Jason Fried has a radical theory of working: that the office isn't a good place to do it. In his talk, he lays out the main problems (call them the M&Ms) and offers three suggestions to make work work. (Filmed atTEDxMidWest.)
Zurb Foundation is my favorite CSS framework.
It's may be not a coincidence but I just found free email responsive template here. It's delivered from Zurb university because like many awesome company, they also teach to people !
This weekend I've been at the RuPy (organised this year in Hungary).
It was really cool, I met nice people and have great talks.
The most memorable was an exchange about Y/X generations conflict in the IT world.
I also discovered Anynines, a new cloud hosting service based on Open stack and Cloud foundry. They market them-self with a strong EU data privacy respect when I believe EU is capable of same evilness that US. However the service target a 30% less cost than Heroku that sound really good to everyone whatever his political though.
If you haven't been here or missed some conferences, every thing should be available as videos soon.
Rails controllers are the sweaty armpit of every rails app. This is due, in large part, to the fact that they expose their instance variables directly to their views. This means that your instance variables are your interface... and that you've broken encapsulation. Instance variables are meant to be private, for Science's sake!
There is many resources out there about how to start business, what to do or not. I didn't read any before to get into it. Shame on me I just finished rework few hours ago.
In fact, if you start to read articles or books about this topic you are already out of the matrix.
So today I gonna try to save few readers still connected to the fake "real world" by telling how great it is.
The hardest is to wake up then you fly
I was not able to accept that company tried out to make me a tech-slave.
Tech-slave means : You know programming, so do and do only this, we pay you (disagree) enough for that.
It's what most of companies does. Problem : I cannot stand for long on somebody else way. The result of this was a recurrent company jump. Making dirty work on dirty project, changing job every 1-2 years to get better paid, until be promoted creepy project manager…
I was really unhappy with this career perspective. Until I figured out how two difficulties was able to canceled each other :
Start freelancing prevented by high life cost.
Live in Hungary prevented by lack of hiring IT companies.
A month after I was packing to start a new life. Great move, two big dreams done at once.
Living here low down my life cost letting me start freelance without pressure. Another freelance friend was already here, great to have feedback and motivation. More time was available to learn and experiment.
Bref, a year and a half later I have no regrets, I get more than I expected.
Freedom to stand for what make sense to you
Right now I'm working 80% of my job time for a partner company. We built up great business relation over the time. It provides me an income larger than required to live comfortably here.
20% remaining is used to build up my own business. My first product should be in user hands end september. I share experiences and knowledge with inspiring people.
I'm even getting in contact to start teaching in University.
Whatever it will succeed or not, It cannot fail. Failure is when you regret. Building it makes me meet people, improve my skills, etc …
Rock star do not play for scene but music.
My name is Cypher is it for me ?
Why not everybody do that ? Because it requires to quite and it's not easy. And is not getting easier after either.
If you are afraid then try to remember last time you heard "life is so easy !" Starting just make you realise that you can do something by your own. It make you realise that fear sucks.
Some people say that I work a lot and hard. I prefer to tell with passion and to be honest I work less than when I was employee in Paris. The main difference is that I work for me so I agree to stay a bit more.
If you are looking for additional thing to read two book.
Rework : that can also fit people who don't want to quite but improve what they are already doing.
4 hour work week : more about life style, a bit too much for me, but still really interesting.
Today we gonna mess with views, errors and loading paths in rails.
I gonna recap basic stuffs about render method, explain layout missing error then share couple of tricks I use with loading paths.
Render basics
This part show some usage of render method. If it's your first time with Rails you should better start reading the official guide for layout and rendering :
Ready ? Let's play a with render, it will provide examples for the rest of the article.
