Ruby on Rails

In my post on the E Text Editor, someone recommended checking out using Net Beans for Ruby on Rails development.

A good text editor is an essential tool for people who write a lot of text or code. After a long search for the perfect editor, including jEdit, Emacs, SciTE and others, I've settled on Vim.

Last night I found out about a new editor that looks promising.

Continuing in the series of Brazilian bikini Web development tutorials, here is an experiment with the Yahoo Search API, Ruby and Brazilian bikinis.

The script uses Ruby to convert the XML from the Yahoo Image Search API into XHTML Strict as shown in the image below:

Please download the attached Ruby file to follow along.

I have often wished that I could talk to my text editor. "Editor, delete the text up to the next closing HTML tag. Take this list of 15 words and enclose each line in <li> tags."

I've been using Vim since last summer and I am finally able to talk to my editor. It took a while to learn Vim's language, but it began to make sense after learning enough of the commands.

This tutorial shows some of the great things that I like about using Vim.

I've been busy with work lately and haven't had time to write much.

Here are some useful scripting links that have been sitting in my Firefox tabs for a week or so:

I was using Cygwin for a script that incorporated a Ruby one-liner in it. I was having trouble because I kept getting the error message No such file to load -- ubygems (LoadError).

The answer to the Ruby/Cygwin problem is here.

Many people have probably experienced this problem — you are at work and want to use your favorite programs, but you don't have the admin access that you need to install software.

There is a way to run software on Windows without needing to install anything. It's the perfect solution for restrictive work environments and public Internet cafes.

Ruby and Ruby on Rails are growing in popularity. I've been spending a lot of time with them lately. Here are some good sites to get started with Ruby and Rails:

Ruby Tutorials

If you are completely new to Ruby, check out this brilliant online Ruby IRB session. It is a way to try Ruby even if you don't have it installed on your computer already. A cleverly-designed interactive tutorial in your browser:

There is an older Ruby tutorial with good information.

Programming Ruby is a great book. The online version is free, but it is an older version. I recommend buying the latest edition which is different than the free online version.

Chris Pine's original Learn to Program is a good introduction.

A fun, but slightly eccentric introduction to Ruby can be found on Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby.

The Little Book of Ruby is a free PDF ebook about how write Ruby programs.

Get a free Ruby Cheat Sheet and check out this online reference.

Ruby on Rails Tutorials

Rolling with Ruby on Rails is a good introductory tutorial. Part 2 is here.

Books About Ruby

Programming Ruby is the standard textbook on Ruby.

The Ruby Cookbook is helpful.

Also try Ruby for Rails by David Black.

More Resources

• Ruby tutorials
• Ruby Resources
• Top 12 Ruby on Rails Tutorials
• Top 30 Rails Tutorials

[I've been really busy lately which is why I haven't been posting more often. I will finish this post later. Sorry for the sparse content. If you have resources to add for Ruby beginners, post a comment and I'll add them to this page.]

I've wanted to add tab completion to IRB for a while, but when I had tried a tutorial that I found on the Web a few weeks ago, it didn't work for me.

I just found a great Flash video on how to enable tab completion in IRB. I was glad to see that the author of the tutorial was also using Ubuntu, and that the solution is very fast and easy.

I've moved the feed subscriptions over to Feedburner. Your feed readers should automatically be redirected to the new feeds.

If you would like to update your feed readers (not essential), these are the new addresses for the two most popular feeds on this site:

• Main RSS Feeds
• Ruby on Rails feed

If you notice any problems with the redirection, please let me know.

Instructions for redirecting Drupal feeds to Feedburner can be found here.