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Rails Cookbook

Recipes for Rapid Web Development with Ruby

By Rob Orsini

Publisher: O'Reilly Media

Release Date: December 2008

Pages: 544

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Rails Cookbook is packed with the solutions you need to be a proficient developer with Rails, the leading framework for building the new generation of Web 2.0 applications. Recipes range from the basics, like installing Rails and setting up your development environment, to the latest techniques, such as developing RESTful web services.

With applications that are code light, feature-full and built to scale quickly, Rails has revolutionized web development. The Rails Cookbook addresses scores of real-world challenges; each one includes a tested solution, plus a discussion of how and why it works, so that you can adapt the techniques to similar situations. Topics include:

Modeling data with the ActiveRecord library
Setting up views with ActionView and RHTML templates
Building your application's logic into ActionController
Testing and debugging your Rails application
Building responsive web applications using JavaScript and Ajax
Ensuring that your application is security and performs well
Deploying your application with Mongrel and Apache
Using Capistrano to automate deployment
Using the many Rails plugins
Working with graphics

Whether you're new to Rails or an experienced developer, you'll discover ways to test, debug and secure your applications, incorporate Ajax, use caching to improve performance, and put your application into production. Want to get ahead of the Web 2.0 curve? This valuable cookbook will save you hundreds of hours when developing applications with Rails.

