RAA - rss/0.1.9
- SeeSaw | Rails Widgets
- annotate_models plugin
Provides a rake tasks that adds comments to all your models listing the database columns. - Savvication: Email Veracity Plugin
Plugin for validating email addresses using the existence of an MX record as the test. - MasterView - Rails-optimized (x)html friendly template engine
- activecalendar
- Substruct - Ruby on Rails E-Commerce / CMS Project
- codefluency's keyword_search-1.3.1 Documentation
Add gmail-like keyword search (using keyword:value pairs) to your application. - WhooTube: Ruby on Rails video streaming
Flash video streaming platform built on Rails. - acts_as_emailable
- ActsAsIndexed
- WYM on Rails
Plugin for integrating the WYM editor into Rails. - Blazing fast page loads through bundled CSS and Javascript
Plugin that bundles multiple CSS and JavaScript files into a single pair of files to improve page rendering times. - /plugins/legacy/ - Rails Trac - Trac
Legacy Rails core plugins. - Mysql Replication Adapter
Rails database adapter that supports replicated MySQL databases. - RubyWorks - ThoughtWorks Studios
Enterprise support for Ruby applications from ThoughtWorks. - BlogFish: tooltip.js
Javascript function to add a tooltip when the user hovers over certain items. Uses Prototype and includes Rails helpers. - CruiseControl.rb
Open-source continuous integration software for Ruby applications. - Tabnav: Plugin for tabbed navigation
- Ruby
Central site for the Ruby programming language - MasterView
An alternative template engine for Rails applications. - Substruct - Ruby on Rails E-Commerce / CMS Project - Trac
Open-source e-commerce system for Rails applications, implemented as a Rails engine. - YM4R: Yahoo Maps for Rails
Plugin for using Yahoo maps in Rails applications. - Goldberg -- A website development tool for Ruby on Rails
Goldberg is a Ruby on Rails generator that enables you to set up fully-featured websites within minutes. Goldberg provides security, site navigation and content management. - Combustible
Rails plugin for accessing the FeedBurner API. - Google Analytics Plugin at Notes from a messy desk
A simple plugin that inserts the google analytics tracking code in your layout. - validates_email_format_of
Plugin to provide a validation for email address formats. - ActiveScaffold
ActiveScaffold is a plugin that dynamically generates Ajax-based scaffolds that understand model associations and are customizable via configuration statements. - Custom Scaffold for Rails
A plugin that replaces the view code produced by the standard Rails scaffold with a view that explicitly references each column, rather than iterating over all the columns, so it is much easier to customize. - acts_as_textiled
Plugin that makes using Textile as simple as it can be. The specified model field is always interpreted as Textile when displayed, except when in a form (for editing). - Textile Editor Helper
Plugin that shows a simple toolbar over Textile text-entry areas, so you can, for example, click a Word-like “B” icon for bold and it will wrap the selected text in asterisks. (Display is still not wysiwyg, however.) - Selenium on Rails
Plugin that simplifies the use of Selenium for testing Rails applications. - Datetime Toolbocks - Intuitive Date Input Selection
Plugin that provides a JavaScript widget for entering dates in a mini-calendar, and also parses many common text versions of dates — even things like “next Tuesday”. - GeoKit: a plugin for location-based Rails apps
Plugin for building location-based apps; provides geocoding, location finders, and distance calculation. - Sitealizer Web Stats plugin for Rails
Plugin lets you track visitors, referrers, robots, search terms and more. - Excel export plug-in
- Pretty Accessible Forms
Rails plugin to implement the pretty accessible forms design from A List Apart. - OpenEPRS (Electronic Patient Record System)
An open-source Rails implementation of an electronic medical records system. - production_log_analyzer
Gem for analyzing Rails production logs to find the slow parts of your code. - calendar_date_select : Ruby on Rails Datepicker Plugin - Ruby on Rails: Talk | Google Groups
- Arti (Rails Documentation Generator)
An exploratory project to automatically produce better documentation for Rails applications. - FCKEditor Plugin for Rails
This plug-in simplifies the use of the FCKeditor, an open-source, JavaScript, WYSIWYG HTML editor, in Rails applications. - FeedFetcher plugin
The FeedFetcher plugin locates RSS feeds, given the URL of a site.
Presentation Slides (10)
- EXPLAIN Demystified: MySQL Conference & Expo - Co-presented by MySQL & O'Reilly Conferences, April 14 - 17, 2008, Santa Clara, CA
Good overview of what EXPLAIN is, how its results are calculated, and what all of the data is presents means. - Httperf Presentation
Presentation slides, recording, and quick reference for Httperf talk at www2007 conference. - Ruby on Rails Intensive Slides (ZIP of PPT slides)
Slides from a one-day course presented by the UC Berkeley Rad Lab, by Armando Fox. Streaming video is also available. - A Small Talk on Getting Big
Talk from RailsConf Europe 2007 on scaling Rails applications, based on the Twitter experience. - RubyConf 2007 Presentations
- Ruby on Rails 101: Presentation Slides for a Five Day Course
An extensive set of slides from a five-day Ruby on Rails course. - Email on Rails
Excellent, detailed presentation on the finer points of sending and receiving email from Rails applications - Full-stack webapp testing with Selenium and Rails
- A Peak at Rails 2.0
DHH’s talk at RailsConf 2007. - Introduction to Active Record
Presentation from the Silicon Valley Ruby Conference 2007. A great overview of ActiveRecord
Presentation Video (4)
- RailsConf 2008 Live keynote video
Unofficial videos of the keynote talks from RailsConf 2008. - Ruby on Rails Intensive
The UC Berkeley RAD Lab presented a one-day intensive in Ruby on Rails. A series of six, one-hour streaming videos is available here. - Rails Envy: ActiveRecord Tutorial
- Presentations from RailsConf 2007
These are videos of the presenters, unfortunately without the slides.
