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.Setting up Rails on Windows XP
This guide walks you through setup instructions for preparing a Windows XP development machine to be used for general Ruby on Rails coding. This baseline setup is what we use for our LearningRails online course. 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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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.
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Searching Beast and WordPress from a Rails app
How to implement search (using Ferret in this case) on a non-integrated data source.
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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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Ruby on Rails: scaling to 1 billion page views per month
LinkedIn’s “Bumpersticker” Facebook application delivers more than 1 billion page views per month and is written in Rails.
Books
Related Books
Beginning Ruby
From Novice to Professional
Beginning Ruby is, despite its title, not just a beginner’s book. It does start at the beginning, and it is written without assumin...
List: $39.99 Amazon price: $32.57 Buy
The Ruby Way, Second Edition
Solutions and Techniques in Ruby Programming
More akin to a Cookbook format, The Ruby Way provides valuable how-to information for common and esoteric programming problems using the ...
List: $44.99 Amazon price: $29.69 Buy
Agile Web Development with Rails
This is the original Rails book that started it all. Written by the creator of Rails, David Heinemeier Hansson and noted Pragmatic Progra...
List: $39.95 Amazon price: $35.95 Buy
Links
Links by Type
Documentation (73)
- 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
- Noobkit Docs - Ruby On Rails API... on Rails.
Another viewer for Rails API documentation, with some unique features. - Ajax In Place Editor
Scriptaculous in-place editor widget documentation. - Raaum's Rails Reader
An extensive reference to Ruby on Rails, and a large set of links to other resources. - 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. - 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. - Ruby Standard Library Documentation
- RailsBrain: Javascript-Enhanced Rails API Documentation
A Rails API viewer using Ajax. Can also be downloaded to run locally. - 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
- Rails Edge API documentation
- Ruby on Rails API
Searchable Ruby on Rails documentation - Rails CHM Documentation - Version 1.2.1
Rails docs in Windows help file format. Unfortunately, as of this writing the version is rather behind. - 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. - 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.” - Raaum's Rails Reader
Very useful set of tutorially-oriented documentation for Rails. - 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. - 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. - 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. - RubyGems Manuals
Reference manual for RubyGems - 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.” - 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. - $ cheat rdebug
No-frills, full cheat-sheet for ruby-debug. - 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. - 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). - 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. - Active Record -- Object-relation mapping put on rails
The official API documentation for Active Record as implemented in Rails. - Raaum's Rails Reader: ActiveRecord
- 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. - 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. - 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. - the fabulous spider fuzz plugin
SpiderTest is an automated integration-testing script that iterates over every page in your application. - Reserved Words in Ruby on Rails
- Ruby Standard Library Documentation
- Noobkit
Documentation site for Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and select Gems. - 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. - 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. - Yahoo! UI Library: Rich Text Editor
Rich Text Editor built within the Yahoo Javascript Library. - The Rails Documentation App - Rails-doc.org
- APIdoc
Rails Doc morphed into APIdock. Collects various versions of Rails, Ruby, and Rspec documentation into one place. - Top 100 Rails sites by Alexa ranking
- Ruby on Rails Guides
- FiveRuns and Seattle.rb's memcache-client
Replacement for older memcache-client that deals with disconnecting memcache server issues. - 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… - 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. - 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. - 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. - 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. - Bleak House
Memory leak detection - The Fully Upturned Bin
Why's discussion of some of the Garbage Collector's behavior in the Ruby 1.8 code. - the { buckblogs :here }: Inspecting a live Ruby process
Discussion on using GDB to explore a running Ruby (1.8) process. - WYMeditor - web-based XHTML editor
A new alternative for WYSIWYG editors. Uses JQuery. - The Great Ruby Shootout (December 2008) | Zen and the Art of Programming
Comparison of all of the current Ruby implementations with basic performance info. - 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. - 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 - Riding Rails: Rails 2.3: Templates, Engines, Rack, Metal, much more!