Chapter 1 Getting Started
1. Introduction
2. Joining the Rails Community
3. Finding Documentation
4. Installing MySQL
5. Installing PostgreSQL
6. Installing Rails
7. Fixing Ruby and Installing Rails on OS X 10.4 Tiger
8. Running Rails in OS X with Locomotive
9. Running Rails in Windows with Instant Rails
10. Updating Rails with RubyGems
11. Getting Your Rails Project into Subversion
Chapter 2 Rails Development
1. Introduction
2. Creating a Rails Project
3. Jump-Starting Development with Scaffolding
4. Speeding Up Rails Development with Mongrel
5. Enhancing Windows Development with Cygwin
6. Understanding Pluralization Patterns in Rails
7. Developing Rails in OS X with TextMate
8. Cross-Platform Developing with RadRails
9. Installing and Running Edge Rails
10. Setting Up Passwordless Authentication with SSH
11. Generating RDoc for Your Rails Application
12. Creating Full-Featured CRUD Applications with Streamlined
Chapter 3 Active Record
1. Introduction
2. Setting Up a Relational Database to Use with Rails
3. Programmatically Defining Database Schema
4. Developing Your Database with Migrations
5. Modeling a Database with Active Record
6. Inspecting Model Relationships from the Rails Console
7. Accessing Your Data via Active Record
8. Retrieving Records with find
9. Iterating Over an Active Record Result Set
10. Retrieving Data Efficiently with Eager Loading
11. Updating an Active Record Object
12. Enforcing Data Integrity with Active Record Validations
13. Executing Custom Queries with find_by_sql
14. Protecting Against Race Conditions with Transactions
15. Adding Sort Capabilities to a Model with acts_as_list
16. Performing a Task Whenever a Model Object Is Created
17. Modeling a Threaded Forum with acts_as_nested_set
18. Creating a Directory of Nested Topics with acts_as_tree
19. Avoiding Race Conditions with Optimistic Locking
20. Handling Tables with Legacy Naming Conventions
21. Automating Record Timestamping
22. Factoring Out Common Relationships with Polymorphic Associations
23. Mixing Join Models and Polymorphism for Flexible Data Modeling
Chapter 4 Action Controller
1. Introduction
2. Accessing Form Data from a Controller
3. Changing an Application’s Default Page
4. Clarifying Your Code with Named Routes
5. Configuring Customized Routing Behavior
6. Displaying Alert Messages with Flash
7. Extending the Life of a Flash Message
8. Following Actions with Redirects
9. Generating URLs Dynamically
10. Inspecting Requests with Filters
11. Logging with Filters
12. Rendering Actions
13. Restricting Access to Controller Methods
14. Sending Files or Data Streams to the Browser
15. Storing Session Information in a Database
16. Tracking Information with Sessions
17. Using Filters for Authentication
Chapter 5 Action View
1. Introduction
2. Simplifying Templates with View Helpers
3. Displaying Large Datasets with Pagination
4. Creating a Sticky Select List
5. Editing Many-to-Many Relationships with Multiselect Lists
6. Factoring Out Common Display Code with Layouts
7. Defining a Default Application Layout
8. Generating XML with Builder Templates
9. Generating RSS Feeds from Active Record Data
10. Reusing Page Elements with Partials
11. Processing Dynamically Created Input Fields
12. Customizing the Behavior of Standard Helpers
13. Creating a Web Form with Form Helpers
14. Formatting Dates, Times, and Currencies
15. Personalizing User Profiles with Gravatars
16. Avoiding Harmful Code in Views with Liquid Templates
17. Globalizing Your Rails Application
Chapter 6 RESTful Development
1. Introduction
2. Creating Nested Resources
3. Supporting Alternative Data Formats by MIME Type
4. Modeling Relationships RESTfully with Join Models
5. Moving Beyond Simple CRUD with RESTful Resources
6. Consuming Complex Nested REST Resources
7. Developing Your Rails Applications RESTfully
Chapter 7 Rails Application Testing
1. Introduction
2. Centralizing the Creation of Objects Common to Test Cases
3. Creating Fixtures for Many-to-Many Associations
4. Importing Test Data with CSV Fixtures
5. Including Dynamic Data in Fixtures with ERb
6. Initializing a Test Database
7. Interactively Testing Controllers from the Rails Console
8. Interpreting the Output of Test::Unit
9. Loading Test Data with YAML Fixtures
10. Monitoring Test Coverage with rake stats
11. Running Tests with Rake
12. Speeding Up Tests with Transactional Fixtures
13. Testing Across Controllers with Integration Tests
14. Testing Controllers with Functional Tests
15. Examining the Contents of Cookie
16. Testing Custom and Named Routes
17. Testing HTTP Requests with Response-Related Assertions
18. Testing a Model with Unit Tests
19. Unit Testing Model Validations
20. Verifying DOM Structure with Tag-Related Assertions
21. Writing Custom Assertions
22. Testing File Upload
23. Modifying the Default Behavior of a Class for Testing by Using Mocks
24. Improving Feedback by Running Tests Continuously
25. Analyzing Code Coverage with Rcov
Chapter 8 JavaScript and Ajax
1. Introduction
2. Adding DOM Elements to a Page
3. Creating a Custom Report with Drag and Drop
4. Dynamically Adding Items to a Select List
5. Monitoring the Content Length of a Textarea
6. Updating Page Elements with RJS Templates
7. Inserting JavaScript into Templates
8. Letting a User Reorder a List
9. Autocompleting a Text Field
10. Searching for and Highlighting Text Dynamically
11. Enhancing the User Interface with Visual Effects
12. Implementing a Live Search
13. Editing Fields in Place
14. Creating an Ajax Progress Indicator
Chapter 9 Action Mailer
1. Introduction
2. Configuring Rails to Send Email
3. Creating a Custom Mailer Class with the Mailer Generator
4. Formatting Email Messages Using Templates
5. Attaching Files to Email Messages
6. Sending Email from a Rails Application
7. Receiving Email with Action Mailer
Chapter 10 Debugging Rails Applications
1. Introduction
2. Exploring Rails from the Console
3. Fixing Bugs at the Source with Ruby -cw
4. Debugging Your Application in Real Time with the breakpointer
5. Logging with the Built-in Rails Logger Class
6. Writing Debugging Information to a File
7. Emailing Application Exceptions
8. Outputting Environment Information in Views
9. Displaying Object Contents with Exceptions
10. Filtering Development Logs in Real Time
11. Debugging HTTP Communication with Firefox Extensions
12. Debugging Your JavaScript in Real Time with the JavaScript Shell
13. Debugging Your Code Interactively with ruby-debug
Chapter 11 Security
1. Introduction
2. Hardening Your Systems with Strong Passwords
3. Protecting Queries from SQL Injection
4. Guarding Against Cross-Site Scripting Attacks
5. Restricting Access to Public Methods or Actions
6. Securing Your Server by Closing Unnecessary Ports
Chapter 12 Performance
1. Introduction
2. Measuring Web Server Performance with Httperf
3. Benchmarking Portions of Your Application Code
4. Improving Performance by Caching Static Pages
5. Expiring Cached Pages
6. Mixing Static and Dynamic Content with Fragment Caching
7. Filtering Cached Pages with Action Caching
8. Speeding Up Data Access Times with memcached
9. Increasing Performance by Caching Post-Processed Content
Chapter 13 Hosting and Deployment
1. Introduction
2. Hosting Rails Using Apache 1.3 and mod_fastcgi
3. Managing Multiple Mongrel Processes with mongrel_cluster
4. Hosting Rails with Apache 2.2, mod_proxy_balancer, and Mongrel
5. Deploying Rails with Pound in Front of Mongrel, Lighttpd, and Apache
6. Customizing Pound’s Logging with cronolog
7. Configuring Pound with SSL Support
8. Simple Load Balancing with Pen
9. Deploying Your Rails Project with Capistrano
10. Deploying Your Application to Multiple Environments with Capistrano
11. Deploying with Capistrano When You Can’t Access Subversion
12. Deploying with Capistrano and mongrel_cluster
13. Disabling Your Web Site During Maintenance
14. Writing Custom Capistrano Tasks
15. Cleaning Up Residual Session Records
Chapter 14 Extending Rails with Plug-ins
1. Introduction
2. Finding Third-Party Plug-ins
3. Installing Plug-ins
4. Manipulating Record Versions with acts_as_versioned
5. Building Authentication with acts_as_authenticated
6. Simplifying Folksonomy with the acts_as_taggable
7. Extending Active Record with acts_as
8. Adding View Helpers to Rails as Plug-ins
9. Uploading Files with file_column
10. Uploading Files with acts_as_attachment
11. Disabling Records Instead of Deleting Them with acts_as_paranoid
12. Adding More Elaborate Authentication Using the Login Engine
Chapter 15 Graphics
1. Introduction
2. Installing RMagick for Image Processing
3. Uploading Images to a Database
4. Serving Images Directly from a Database
5. Creating Resized Thumbnails with RMagick
6. Generating PDF Documents
7. Visually Displaying Data with Gruff
8. Creating Small, Informative Graphs with Sparklines

