PODCAST

Rails Coach

Charles Max Wood

Your Playbook for Ruby on Rails

technology software how-to

All Episodes

2:32

Reboot

Rails Coach ·

2012/04/19

Today, just a quick message outlining the future of Rails Coach.

7:59

032 RC CoffeeScript

Rails Coach ·

2012/01/13

CoffeeScript is a language written by Jeremy Ashkenas that compiles to Javascript. Its syntax is much more friendly than native JavaScript. Especially if you're used to languages like Ruby or Python.As or Rails 3.1, CoffeeScript is available by default and a coffeescript file is created in /app/assets/javascripts every time you run the scaffold generator. A few of my favorite features of the language are: I can ignore parenthesis (mostly), semi-colons, and curly braces Function

5:42

031 RC Generators

Rails Coach ·

2011/12/30

A generator is a way of creating code from the command line. Rails has several of these built in, including generators for models, controllers, tests, helpers, scaffold (models, views, and controllers that support Rails' RESTful routing), and much more. Generators are actually relatively simple. They are made up of two parts. The generator itself, and the generator's templates. In the Ruby on Rails source code there's an assets generator and the javascript template and stylesheet templates it

9:50

030 RC NoSQL

Rails Coach ·

2011/12/24

NoSQL is a terrible term for a collection of widely varied databases. You have key-value stores like Redis, Tokyo Cabinet, Memcached, etc. You also have document databases like couchDB and mongoDB. Finally you have column based systems like Cassandra. And still others like HBase. In a lot of cases, there are gems for these. I've used several of them such as the gems for managing Cassandra, couchDB, and mongoDB.

7:16

028 RC Backbone.js

Rails Coach ·

2011/12/23

I've been using Backbone.js for a few weeks and really like the way it helps you manage your data on the client side. It's also a terrific way to keep your UI in sync when your data changes through Javascript events.

7:29

029 RC Ruby-doc.org

Rails Coach ·

2011/12/09

One of the most handy websites out there for people trying to find specific API's in Ruby is ruby-doc.org. From the main page, you can search or select your Ruby version. From the core page, you can narrow down the class or method you're looking for. From the std-lib page, you can read docs and see where different aspects of the programming language are implemented. On each class' page, you can find the specific functionality you need in the menu on the left.

9:06

027 RC Vim

Rails Coach ·

2011/11/17

I've been using VIM for a while to do my development. It's a terrific text editor that has been around for quite some time. Here's the rundown of what I've got set up. MacVim: http://code.google.com/p/macvim/ Janus: https://github.com/carlhuda/janus I've also found a few resources to help me get better with Vim as well. Here are some of my favorites: VimCasts: http://vimcasts.org/ VimGolf: http://vimgolf.com

5:19

026 RC Counter Caches

Rails Coach ·

2011/11/04

A counter cache is a handy way to speed up queries where you only need the number of an associated model rather than the entire collection. In your code, you might see something like this: @post.comments.count When you run this code, you wind up with another query to the database to get that number. That's not a big deal until you have that count being called for each post in your stream. To avoid this, you can use a counter cache. To use the counter cache, add a _count to the primary model's

7:28

025 RC Eager Loading

Rails Coach ·

2011/10/14

Eager loading is a terrific way of speeding up your response times. Let's consider a piece of code that pulls a list of associated objects from the database. For example, a view that displays the posts written by a given user: <% @user.posts.each do |post| %> <%= render post %> <% end %> (I know that partial has a collection option for things like this. I feel that this code sample is more expressive for our discussion.) In this case, assuming that @user was loaded by calling User.find(1), your

9:19

Rails 3.1 Asset Pipeline

Rails Coach ·

2011/09/23

Assets in Rails before version 3.1 were kept in the /public folder. In Rails 3.1 they've been moved to /app/assets and function in a slightly different way. Here are some of the highlights: Javascript assets written in Coffeescript will now be compiled to Javascript. CSS assets written in SASS or SCSS will now be compiled to CSS Other templating languages like ERB can be used in assets JQuery is now the default Javascript framework in Rails 3.1 You can combine Javascript files with the new