Render : In Controllers
Rails offer multiple ways display views. Here couple way to load app/views/users/posts/index.EXT
I use EXT means extension like index.en.js.rabl that means in this specific case an index view in ENglish responding to JS output format processable by RABL handler... for less confusion, I will write just EXT when it's not helpful in described scenarios.
class Users::PostsController < UserResourcesController
layout 'application_layout'
def index
# by convention it render the action name, here 'index'
end
def show
render 'index'
end
def new
render action: :index
end
def edit
render 'users/posts/index'
end
end
Render : In Views
It's also useful in views. You can split views in small partials and render them dynamically. By the way, I use HAML.
So here a simple layout/application.html.haml
!!! 5
%html
%head
= render partial: 'head' # will load head.EXT
= yield :head
%body
%header
/ will display _navigation.EXT wrapped in _header.EXT
= render partial: 'navigation', layout: 'header'
= yield
%footer
- unless current_user # this is ugly, we will change this later
= render partial: 'footer' # will load _footer.EXT
- else
= render partial: 'logged_footer' # will load _footer.EXT
Missing view error !
Let say _footer partial is missing, Rails will through an error similar to:
What to remember about this ? Actually you can share views (and also assets) from any lib/engine/gem
Loading path management !
You remember the comment in the application layout ? Good view contains as few logic as possible. Some people even use logic less tempting language, but I don't really enjoy the syntax and prefer HAML.
Playing with partial, collection you can already remove a lot of things. But we can go deeper and add our own loading path ...
Loading : In a subcontext
We gonna remove the visitor|logged user messy "if else" by creating a "users context". Did you noticed that PostsController parent is UserResourcesController instead of ApplicationController ?
This controller will not be routed but only shared common features to user subresources such as view loading path :
protected
def prepend_users_view_path
prepend_view_path 'users' # we tell to add our specific path
end
end
Now your view paths for subcontrollers are :
users/posts/_footer
users/application/_footer
application/_footer
It means we can now replace the ugly logic in our application layout with :
%footer= render partial: 'footer'
And moving views/application/_user_footer.html.haml as views/users/application/_footer.html.haml
Generally specking, it provides a way to define sub applications that can override general application views.
It could be useful for header, footer, side bar and so one …
Loading : Same views context From multiple controller namespace
I recently met this problematic for an API.
You have multiple controllers for a unique model. Both handle different access types and filtering but they display specific collections and resources with the same views.
module TeamResources
class PostsController < AccountResourcesController; end
class CommentsController < AccountResourcesController; end
end
module UserResources
class PostsController < AccountResourcesController; end
class CommentsController < AccountResourcesController; end
end
you want to have the following view folders :
app/views/account_resources
app/views/account_resources/posts
app/views/account_resources/comments
If you try prepend view path like this :
class AccountResourcesController < ApplicationController
def preprend_account_resources_view_path
prepend_view_path 'accounts'
end
end
It will not work the way you expect making impossible to use a render action in PostsControllers and CommentsControllers.
The solution I found is to override controller_path of ActionController::Base
class AccountResourcesController < ApplicationController
RESOURCES_PATH_REG = "(?<resource_path>([a-z0-1_]+\/)+[a-z0-1_]+)_controller/"
SUB_RESOURCES_PATH_REG = /account_resources_path\/#{RESOURCES_PATH_REG}/
def controller_path
@_controller_path ||= "accounts/#{account_resources_controller_path}"
end
protected
def account_resources_controller_path!
_str = self.class.to_s.underscore
_system= AccountResourcesController
matching = system::SUB_RESOURCES_PATH_REG.match? _str
raise "cannot match sub resources path in #{_str}" unless matching
matching[:account_resources_path]
end
end
This way it will load app/views/accounts/posts/index for both index posts action methods of team and user namespace.
When project starts, you want be online asap with your minimal product. Rails is of course making the task easier but more help is always enjoyable. I give you my personal gem sauce that help me to go even faster. It contains basic stuff that I near always use.
Some of quoted gems are directly shipped with Rails now. If you are following the community, you may know all of them. Anyway it could help new comers, like to remember some forgotten things for the others.
Of course, you probably could find a better list somewhere else. Anyway you found this one. Feel free to pick gems that could help you. If you have additional stuff that should absolutly be here, comment ;)
Let's go !
