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Rails and RMagick made easy - generating thumbnails

Yavor Ivanov — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:27:13 +0000

The one thing that is different about this article from others around the web is that I wanted to do simple and easy stuff. I did not want to have a model or to put pictures in a database and so on I just wanted to store a resized image to the file system. Why the filesystem and not database? Database is like a funnel. You put and put and use and it isn’t something that you can easily extend or expand to fit easily your needs. There are extends and so on… and you can always hack around problems but why running into them in the first place? So my way was simple and easy without putting much effort in things that I don’t actually need.

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How to use Rails Migrations - Part II

Yavor Ivanov — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 01:34:10 +0000

This article is part two of the series about Rails Migrations and it will explain on a deeper level how to use the Ruby on Rails migrations.

After we spoke about Migrations in our previous article found here we understood the basics needed to use Migrations in Ruby on Rails.

Now to begin with the code and something we did not mention earlier.

You see indexes are something that a good database design MUST contain!
This example shows how to add and remove an indexed field.

And now let’s take a look at some examples which might or might not be so obvious to make.

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Ruby on Rails Blog Carnival - April

Stanislav Bozhkov — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 22:17:12 +0000

Here it is - this month’s Blog Carnival. After lots of reading and searching the network I’ve collected a new dozen of valuable posts. As everybody knows not every single blog post on the globe deserves a read up. That’s why I’m trying to weed out those that are not so useful. So, as a result I’ve compiled this Blog Carnival. I believe that most of these posts deserve a browse. Have a nice reading!

Rails Performance

Twitter starting to get de-Railed - Twitter starting to get de-Railed - On this post is questioned the scalability of Rails applications. This question has also been asked to David Heinemeier Hansson. Moreover there’s a small discussion on the problem of scaling Twitter. It’s worth to give this post a read.
A “facility in Rails to talk to more than one database at a time” - Dr.Nic has writen a great plugin to enable our Rails applications to talk to more than one database. Moreover he has written a nice tutor how things work. Good work!

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Developing a News site in Rails [Project 1] [Part 1]

Yavor Ivanov — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 23:27:13 +0000

Recently I was asked the following question:

“How hard is it to build this project in Rails”

You can substitute this with anything. After a short period of time I realized that such a question can’t be really answered to a point where a programmer would agree completely if he/she didn’t even touched Ruby on Rails. In order to change that fact a person should see the whole process of developing and deploying a Rails application so he/she can realize the power and potential of a Rails application.

With all this in mind I hereby announce the Project type articles of RubyCorner.net. Those articles will represent an overview of the development process of a real working Rails web application. This article is the first of the series Project and it will begin not so briefly and give a more detailed overview of the things we will do. The next articles in the series will focus on more complex things and will skip those explained before assuming the knowledge was already obtained.

Let’s begin with our first web application project:

Project 1 – Developing a News site in Rails
parts count: 3 (this is a three day project)

Rails version used: 1.2.3 (used both on Windows and Linux platform)
Ruby version used: 1.8.5 (used both on Windows and Linux platform)
Knowledge of HTML and CSS: assumed
Knowledge of a Web Programming Language and Database: Basic-Advanced assumed

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Create An eBay Clone With Ruby on Rails?

Stanislav Bozhkov — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:52:27 +0000

I found an interesting topic recently in a forum discussion. It was about whether or not an eBay clone could be build on the top of Ruby on Rails. A few interesting questions are: “Is RoR the best toolkit for doing that?”, “Whether the
same eBay functionality could be accomplished?” or “Could it scale enough?”
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The Key For Ruby And Telnet Communication With Cisco

Stanislav Bozhkov — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 06:38:00 +0000

Have you ever had the need to programatically obtain information from a network device. In general when we deal with manageable network devices the smartest way is to use SNMP. However in some cases your head can get fired from problems concerning SNMP. Sometimes you would want just to obtain the output of a common terminal command. Well it could be a bit tricky when communicating with Cisco switches. I will share my experience now - problems and resolutions about this issue.

