How do you write truly elegant code with Ruby? Ruby Best Practices is for programmers who want to use Ruby as experienced Rubyists do. Written by the developer of the Ruby project Prawn, this concise book explains how to design beautiful APIs and domain-specific languages with Ruby, as well as how to work with functional programming ideas and techniques that can simplify your code and make you more productive. You'll learn how to write code that's readable, expressive, and much more.
Ruby Best Practices will help you:
Understand the secret powers unlocked by Ruby's code blocks
Learn how to bend Ruby code without breaking it, such as mixing in modules on the fly
Discover the ins and outs of testing and debugging, and how to design for testability
Learn to write faster code by keeping things simple
Develop strategies for text processing and file management, including regular expressions
Understand how and why things can go wrong
Reduce cultural barriers by leveraging Ruby's multilingual capabilities
This book also offers you comprehensive chapters on driving code through tests, designing APIs, and project maintenance. Learn how to make the most of this rich, beautiful language with Ruby Best Practices.
Chapter 1 Driving Code Through Tests
A Quick Note on Testing Frameworks
Designing for Testability
Testing Fundamentals
Advanced Testing Techniques
Keeping Things Organized
Conclusions
Chapter 2 Designing Beautiful APIs
Designing for Convenience: Ruport’s Table( ) feature
Ruby’s Secret Power: Flexible Argument Processing
Ruby’s Other Secret Power: Code Blocks
Avoiding Surprises
Conclusions
Chapter 3 Mastering the Dynamic Toolkit
BlankSlate: A BasicObject on Steroids
Building Flexible Interfaces
Implementing Per-Object Behavior
Extending and Modifying Preexisting Code
Building Classes and Modules Programmatically
Registering Hooks and Callbacks
Conclusions
Chapter 4 Text Processing and File Management
Line-Based File Processing with State Tracking
Regular Expressions
Working with Files
The tempfile Standard Library
Text-Processing Strategies
Conclusions
Chapter 5 Functional Programming Techniques
Laziness Can Be a Virtue (A Look at lazy.rb)
Minimizing Mutable State and Reducing Side Effects
Modular Code Organization
Memoization
Infinite Lists
Higher-Order Procedures
Conclusions
Chapter 6 When Things Go Wrong
A Process for Debugging Ruby Code
Capturing the Essence of a Defect
Scrutinizing Your Code
Working with Logger
Conclusions
Chapter 7 Reducing Cultural Barriers
m17n by Example: A Look at Ruby’s CSV Standard Library
Portable m17n Through UTF-8 Transcoding
m17n in Standalone Scripts
m17n-Safe Low-Level Text Processing
Localizing Your Code
Conclusions
Chapter 8 Skillful Project Maintenance
Exploring a Well-Organized Ruby Project (Haml)
Conventions to Know About
API Documentation via RDoc
The RubyGems Package Manager
Rake: Ruby’s Built-in Build Utility
Conclusions
Appendix Writing Backward-Compatible Code
Avoiding a Mess
Nonportable Features in Ruby 1.9
Workarounds for Common Issues
Conclusions
Appendix Leveraging Ruby’s Standard Library
Why Do We Need a Standard Library?
Pretty-Printer for Ruby Objects (pp)
Working with HTTP and FTP (open-uri)
Working with Dates and Times (date)
Lexical Parsing with Regular Expressions (strscan)
Cryptographic Hash Functions (digest)
Mathematical Ruby Scripts (mathn)
Working with Tabular Data (csv)
Transactional Filesystem-Based Data Storage (pstore)
Gregory T. Brown is a New Haven, CT based Rubyist who spends most of his time on free software projects in Ruby. His main projects are Prawn and Ruport, and he is also the author of the upcoming book Ruby Best Practices. He also is in possession of a small bamboo plant that seems to be invincible, and he is quite proud of this accomplishment.
The animal on the cover of Ruby Best Practices is a green crab (Carcinus maenas). Also known as a European shore crab, it is native to the coasts of the North and Baltic Seas. Although relatively small--adults measure three inches across--an adult green crab can consume up to 40 clams each day and can eat other crabs as large as itself. A voracious predator, the green crab also preys on oysters, mussels, and snails, competing for food with many fish and bird species.
Despite its name, the green crab's shell color can vary from dark green to orange or red, sometimes with yellow patches on its underside. The abdomen of the male is triangular in shape, whereas the female's is broader and rounder. Males and females also react differently upon being picked up: males typically stretch out their legs, whereas females fold them in, a behavior known as the egg-protection reflex.
A natural colonizer, the green crab is potentially destructive to any ecosystem it invades. It has already invaded many coastal communities outside of its native range, including Australia, South Africa, and North America, where it is blamed for the collapse of the softshell clam industry in Maine. It is ranked number 18 on the list of the 100 world's worst invasive types of species. Numerous efforts around the world have been made to control invading populations, to varying degrees of success. One of the more effective experiments has been on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where the town of Edgartown pays bounty hunters 40 cents per pound of green crab; more than 10 tons have been caught and destroyed as a result.
The cover image is from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover font is Adobe ITC Garamond. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSansMonoCondensed.