Directories (10)
- Open Source Rails
Directory listing of open-source Rails applications. - What's up in Ruby?
Ruby-specific search engine. - Working With Rails
Perhaps the largest Rails-specific community site. Includes directories of developers, companies, and sites, as well as forums and a job board. - railsbased.org - reusable applications built with Ruby on Rails
A list of open-source applications built with Ruby on Rails that you can use as a starting point for your own sites. - RubyGems.org
An excellent site for finding and rating Ruby gems. - 101 Innovative Ruby on Rails Web Apps
- RailsLodge - Ruby on Rails showcase
- RailsLodge - Ruby on Rails plugins
- Working With Rails
Extensive directory of Rails developers from all over the world. Also includes lists of sites, projects, and groups. - Working with Rails
Large and frequently updated directory of sites developed with Rails.
Cheat Sheets (8)
- Ruby on Rails Cheatsheets
Nice cheatsheets for various aspects of Rails, including Active Record validation errors, migrations, form helpers, and Action Mailer. - Textile Quick Reference
- Rails 2.0 Cheatsheet
- Ruby On Rails Cheat Sheets
- Ruby Cheatsheet v.1
- Ruby QuickRef
- Command references for Rake, Gems, IRb, and more
- RJS Demistified With Pretty Colors!
RJS cheat sheet
e-Books (12)
- Ruby on Rails 2.1 - What's new
Free ebook from Brazil - Rails Security Audit PDF | PeepCode Screencasts for Ruby on Rails Developers
Detailed ebook on keeping your Ruby on Rails application secure. - Using memcached
Guide to using memcached, an in-memory object caching system. - ActiveMerchant PDF | PeepCode Screencasts for Ruby on Rails Developers
Extensive description of how to use the Active Merchant payment gateway. - ActiveMerchant PDF
A $9 e-book from the publishers of the PeepCode screencasts, written by one of the ActiveMerchant developers. - Rails Code Review PDF
An assortment of “best practices” for designing Rails applications. - Rails2 PDF
A good overview of the new features in Rails 2.0. - Getting Started with Rails
An open-source e-book for developers who are new to Rails. - Mr. Neighborly's Humble Little Ruby Book
- Ruby Programming
- Integrating the PayPal API with Ruby on Rails
Includes a complete sample application that shows how to integrate PayPal’s Direct Payment API and PayPal Express Checkout. The Direct Payment API, when used with a PayPal account approved for Website Payments Pro, allows you to capture credit card information at your site rather than redirecting your users to the PayPal site. Integrating the API for PayPal Express Checkout allows you to immediately get transaction details when sending users to the PayPal site to complete payment. - The Money Train: Building e-commerce sites using Ruby on Rails - Agile Web Development
E-book on building e-commerce sites with Rails.
Hosted services (5)
- Scout Ruby on Rails Monitoring
Ruby on Rails application monitoring tool. Installs as a gem on your server. Supports plug-ins for extending its monitoring functions. Limited free plan with 30-minute monitoring interval for a single server, plus a variety of paid plans for multiple servers, more plug-ins, and more frequent monitoring. - FiveRuns Manage
Hosted service for monitoring the performance of your Ruby on Rails application, as well as all the software components of your hosting infrastructure. - Five Runs TuneUp
A new socially networked application profiling tool for Ruby on Rails applications. You can view the performance details for your application, and if you want help, you can upload your performance data to the FiveRuns site, where colleagues or the Rails community at large can offer help. - New Relic RPM (Rails Performance Management)
Ruby on Rails plug-in and hosted service for performance analysis. Can be used in development and in production. “Lite” service is free; more features available on paid plans. - Rubular: a Ruby regular expression editor
A great free tool for working with regular expressions. Enter your expression and some test text, and it gives you the matches. Includes a nice quick reference in the same window to help you write the expression.
Job Boards (5)
Training (1)
- Free Ruby on Rails Training Online Course
Free online Rails course with a coverage of JRuby, Glassfish, and NetBeans.
Blogs
Top Blogs
- Rails Illustrated
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Five Runs Blog
Includes interviews with a variety of folks from the Rails community.
-
New Relic Blog
From the creators of the New Relic Rails Performance Management system.
- Hungry Machine Blog - Stay Hungry.
- The Agile Developer
- Adam @ Bitscribe
- Misuse
- Hungry Machine Blog - Stay Hungry.
- CSRF - An underestimated attack method
-
Enhanced Migrations v1.2.0
Plug-in that provides improved migration support, simplifying coordination of multiple developers.
-
Zen and the Art of Programming
This blog includes a useful weekly post titled "This week in Ruby" with a roundup of the latest Ruby-related news.