Appendix Migrating to Rails 1.2
1. Action Controller
2. Active Record
3. Action View
Colophon

Books & Videos

Rails Cookbook

Recipes for Rapid Web Development with Ruby

Read on O'Reilly Online Learning with a 10-day trial

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Getting Started

Introduction

Joining the Rails Community

Finding Documentation

Installing MySQL

Installing PostgreSQL

Installing Rails

Fixing Ruby and Installing Rails on OS X 10.4 Tiger

Running Rails in OS X with Locomotive

Running Rails in Windows with Instant Rails

Updating Rails with RubyGems

Getting Your Rails Project into Subversion

Chapter 2 Rails Development

Introduction

Creating a Rails Project

Jump-Starting Development with Scaffolding

Speeding Up Rails Development with Mongrel

Enhancing Windows Development with Cygwin

Understanding Pluralization Patterns in Rails

Developing Rails in OS X with TextMate

Cross-Platform Developing with RadRails

Installing and Running Edge Rails

Setting Up Passwordless Authentication with SSH

Generating RDoc for Your Rails Application

Creating Full-Featured CRUD Applications with Streamlined

Chapter 3 Active Record

Introduction

Setting Up a Relational Database to Use with Rails

Programmatically Defining Database Schema

Developing Your Database with Migrations

Modeling a Database with Active Record

Inspecting Model Relationships from the Rails Console

Accessing Your Data via Active Record

Retrieving Records with find

Iterating Over an Active Record Result Set

Retrieving Data Efficiently with Eager Loading

Updating an Active Record Object

Enforcing Data Integrity with Active Record Validations

Executing Custom Queries with find_by_sql

Protecting Against Race Conditions with Transactions

Adding Sort Capabilities to a Model with acts_as_list

Performing a Task Whenever a Model Object Is Created

Modeling a Threaded Forum with acts_as_nested_set

Creating a Directory of Nested Topics with acts_as_tree

Avoiding Race Conditions with Optimistic Locking

Handling Tables with Legacy Naming Conventions

Automating Record Timestamping

Factoring Out Common Relationships with Polymorphic Associations

Mixing Join Models and Polymorphism for Flexible Data Modeling

Chapter 4 Action Controller

Introduction

Accessing Form Data from a Controller

Changing an Application’s Default Page

Clarifying Your Code with Named Routes

Configuring Customized Routing Behavior

Displaying Alert Messages with Flash

Extending the Life of a Flash Message

Following Actions with Redirects

Generating URLs Dynamically

Inspecting Requests with Filters

Logging with Filters

Rendering Actions

Restricting Access to Controller Methods

Sending Files or Data Streams to the Browser

Storing Session Information in a Database

Tracking Information with Sessions

Using Filters for Authentication

Chapter 5 Action View

Introduction

Simplifying Templates with View Helpers

Displaying Large Datasets with Pagination

Creating a Sticky Select List

Editing Many-to-Many Relationships with Multiselect Lists

Factoring Out Common Display Code with Layouts

Defining a Default Application Layout