Rails 2.3 Release Notes - Skipping ActiveRecord Callback Methods
Links (1)
Events (12)
- 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - Dr Nic Academy
Ruby on Rails training - 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 - The Pragmatic Studio | Ruby on Rails Training
Three-day introduction to Ruby on Rails. Dates: 03/10/08– 03/12/08 - 2008 Web 2.0 & Technology Conference Calendar
An excellent list of web-related conferences. - Silicon Valley Ruby Conference
Dates: 04/18/08– 04/19/08
Groups (11)
- 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. - Ruby on Rails: Spinoffs
Forum for discussion of Prototype, Scriptaculous, and other Rails spinoffs. - Ruby on Rails: Security
Announcement-only list for issues relating to Rails security. - Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP)
- Ruby Forum on DaniWeb
- acts_as_community - ruby together
Screencasts (121)
- TechScreencast Directory
A listing of screencasts on Ruby on Rails (and other topics) - 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. - 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. - 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. - rSpec Mocks and Models
- rSpec Basics
- Rails from Scratch Part I
- Rails from Scratch Part II
- Benchmarking with httperf
- Page, Action, and Fragment Caching
- RJS Templates
- RESTful Rails
- Test-First Development for Rails
- restful_authentication
- Railscasts - Stopping Spam with Akismet
- Railscasts - Custom Helper Modules
- Railscasts - Model Name in URL
- Railscasts - Hacking ActiveRecord
- Railscasts - Sending Email
- Railscasts - Testing without Fixtures
- Railscasts - Optimistic Locking
- Railscasts - How to Make a Generator
- Railscasts - Create Model Through Text Field
- Railscasts - The Logger
- Railscasts - Cleaning Up the View
- Railscasts - Debugging with ruby-debug
- Railscasts - Handling Exceptions
- Railscasts - Update through Checkboxes
- Railscasts - will_paginate
- Railscasts - Contributing to Rails
- Railscasts - Reading the API
- Railscasts - Console Tricks
- Railscasts - Two Many-to-Many
- Railscasts - Catch-all Route
- Railscasts - RJS Tips
- Railscasts - Debugging RJS
- Railscasts - AJAX with RJS
- Railscasts - with_options
- Railscasts - Conditional Validations
- Railscasts - Blocks in View
- Railscasts - Customize Field Error
- Railscasts - Multibutton Form
- Railscasts - Simple Search Form
- Railscasts - Custom REST Actions
- Railscasts - Named Routes
- Railscasts - Making a Plugin
- Railscasts - Time in Text Field
- Railscasts - Formatting Time
- Railscasts - Pretty Page Title
- Railscasts - group_by Month
- Railscasts - in_groups_of
- Railscasts - Cross Site Scripting
- Railscasts - Hackers Love Mass Assignment
- Railscasts - SQL Injection
- Railscasts - The Stack Trace
- Railscasts - Counter Cache Column
- Railscasts - Eager Loading
- Railscasts - Super Simple Authentication
- Railscasts - Restricting Access
- Railscasts - Where Administration Goes
- Railscasts - Looping Through Flash
- Railscasts - HABTM Checkboxes
- Railscasts - Virtual Attributes
- Railscasts - Fun with Find Conditions
- Railscasts - Performing Calculations on Models
- Railscasts - Dangers of Model in Session
- Railscasts - Refactoring User Name Part 3
- Railscasts - Refactoring User Name Part 2
- Railscasts - Refactoring User Name Part 1
- Railscasts - Filtering Sensitive Logs
- Railscasts - Layouts and content_for
- Railscasts - All About Layouts
- Railscasts - Shortcut Blocks with Symbol to_proc
- Railscasts - Using with_scope
- Railscasts - Move Find into Model
- Railscasts - Find Through Association
- Railscasts - Dynamic find_by Methods
- Railscasts - Caching with Instance Variables
- evang.eli.st Story Runner top to bottom screencast
- Railscasts - OpenID Authentication
- Railscasts - Markaby in Helper
- RSpec User Stories
- rSpec Controllers and Tools
- Railscasts - Custom Routes
- Railscasts - Testing Controllers
- Railscasts - Adding an Environment
- Railscasts - Complex Forms Part 1
- Railscasts - Complex Forms Part 2
- Railscasts - Complex Forms Part 3
- Railscasts - scope_out
- Railscasts - Destroy Without JavaScript
- Railscasts - Generating PDF Documents
- Railscasts - Generate Named Routes
- Railscasts - Simplify Views with Rails 2.0
- Railscasts - Fixtures in Rails 2.0
- Railscasts - HTTP Basic Authentication
- Railscasts - Migrations in Rails 2.0
- Railscasts - Cookie Based Session Store
- Railscasts - YAML Configuration File
- Railscasts - Logging Variables
- Railscasts - Generating RSS Feeds
- 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. - RubyPlus Free Ruby and Rails Screencasts
- Ruby on Rails Videos
- Agile Development Screencasts
- Gitting Rails 2.1 RC1
- Railscasts - Time Zones in Rails 2.1
- Tracking Attribute Changes
- Gem Dependencies
- Railscasts - named_scope
- Railscasts - Tracking Attribute Changes
- Railscasts - Migrations in Rails 2.1
- ThinkRefresh
- 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. - 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. - Rails Illustrated: Hover Content in Rails and Prototype (Part 1)
- Rails Illustrated: An Endless Page in Rails and Prototype
- Rails Illustrated: How to Create a File Upload Progress Bar in Rails, Passenger, Prototype and Low Pro - Rails Ill.
- 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.
