Ruby and Rails Resources

From NHRubyWiki

Contents 1 Ruby and Rails Resources 1.1 Tutorials and Documentation 1.2 Screencast Tutorials 1.3 Books 1.4 Examples of Ruby on Rails Web Applications 1.5 Mailing Lists/Forums/IRC/Podcasts 1.6 Presentations 1.7 Blogs 1.8 Rails Deployment 1.9 Using the TabNav Plugin to Generate Navigation Tabs

Ruby and Rails Resources

This page started out as a list of the things Scott Garman went over during the January 2007 meeting, Ruby and Rails Resources. Members are free to make further additions/comments.

Tutorials and Documentation

Starting Ruby On Rails - What I Wish I Knew; This should be one of the first articles you read when getting started with Ruby on Rails.

Rolling with Ruby on Rails; This was one of the first tutorials to spread awareness about the Ruby on Rails framework. It's a bit dated now but walks you through setting up a Windows environment to create a simple Rails application.

Try Ruby!; This web site allows you to try out Ruby using just your web browser - no need to install anything.

Secrets of the Rails Console Ninjas; Amy Hoy wrote an excellent tutorial about using the Rails console, which allows you to jump into your application's Rails environment and issue commands for testing purposes or to get some tasks done quicker.

RDoc Documentation; The official documentation for the latest Ruby version, indexed into a web site format for browsing. Ruby developers often spend a lot of time on this site.

api.rubyonrails.com; The official documentation for the latest Rails API framework, indexed into a web site format for browsing. Rails developers often spend a lot of time on this site.

RubyBrain and RailsBrain; Two online browsers for the Ruby and Rails documentation, respectively. Offers a nice way of searching through documentation via a web browser. Discussed during the February 2008 meeting.

Brian Leonard's Blog; This blog entry offers a step-by-step tutorial on installing and using NetBeans 6 for Ruby development.

Screencast Tutorials

Screencasts are recordings of a computer screen, narrated by the computer user. They are excellent tools for viewing demonstrations or tutorials of software. The Ruby and Rails community has embraced screencasts as tools to share information and teach others techniques of Ruby programming. The following are excellent screencast resources you should check out.

Railscasts http://railscasts.com

You can't go wrong watching a Railscast - they are free, short and to the point, and effectively demonstrate a particular feature of best practice of Ruby on Rails development.

Peepcode http://www.peepcode.com

Peepcode offers some top-notch quality Ruby on Rails screencasts, which usually cover a new or poorly documented aspect of RoR. Nearly all of them cost $9 each to download, but there are a few free ones, and most offer free previews.

Rubyonrails.org Screencasts http://www.rubyonrails.org/screencasts

These are the classic screencasts from the official Ruby on Rails web site that many people are first introduced to.

Best Tech Videos - Ruby on Rails http://www.bestechvideos.com/tag/ruby-on-rails

Best Tech Videos is a searchable directory of screencasts and technology-oriented videos. This is their Ruby on Rails selection, which at the time of this writing, included over 90 videos.

Best Tech Videos - Ruby http://www.bestechvideos.com/category/development/ruby

This is Best Tech Videos' selection of videos tagged with Ruby. Over 100 videos are indexed, although this includes all of the Ruby on Rails ones mentioned above.

San Diego Ruby User Group http://podcast.sdruby.com

The San Diego Ruby User Group records videos from its meeting presentations and posts them online. The quality of these videos is typically very high and the presentations usually very relevant and engaging.

Boston Ruby User Group http://boston.rubygroup.org

Keep an eye on this site - the Boston Ruby User Group is currently experimenting with recording its meetings and posting them online, and will probably be doing so regularly soon.

Safari Books Online http://safari.informit.com/1596713089

This is a subscription-based site that provides access to thousands of technical books and about 100 videos. For example, a 'rails' search resulted in finding 414 books, 12 videos and 23 articles on the topic! They recently added a video tutorial on RoR.

Do you have a favorite screencast that's not listed here? Please feel free to add more.

Books

• Programming Ruby, by Dave Thomas, Chad Fowler, and Andy Hunt.
• Agile Web Development with Rails, by Dave Thomas and David Heinemeier Hansson.
• Rails Recipes, by Chad Fowler.
• Ruby Cookbook, by Lucas Carlson and Leonard Richardson.
• Ruby for Rails, by David Black.
• The Little Book of Ruby, by Huw. An e-book in PDF format that's a good, quick read.
• Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, by Why the Lucky Stiff. A unique book told in a very eccentric manner.

Examples of Ruby on Rails Web Applications

Basecamp; One of the first well-known Ruby on Rails applications. It is a simple tool for project management.

Cork'd; A wine tasting and community site.

BillMonk; A service that allows people to easily keep track of expenses and properly split shared costs when dining out or other contexts.

Stikkit; A digital post-it note system that intelligently interprets what you're keeping track of and can handle task lists, web bookmarks, contact lists, and more.

An enormous listing of Ruby on Rails-based sites can also be found at HappyCodr.

Technocrat; A Ruby on Rails based web forum run by Bruce Perens. It's his attempt at a "Slashdot for Grown-Ups."

Mailing Lists/Forums/IRC/Podcasts

• Several Rails mailing lists can be found in the first section of the Rails community page.
• The web-based Ruby Forum has several specialized forums focused on ruby and rails development.
• IRC is a great way to get some real-time help or follow community activity. Check out the channels #ruby-lang and #rubyonrails on the irc.freenode.net server.
• One of the top podcasts for Rails fans is the Ruby on Rails Podcast.

Presentations

The Beauty of Ruby; Glenn Vanderburg explains some of the things that make Ruby unique and elegant.

Applying Agile to Ruby; Fred George discusses how to implement agile software development practices with Ruby in companies.

Blogs

The Rails Way; A superb technical blog for learning how to write idiomatic Ruby code. It accepts submissions of Ruby or Rails code and posts a review of how to modify that code to make it better fit into Ruby's best practices.

Riding Rails; A collection of blog entries by Rails developers. Great for getting cutting-edge news about new and upcoming Rails features.

Dzone Ruby; A digg-like social bookmarking site which focuses on web links to software development-related articles and tutorials. There's a lot more there than just Ruby links if you're interested.

Vitamin; A kind of web developer e-zine that is regularly updated with articles, tutorials, interviews, etc. They have a decent amount of Ruby/Rails resources on their site.

Amy Hoy's Blog; Amy Hoy is a Ruby and Rails enthusiast and often posts high-quality content. Be sure to check out her cheat-sheets.

Loud Thinking; David Heinemeier Hansson's blog, or "DHH" as he is commonly known. Another great blog which regularly features comments about the cutting-edge of Rails development, by the maintainer of Rails himself.

Rails Deployment

Deploying Rails Apps on CentOS 4 - a guide on customizing a CentOS 4.4 server to include Apache 2.2/mod_auth_proxy/mongrel for deploying Rails apps.

Capistrano - a short capistrano cheat sheet style guide.

Using the TabNav Plugin to Generate Navigation Tabs

TabNav Plugin - notes from the June 2007 presentation on using the TabNav plugin, which allows you to create HTML/CSS tabbed navigation easily and cleanly.