In my case I’m developing a webconsole application. It should have the feature to search for a mac address in the ARP tables of a couple of switches. Of course what I did first was to try doing it with SNMP. (more…)

Why use Ruby on Rails ?

Yavor Ivanov — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 09:48:26 +0000

Programming languages and tools from the business point of view Programming languages and tools are considered only for developers but smart companies have understood that in order to achieve best results they should not only care for business but for developers too. And what kind of better care than the one for programmers happiness and productivity by suppling them with the best tools available? This article intention is to point out in a bit of a story like form how Rails helps. It will go from the ways of developing a web application and points out some of the aspect in business and development which are really useful when a company chooses to use Rails for it’s development tool.

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Be A Developer Not A Coder (Rails)

Stanislav Bozhkov — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:09:08 +0000

Not more than two months ago I started programming in Ruby. Ofcourse using the rails framework. It was superb for me to find that just everything about web development is already there in the framework. The directory structure - it’s just so easy and you intuitively find whatever you need, logging - it has that useful feature to tell you the performance of your business logic as well as the performance of rendering the view. Ruby on Rails clearly MVC based. Working with and refactoring of your DB is an ease with the help of migrations. You’ve heard about Web 2.0 - yes, AJAX is well incorporated into the rails, too. I still haven’t found a missing part.

Why a Developer but not a Coder? Well, you should feel the beauty to develop in Rails. For me a CODER is someone who concentrates on code structure and thinks about how to CODE down the business logic for his problem. The Coder is also highly considering the difficulties for accessing his DB. What’s the contrast in case of using Ruby on Rails. Just after a little experience, you don’t code down - you write down whatever you need. Moreover you are not scared to think about adding new functionality related to DB Objects - you just tell rails that you want it. All this ease lets you think on a higher level and lets you concentrate on the real problems that should be solved.

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How to use Rails Migrations - Part I

Yavor Ivanov — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 23:28:22 +0000

This article is part one of the series about Rails Migrations and it will explain on a basic level how to use the Ruby on Rails migrations.

1. What are Migrations ?

Migrations in Rails is a way of describing what the database should look like and synchronize it with the respective model.
Migrations are abstract to the database they are used with. This means that if you have used a MySQL database server when developing the application and the production database server is different let’s say Postgresql the database you defined within the migrations will remain intact and will run just fine on the new database server.
Migrations provide a way to make the database development SVN like… I will cover this latter on so just keep in mind this for now.

2. Creating and Running Migrations

A migration is a simple Ruby file in the db/migrate directory.
Each migration file has a name starting with three digits and an
underscore. Those digits are the representation of the migrations version (a bit like SVN),
because they define the sequence in which the migrations are applied.

To generate a migration type:

Notice: This will generate a model and a migration to it.

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Ruby On Rails Blog Carnival

Stanislav Bozhkov — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 19:32:38 +0000

These days I searched for a blog carnival about Ruby on Rails. However I couldn’t find a good one. In fact such a carnival should be useful for a lot of people interested in this topic - web development on rails. That’s why I’ll setup one mine carnival here. I’ll try to filter the most useful posts for you. So let’s the carnival begin :).

The glory of Ruby and Rails

PHP vs. Ruby on Rails. An evolutionary story of a Web Developer and his tools. - The story of Nathaniel S. H. Brown - an experienced PHP developer. He compares in a good manner PHP vs Ruby (Ruby on Rails) and puts some ideas that Rails along with Ruby is the “evolutionary king” of the web development niche.
Why I moved from Ruby on Rails to Python/Django and back - Carl Mercier: “I am now at least twice as productive with Ruby on Rails than with ASP.NET”. This guy jumps into RoR world from ASP.NET, after that he tries python/django and at the end he is again happy with Ruby on Rails. It’s interesting to read his story.
How Ruby on Rails has made me a better programmer - Casper Fabricius is a programmer who has moved from ASP to Ruby on Rails. He notices some obvious difficulties about rails and it’s documentation.

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