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My 5 minutes of fame @ RailsConf
Sven Fuchs gave a presentation of Rails i18n today. And I was in the 'thank you' page! :) Nice to see that Sven also thanked himself :)
View ArticleThe Future of I18n in Ruby on Rails @ RailsConf
Sven Fuchs put his presentation of i18n in Ruby on Rails online. A fine presentation! A must read for every Rails developer!
View ArticlePlugin: translatable_columns
It was just three days ago when I discussed how to translate columns. At the moment I was writing it, I was already thinking: "this should be a plugin". So today, I took the liberty and created it....
View ArticleForm Labels in Rails 2.2
Shamelessly copy-pasted from the README file of the new plugin I released today: Since form labels don’t use I18n in Rails 2.2 (I was too late in submitting the patch), we’d have to make due with a...
View Articleacts_as_translatable_model plugin
After a long day in the train today, I extracted the I18n functionality from ActiveRecord so its applicable to any class. This can be especially handy if the source of the data is different, e.g. LDAP....
View ArticleResources
Just a simple little advice for all RESTful programmers out there. It's really simple, and cleans up your code quite a bit. A lot of Rails applications have two roles: an admin and non admin. Your code...
View ArticleLocalizing Dates and Times in Rails 2.2
Here is the next installment of a series of guides I'm writing for internationalizing a Rails 2.2 application. Please read the first part, Translating ActiveRecord, if you haven't already. This time...
View ArticlePluralization Rails 2.2 style
Railscast episode 132 talks about using helpers outside views. All in all a good and useful screencast. I only have one comment: In Rails 2.2 internationalized pluralization goes like this:...
View ArticleAsset paths
Just a quickie. We all know that Rails adds asset ids to images, javascript include tags and stylesheet link tags. This is to help the browser in caching assets properly. The generated code looks...
View ArticleAuthLogic is awesome!
Probably every Rails developer has used restful_authentication. Most of us on practically every application. But restful_authentication generates quite some code and is somewhat an odd plugin. It is a...
View Articleno_value_helper plugin
It took some late night coding, but I finished another plugin. It's a little helper that goes by the name of no_value_helper. To install it, type: ./script/plugin install...
View ArticleChainable.not.gem
Well then: happy holidays! This x-mas, there have been a few nice Ruby presents, like the merging of Rails with Merb and Github has a shiny new feature for creating project sites. I too will present...
View ArticleRSpec, Shoulda, and custom matchers
I have been playing with the matchers that Thoughtbot's Shoulda provides, and they are very cute! For instance, a controller can be easily tested like this: describe ArticlesController do...
View ArticleGem cleanup
I was browsing through the gem documentation today, and I found a command that I didn't know existed. sudo gem cleanup It removes old versions of your installed gems. You can of course specify the gems...
View ArticleNested Forms
The old subject of nested forms comes back again to hunt me. Rails 2.3 has the new and shiny accepts_nested_attributes_for feature. I like it, but there are some things to take into consideration....
View ArticleWriting YAML files
A short one for today: How do I write YAML files? Well, to get the prettiest results, I do something like this: def write(filename, hash) File.open(filename, "w") do |f| f.write(yaml(hash)) end end def...
View ArticleFiltering with named scopes
Suppose you have an index page with people and you want to have a series of neat filters to show a selection of people. For example only the people still alive of only the adults. How would one do...
View ArticleFiltering with named scopes (encore)
In my previous post, I talked about making filters using named scopes. To summorize: I like the method of using a named_scope and delegating to specified filters. This way, you can structure your...
View ArticleSilencing Passenger
When using Rails 2.3 and Passenger, you can do yourself a favor by adding this line to config/silencers/backtrace_silencer.rb Rails.backtrace_cleaner.add_silencer { |line| line =~ /^\s*passenger/ }...
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Plugin release: Root table
Yes, I've written another plugin for Rails. It's about so called root tables. It seem to be making them often. I want a list with options to choose from and some easy way to manage that list, which is...
View ArticleConfiguring Autotest
I have a big test suite in the current Rails application I'm working on. I have 2340 examples in RSpec, taking over 2 minutes to run. This is an absolute pain to run. Luckily there is autotest (or...
View ArticlePrawn and controller tests
There is a real annoying gotcha in using controller tests to test an action that renders a pdf with Prawn. You'll get a NoMethodException on "nil.downcase". The troubling part is that it totally puts...
View ArticleCucumber 0.5 and my little commit
The strangest thing happened to me this week. I was working on a little side project at work. It seemed like a nice time to try out some new gems (Bundler and Devise: love it! InheritedResources, not...
View ArticleBasic Named Scopes
Cal it tiny, I don't care. I've made a gem named BasicNamedScopes. Basic Usage I was fed up with writing: Post.all(:conditions => { :published => true }, :select => :title, :include =>...
View Articlehttp_accept_language released as a gem
I released an old Rails plugin as gem today. Slowly but surely, all my plugins will be converted to gems. This time it's an old one: http_accept_language Splits the http-header into languages specified...
View Article3 times ActiveSupport 3
Rails 3 is coming. All the big changes are spoken of elsewhere, so I'm going to mention some small changes. Here are 3 random new methods added to ActiveSupport: presence First up is Object#presence...