7:12

ActiveRecord Observers

Rails Coach ·

2011/09/07

About a month ago, I talked about ActiveRecord Callbacks. Observers are a way of moving callbacks out of the Model. Usually this is done to adhere to the Single Responsibility principle. So, for example, programmers will move sending an email when a record is updated or created to an Observer. class UserObserver < ActiveRecord::Observer def after_create(user) UserMailer.sign_up(user).deliver end end Observers should be included in your app/models folder and named using the same convention as

6:53

ActiveModel – Making Ruby Classes Behave Like Models

Rails Coach ·

2011/08/25

I’ve been working on an ORM for Cassandra. One of the things I’ve been using to build the ORM is ActiveModel. ActiveModel gives you modules you can add to your class that makes it behave like an ActiveRecord Model. Here are some of the features you can add to your classes with ActiveModel. Attribute Methods Callbacks Dirty Attributes (knowing which attributes have changed) Naming (allows you to reference the class and model by the object) Observers Serialization (to JSON or XML) State

7:32

Web Forms in Ruby on Rails

Rails Coach ·

2011/08/12

Building web forms in Rails was something that confused me when I was new to the framework. This is probably due to the fact that there are some methods that are a lot alike and there are a couple of ways of instantiating a form that do different things. The first way of building a form that is probably the most common is by using the ‘form_tag’ helper and the form helpers to build forms. Here’s an example. Pretty straightforward and it builds a standard login form. I’d get

9:23

Polymorphic Associations

Rails Coach ·

2011/08/09

Rails has the concept of Polymorphic associations, which are associations that can be of different data types. For example, let’s say we have a Comment model. A comment in your app can be on a post or a page. Rather than creating a PostComment model and a PageComment model, you can set up your Comment model to have a polymorphic association to a Page or a Post. Generally people call these associations “something-able”. In this case, it would be commentable. Here’s a quick code sample: class

10:20

Model Associations

Rails Coach ·

2011/08/01

ActiveRecord models are based upon tables in relational databases. This, of course, means that they can be relational. Models can associate in three main ways: one to many, one to one, and many to many. One to many is usually achieved by calling has_many on the model representing the “one” to state that it “has many” of its counterparts. The model that represents the “many” calls belongs_to . Here’s an example: class User < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :posts end class Post < ActiveRecord::Base

7:15

Rails Controllers: Before, After, and Around Filters

Rails Coach ·

2011/07/24

In your Rails controllers you have filters you can place on incoming requests, outgoing responses, or wrap around your actions. Before filters are run on requests before the request gets to the controller’s action. It can return a response itself and completely bypass the action. The most common use of before filters is validating a user’s authentication before granting them access to the action designated to handle their request. I’ve also seen them used to load a resource from the database,

8:14

ActiveRecord Callbacks

Rails Coach ·

2011/07/15

You can get a full list of the ActiveRecord callbacks here. Callbacks are a handy way of insuring specific behaviors on your models as well as managing the events that follow the callbacks. For example, a before_destroy callback can be called to destroy associated objects. (This is best done on the association with :dependent => :destroy, but it makes sense here too.) You can also stop the destroy process if you have dependent objects you can’t destroy by returning false. I’ve used ActiveRecord

7:43

The DRY Principle

Rails Coach ·

2011/07/08

According to The Pragmatic Programmer by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, "Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system." Last week I talked about extending your Ruby on Rails application. This is because in many cases in order to avoid repeating your logic across multiple classes (models or controllers) you need another place to put your functionality. Mix-in modules, plugins, and single table inheritance all allow you to codify your knowledge

9:53

Extending Ruby on Rails

Rails Coach ·

2011/07/01

I’m going to be talking about the DRY principle next week. However, before I jump into that, I need to discuss how to extend Ruby on Rails so you know where you can put functionality to keep your application DRY. There are a couple of standard places people put code that isn’t a Model, View, Controller, or Helper: The ‘lib’ folder - This is sort of a “junk drawer” for your application. In Rails 3 your application does not load these files on its own. You can make it autoload by following the

9:54

Rails’ Component Libraries

Rails Coach ·

2011/06/24

Rails is made up of several components that all have specific jobs in making your Rails application work. Here’s a quick list of what they are and what they do. ActionMailer - The basis for mailers. This is the library that allows you to format and send emails from your rails application ActionPack - The components that parse, delegate, and render responses for requests. ActionDispatch - Parses HTTP requests and sends the requests to controllers. ActionController - Basis for Controllers

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