Podcasts (4)
- sd.rb Podcasts
- Ruby on Rails Podcast
Interviews with members of the Rails community. - Rubyology
- Rails Envy Podcast
FAQs & Resource Lists (16)
- rubyonrails-talk List FAQ
- 74 Quality Ruby on Rails Resources and Tutorials
- 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.” - Mr. Neighborly: A Ruby and Rails bibliography of sorts
- Ruby on Rails Resources
- List of Ruby on Rails Sites, Editors, Tutorials, Cheat Sheets and More
- 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, Rails, and 3rd Rail Resources
- railsbookmarks' bookmarks on del.icio.us
- Ed Ruder's Rails Page
- 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. - Development resources on Rails and social site building
- Ruby on Rails Flashcard Set
- Morph AppSpace and Rails
A selection of tutorials on Rails in general, and deploying on Morph’s AppSpace. - Top 50 Ruby on Rails Websites
Good list of high-profile Rails sites.
Software (113)
- 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. - calendar_date_select : Ruby on Rails Datepicker Plugin - Ruby on Rails: Talk | Google Groups
- production_log_analyzer
Gem for analyzing Rails production logs to find the slow parts of your code. - 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. - Arti (Rails Documentation Generator)
An exploratory project to automatically produce better documentation for Rails applications. - Excel export plug-in
- 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. - Selenium on Rails
Plugin that simplifies the use of Selenium for testing Rails applications. - GeoKit: a plugin for location-based Rails apps
Plugin for building location-based apps; provides geocoding, location finders, and distance calculation. - 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”. - 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.) - validates_email_format_of
Plugin to provide a validation for email address formats. - Sitealizer Web Stats plugin for Rails
Plugin lets you track visitors, referrers, robots, search terms and more. - 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. - YM4R: Yahoo Maps for Rails
Plugin for using Yahoo maps in Rails applications. - 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. - Ruby
Central site for the Ruby programming language - Tabnav: Plugin for tabbed navigation
- BlogFish: tooltip.js
Javascript function to add a tooltip when the user hovers over certain items. Uses Prototype and includes Rails helpers. - RubyWorks - ThoughtWorks Studios
Enterprise support for Ruby applications from ThoughtWorks. - CruiseControl.rb
Open-source continuous integration software for Ruby applications. - /plugins/legacy/ - Rails Trac - Trac
Legacy Rails core plugins. - 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. - Mysql Replication Adapter
Rails database adapter that supports replicated MySQL databases. - WYM on Rails
Plugin for integrating the WYM editor into Rails. - ActsAsIndexed
- acts_as_emailable
- 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. - 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
- annotate_models plugin
Provides a rake tasks that adds comments to all your models listing the database columns. - Substruct - Ruby on Rails E-Commerce / CMS Project
- 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
- Announcing acts_as_taggable_on
- IBM Sharable Code
IBM Sharable Code is a platform for building, sharing, and managing Web 2.0 API mashups - Announcing Princely Rails Prince XML PDF Wrapper
- XLsuite
Open-source CRM and ERP system written in Rails. - comatose-plugin
A “micro-CMS” (content management system) Rails plug-in. - El Dorado: A full-stack community web application
A complete open-source Rails application that includes a forum, calendar, and files area. - Rubricks - CMS on Rails
An open-source content management system written in Rails, developed in Japan. - 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. - ZenTest: Automated test scaffolding for Ruby
The ZenTest collection includes a full test coverage suite of tools (including the extremely useful autotest). - Rails Analyzer
Doesn’t appear to have been updated in a while, but still lots of logging/analysis tools to check out. - 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. - 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. - 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. - 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.) - 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. - 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. - PullMonkey Projects: Open Flash Chart Plugin for Ruby on Rails - Graphs
- /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. - MOle: Project Info
Mole is a gem that instruments your application and stores usage and performance information in the database. - 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. - Preview Releases: Net::SSH and friends
Announcin preview releases of Net::SSH, Net::SFTP, and Net::SCP - Dojo Toolbocks
Plugin for using the Dojo JavaScript libraries with Ruby on Rails applications. - Radiant CMS
- Log Juicer - Squeeze something from your Rails logs
- glTail.rb: An Open-Source Rails Log Analyzer
- Better Partials Plugin for Ruby on Rails
A nice simplification for rendering partials. - FlexImage2 Image Upload and Rendering Plugin for Ruby on Rails
- 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. - 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. - RubyForge: Acts As Ordered Tree: Project Info
- Auto Tags
Auto-generates tags based on text content. - Multiple File Upload with Flash and Ruby on Rails
Tutorial on uploading multiple files to a Rails application using a Flash-based UI. - 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. - 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 - 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. - Community Engine | A Social Networking Plugin for Ruby on Rails
- RedCloth [Textile Humane Web Text for Ruby]
Ruby gem for translating Textile markup to HTML. - 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. - Plugems Runtime
A gem that supports using enhanced gems to replace Rails plugins. - Rack: a Ruby Webserver Interface
- 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. - ZiYa
Rails plug for creating Flash-based charts. - Railsbench
Set of scripts for doing benchmarking and performance analysis of Rails apps. - ruby-prof
ruby-prof is a fast code profiler for Ruby. - 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. - 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. - Map Rails Kit
A $199 package the provides all the code for incorporating maps into a Rails application - Spree -- Open Source Commerce Plaform for Ruby on Rails
- 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.” - RubyRun Performance Diagnostic Tool
A stand-alone performance diagnostic tool from Rubysophic, which plans to introduce a hosted service to complement the software. - 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. - 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. - Ruby Enterprise Edition
Very fast, Ruby 1.8.6 compatible fork of Ruby. Very good memory handling. - request-log-analyzer
Simple gem/script that helps analyze Rails log files for hotspots. - 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. - #haml
A nice replacement to ERB - 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.
