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Flash Message Conductor now a Gem »

Created at: 13.10.2009 18:30, source: Robby on Rails, tagged: Ruby on Rails PLANET ARGON gem plugins github development code rubyonrails

We’ve been doing some early (or late… if you’re a half-full kind of person) spring cleaning on some of our projects. One of the small projects, flash_message_conductor, which we released last year as a plugin is now a gem. We’ve been moving away from using plugins in favor of gems as we like locking in specific released versions and being able to specify them in our environment.rb file is quite convenient.

To install, just run the following:

  sudo gem install flash-message-conductor --source=http://gemcutter.org
  Successfully installed flash-message-conductor-1.0.0
  1 gem installed
  Installing ri documentation for flash-message-conductor-1.0.0...
  Installing RDoc documentation for flash-message-conductor-1.0.0...

You’ll then just need to include the following in your config/environment.rb file.

Rails::Initializer.run do |config|
  # ...
  config.gem 'flash-message-conductor', :lib => 'flash_message_conductor', :source => "http://gemcutter.org"
end

You can take a peak at the README for usage examples.

We’ll be packaging up a handful of our various plugins that we reuse on projects and moving them to gems. Stay tuned… :-)

Spree: Open Source E-commerce for Rails Apps Gets Even Better »

Created at: 12.10.2009 19:50, source: Rails Inside, tagged: Elsewhere plugins Tools

Back in September 2008, we posted about Spree, an open source Rails e-commerce platform that was then in its infancy. Now, however, Spree is truly flying. New versions are coming out frequently and there are more and more established sites using it to provide e-commerce functionality. Spree also just made it into GitHub's top 10 forked projects this week.

So why post about it again here? Well, our readership has grown a lot in the last year and Spree is a strong open source project that's both incredibly useful and worth knowing about in case you have a need for it in the future.

For those who are totally new to Spree, there's a live demo at http://demo.spreecommerce.com/ and an extensive list of features here. Spree has come a long way in the last year - give it a look!

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Recent Update to Gedit Find in Files »

Created at: 30.06.2009 06:18, source: Hackido, tagged: gedit plugins rails python

I've updated the Find in Files plugin for Gedit again. It should be a tiny bit faster and also be able to search special characters. That means you can search for "<%= link_to" instead of just "%= link_to". (Characters are now properly escaped.) The conflict with the Find in Documents plugin should also work.

The original instructions for using the plugin were on my old site, but the gist is that you (may) need SnapOpen and need to enable the default File Browser plugin. Once you enable the File in Files plugin a 3rd tab will appear at the bottom of the screen. Typing in any search results there will display any matching files under your File Browser root with matching results. Basically a glorified grep -R

Update [11-20-2009]: New version released which supports Ack.

At some point I may get ambitious and add the ability to exclude log files, but for the moment I'd suggest only searching within a modest scope. i.e. searching within your Rails App folder? Ok! Searching within your Rails Root folder? Not such a great idea because of the potentially large log files and also all the plugins you may have. You can try it but you've been warned..

Again, I welcome any contributions or forks, so please have at it. Gedit plugins are written in Python or C and I don't program either particularly well.

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Question: Plugins or Gems? (or both?) »

Created at: 13.01.2009 21:56, source: Robby on Rails, tagged: Ruby on Rails ruby programming question rubyonrails rails gems plugins

Our development team likes to extract reusable pieces of code for our projects and have historically used plugins. However, we are finding more and more people releasing these sorts of modules/components/patterns as gems.

Which do you prefer and why?

If you use both, how do you decide to use plugins or gems?

How Duplo (and I) offended people »

Created at: 21.03.2008 08:59, source: Rails on the Run - Home, tagged: community duplo plugins rails

My recent and certainly provocative post generated a lot of noise. Just by reading some of the comments on my blog or on reddit I could only notice that some people took offense and some people tried to push the metaphor way too far. At the same time, it generated a lot of interesting discussions even outside of our small Ruby community.

A few clarifications:

• Rails is an awesome framework, and to be honest I really like the fact that it's accessible to newbies while offering great tools

• Rails Plugins that I like calling Duplo blocks are great and I use a bunch in most of my projects

• I, myself wrote a bunch of plugins and gems never as great as the one mentioned in my post though

• No, I don't think you are dumb if you don't have a clue how Rails or Rails plugins work

I also agree that the metaphor is very limited and doesn't stretch... but who cares.. it's funny.

What did I mean to say

• Rails plugins are useful, use them and ABUSE them. Even though most of them are very well written I strongly believe you would become a better developer if you understand how they work.

• A Duplo doesn't do exactly what you want it to do, don't bitch about it. Try submitting a patch or if you can write your own plugin.

• If you are using a plugin on a regular basis, give it some love. Submit some documentation, write a blog post, send a thank you email.

• A great framework and a bunch of nice plugins are awesome tools for developers but they won't replace your brain.

So, there you go, this time around I tried to be more straight forward and I even apologize if I offended you.

Finally, I don't believe the Rails community is a bunch of obnoxious-arrogant-wannabe-rockstars, and certainly not a ghetto. We all started as newbies and I hope a lot of newbies will join the fun and learn through Rails and later provide the community with a lot of awesome Duplos!