View ArticleGoing crazy with to_proc
You all know Symbol#to_proc, right? It allows you to write this: # Without Symbol#to_proc [1, 2, 3].map { |it| it.to_s } [3, 4, 5].inject { |memo, it| memo * it } # With Symbol#to_proc [1, 2,...
View ArticleMonkey Patch of the Month: group_by
A while back, I talked about new additions to ActiveSupport. And now, I have a confession to make: I like monkey patches! At least, as long as they're short and self-explanatory. I got a few of them...
View ArticleOdd Ruby Methods
I recently encountered some methods I didn't know about. ~ The tilde method (~) is used by Sequel and you can use it like this: class Post def ~ 11 end end post = Post.new ~post # => 11 That's...
View ArticleMonkey Patch of the Month: attr_initializer
So, about one month ago, I promised to share some useful monkey patches every month. Here is the second one. Your own monkey patches are still more than welcome! I often find myself writing code like...
View ArticleQu'est-ce que c'est Rubyesque?
This is a translation of the post I originally wrote down in Dutch for my company. I recently gave a presentation at my company Finalist IT Group about the philosophy behind Ruby. Code written with...
View ArticleViewTranslator, a dynamic dispatcher
I'm a sucker for syntax. So once again, here's a small experiment. It might not be the most useful snippet out there, but maybe it inspires you to do something awesome. The 'Dynamic Dispatcher' is a...
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Conway's Game of Life; or: Writing Perl in Ruby
We had a programming exercise this week at work. We were set out to write Conway's Game of Life, using pair programming and TDD. It was a fun and educational evening. I even did some Scala. Programmers...
View ArticleHelpers Are Code Too!
I think I've talked about this before, and there has been a Railscasts episode about it too, but I want to touch on it again. I know we're supposed to keep views simple, but that doesn't mean that...
View ArticleCheating Performance With A Little Javascript
This little trick works with most websites with a menubar. When you have a menu that changes color pending on which page you are, you can cheat a bit on the perceived performance of loading pages. And...
View ArticleAbout structs
Recently I talked about a monkey patch called attr_initializer, allowing you to write code like this: class FooBar attr_initializer :foo, :bar def to_s "your #{foo} is #{bar}" end end FooBar.new('foo',...
View ArticleUsing Sass with jQuery UI
Want to build a quick website or backend? Want to make it look good, but without adding too much effort in it? Then this recipe is for you! The jQuery UI framework contains some nice styles and some...
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Customizing IRB, 2010 edition
TL;DR: Check out my new .irbrc-file! Customizing my work environment is a nerdish hobby of mine. I spend far to much time tweaking my terminal. While I'll save my terminal customizations for another...
View ArticleDomain Driven Design: Building Blocks in Ruby
A few weeks ago I talked about Domain Driven Design in Ruby at the local Ruby user group: Rotterdam.rb. It had a great turnup (even though the weather prevented some from coming) and there was a good...
View ArticleBuilding Blocks of DDD: Services
As promised, here is an example of how to use the idea of services from Domain Driven Design to help you design your code better. Let's start with some theoretical stuff, before we dive into some...
View ArticleGemfile vim syntax file
I've updated my Gemfile syntax file, adding a dash of color and making sure it supports all elements of the Bundler DSL. You can get it here. You'll also need to tell vim to automatically use it when...
View ArticleYour argument doesn't cut wood
About once a month I read an article on comparing Ruby to another programming language. Usually it makes the point that Ruby is dynamic and open and therefore it is less suited for reliable...
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RSpec Array Matcher
If you're testing arrays a lot, like ActiveRecord's (named) scopes, you should know the following RSpec matcher: =~. It doesn't care about sorting and it gives you all the output you need when the spec...
View ArticleEasier MetricFu with Metrical
TL;DR: I've just released metrical. It is a tiny wrapper around metric_fu. MetricFu is awesome. It helps me keep my code clean by identifying problem spots in my code. Unfortunately, it's difficult to...
View ArticleCucumber vs. Steak
Jeff Kreeftmeijer talked about Cucumber and Steak at the last Amsterdam Ruby Meetup. He hit upon an important theme in software development: reducing complexity; in this case the extra layers of...
View ArticleBackends in Rails 3.1
If you find yourself needing a backend interface, you can either get an admin plugin of the shelf, like RailsAdmin or ActiveAdmin, or build your own. The of-the-shelf options provide a lot of...
View ArticleGetting the Most out of Bundler Groups
Did you know you can create as many groups in Bundler as you like? You can and I think you should! Let me show you some ways I use groups to clean up my Gemfile. Why groups? Speed: Requiring gems can...
View ArticleTesting ActiveRecord in isolation
Testing ActiveRecord doesn't have to be slow. With some clever loading you can require only the parts that you need and it isn't even that difficult. Another reason might be that you're using...
View ArticleSass 3.2 blocks
A lot of websites have side bars. On normal desktop browsers, this fits nicely. But on smaller screens, it will create horizontal scrollbars. And those are a bad user experience. Luckily, CSS supports...
View Articlealias_method argument order
If you're anything like me, you can never remember the argument order for alias_method. I always think to myself "it's the other way around than I think it is", but then end up doing it wrong anyway....
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