Presentation Slides (10)
- 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 - Email on Rails
Excellent, detailed presentation on the finer points of sending and receiving email from Rails applications - Ruby on Rails 101: Presentation Slides for a Five Day Course
An extensive set of slides from a five-day Ruby on Rails course. - RubyConf 2007 Presentations
- A Small Talk on Getting Big
Talk from RailsConf Europe 2007 on scaling Rails applications, based on the Twitter experience. - 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. - Httperf Presentation
Presentation slides, recording, and quick reference for Httperf talk at www2007 conference. - 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.
Presentation Video (4)
- Presentations from RailsConf 2007
These are videos of the presenters, unfortunately without the slides. - Rails Envy: ActiveRecord Tutorial
- 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. - RailsConf 2008 Live keynote video
Unofficial videos of the keynote talks from RailsConf 2008.
Directories (10)
- Working with Rails
Large and frequently updated directory of sites developed with Rails. - Working With Rails
Extensive directory of Rails developers from all over the world. Also includes lists of sites, projects, and groups. - RailsLodge - Ruby on Rails plugins
- RailsLodge - Ruby on Rails showcase
- 101 Innovative Ruby on Rails Web Apps
- RubyGems.org
An excellent site for finding and rating Ruby gems. - 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. - 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. - What's up in Ruby?
Ruby-specific search engine. - Open Source Rails
Directory listing of open-source Rails applications.
Cheat Sheets (8)
- RJS Demistified With Pretty Colors!
RJS cheat sheet - Command references for Rake, Gems, IRb, and more
- Ruby QuickRef
- Ruby Cheatsheet v.1
- Ruby On Rails Cheat Sheets
- Rails 2.0 Cheatsheet
- Textile Quick Reference
- Ruby on Rails Cheatsheets
Nice cheatsheets for various aspects of Rails, including Active Record validation errors, migrations, form helpers, and Action Mailer.
e-Books (12)
- The Money Train: Building e-commerce sites using Ruby on Rails - Agile Web Development
E-book on building e-commerce sites with Rails. - 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. - Ruby Programming
- Mr. Neighborly's Humble Little Ruby Book
- Getting Started with Rails
An open-source e-book for developers who are new to Rails. - Rails2 PDF
A good overview of the new features in Rails 2.0. - Rails Code Review PDF
An assortment of “best practices” for designing Rails applications. - ActiveMerchant PDF
A $9 e-book from the publishers of the PeepCode screencasts, written by one of the ActiveMerchant developers. - ActiveMerchant PDF | PeepCode Screencasts for Ruby on Rails Developers
Extensive description of how to use the Active Merchant payment gateway. - Using memcached
Guide to using memcached, an in-memory object caching system. - Rails Security Audit PDF | PeepCode Screencasts for Ruby on Rails Developers
Detailed ebook on keeping your Ruby on Rails application secure. - Ruby on Rails 2.1 - What's new
Free ebook from Brazil
Hosted services (5)
- 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. - 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. - 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. - 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. - 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.
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
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RedHanded
"Sneaking Ruby through the system."
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Keith's Blog
Ramblings/life in San Francisco/code.
- Jay Fields Thoughts
- Ruby and Rails Related Tips
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Brainspl.at
Ezra is one of the principals at Rails host Engine Yard, author of Merb, a fan of Nginx, and an expert on Rails deployment.
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PluginAWeek
These prolific plug-in developers provide detailed blog posts on Rails techniques.
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The Hobo Blog
Blog from the developers of Hobo.
- Off the Line
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has_many :through - geek by association
One of the best of the Rails blogs, from an active Rails contributor and developer.
- Cog Blog
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artweb design - Blog
Rails, Mephisto, and other web design issues from a developer in Berlin.