Always test
RSpec + Capybara to write powerful tests that will help to focus, prevent waste of time and keep everything working forever.
RSpec is testing tool for the Ruby programming language. Born under the banner of Behaviour-Driven Development, it is designed to make Test-Driven Development a productive and enjoyable experience
RSpec
Capybara helps you test Rails and Rack applications by simulating how a real user would interact with your app.
Capybara
Do not build data, factories will for you
Fixtures are not reusable, Factories are. FactoryGirl is amazing.
Factory Girl is a fixtures replacement with a straightforward definition syntax, support for multiple build strategies (saved instances, unsaved instances, attribute hashes, and stubbed objects), and support for multiple factories for the same class (user, admin_user, and so on), including factory inheritance.
Factory Girl for Rails
Getting started documentation
Automagic tasks
Launching test manualy, reloading browser pages when working on UI ... Such waste of time. Get things automatic with Guard.
Guard is a command line tool to easily handle events on file system modifications.
Guard
RSpec guard allows to automatically & intelligently launch specs when files are modified
Guard Rspec
LiveReload guard allows to automatically reload your browser when 'view' files are modified
Guard live reload
Do not touch database
You really want to write migration and queries ? Mongoid keep storage dry : model only.
However, I have to warn you. MongoDB is something different than other SQL (Indeed it's a NO sql). It's certainly not better. Some problems disappear, others come. Plus it can take time to get into new data design way of mind.
MongoDB (from humongous) is a scalable, high-performance, open source NoSQL database.
MongoDB website
Mongoid (pronounced mann-goyd) is an Object-Document-Mapper (ODM) for MongoDB written in Ruby. It was conceived in August, 2009 during a whiskey-induced evening at the infamous Oasis in Florida, USA by Durran Jordan.
Mongoid website
Near empty controllers
Do not write CRUD, inherit it. Keep controllers dry with a decent exposure.
Inherited Resources speeds up development by making your controllers inherit all restful actions so you just have to focus on what is important. It makes your controllers more powerful and cleaner at the same time.
Inherited Resources
Rails controllers are the sweaty armpit of every rails app. This is due, in large part, to the fact that they expose their instance variables directly to their views. This means that your instance variables are your interface... and that you've broken encapsulation. Instance variables are meant to be private, for Science's sake!
Decent Exposure
Readable views
Write less HTML. Say hello to HAML while nice presenters based on draper will keep model and view dry and creepy helpers out.
Haml takes your gross, ugly templates and replaces them with veritable Haiku.
HAML
Draper : View Models for Rails
Draper
Instant style
Want to write as few CSS as possible. Better : don't. Twitter bootstrap provide all you need at launch. Compass make the rest peace of cake.
Sleek, intuitive, and powerful front-end framework for faster and easier web development.
Twitter boostrap
Compass is an open-source CSS Authoring Framework.
Compass
Compass Twitter Bootstrap is Twitter's toolkit converted for Compass
Compass twitter bootstrap
Soft JavaScript
Rails ships with JQuery and you can write it with Ruby syntaxe style.
jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.
Jquery
CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript. Underneath all those awkward braces and semicolons, JavaScript has always had a gorgeous object model at its heart. CoffeeScript is an attempt to expose the good parts of JavaScript in a simple way
Coffee Script
Ready authentication
You will not write yet another auth support, do you ? Get sign up/in/out + mailing + password recovering done (+ a lot of awesome things such as social oauth).
Devise is a flexible authentication solution for Rails based on Warden
Devise
Online now
Do not configure a server and deployment tools. Go online instead. Heroku isn't free. But it's damn easy. Relevant for staging env and low user mass.
Agile deployment for Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, Java, Python, and Scala.
Heroku
Conclusion
May you (re)discovered some tool for your Rails projects. Keep following incoming tech is required to stay challenging. Resources such as RailsCasts can help you stay up to date.
romaincrisis
snowghoul
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