Running Mongrel on Windows

Mongrel Win32 HOWTO, from Mongrel shows how to run Mongrel on Windows environment.

GeoKit

Andre Lewis from Web 2.0 Technologies website has published a new plugin for Rails that does geocoding, location fingers, and distance calculation.

Description from website:

Geokit is a Rails plugin for building location-based apps. It provides geocoding, location finders, and distance calculation in one cohesive package. If you have any tables with latitude/longitude oolumns in your database, or if you every wanted to easily query for "all the stores within a 50 mile radius," then GeoKit is for you.

GeoKit: a plugin for location-based Rails apps - Web 2.0 Technologies

In-memory and in-database distance calculations -Web 2.0 Technologies

Use Google's smtp server within your Rails application

If you use Google Apps for your domain and has a need to use Google's smtp server to send out email within your Rails application then head over to Depixelate to see how.

Rails and Google Apps / Gmail Integration - Depixelate

begin rescue else end

Jamis Buck points out the not open used "else" clause of the begin end block. Apparently, the begin end clause can have an else in there.

For example:

begin
# Your normal code block
rescue SomeException
# ... handling exception
else
# This part only run if the main code did not throw
# an exception.
ensure
# The very last thing to be run before the clause exit.
# Code in the ensure clause will always get execute.
end

You can read more about this at Jamis Buck blog entry, begin + else.

Ruby compiler for .Net

If you are a .Net developer but want to write Ruby code, this might be something you want to take a look. It compiles Ruby code into .Net binary so you can run it like normal .Net program.

Gardens Point Ruby.NET Compiler

From their website:

"We are pleased to announce the release of a new Beta (version 0.6) of the Gardens Point Ruby.NET compiler. Implementation is not yet complete but we have now implemented the vast majority of Ruby's builtin classes and modules. We have fixed large numbers of existing bugs, but many still remain. We have not yet implemented continuations or Ruby threads but support most other language features.

In addition to passing all 871 tests in the samples/test.rb installation test suite of Ruby 1.8.2, we are now able to support the standard Ruby test unit library and pass most of the 1864 assertions in the test/ruby test directory."

Extending ActionController

Robby Russel from Robby on Rails blog wrote an article on extending the ActionController. Extending the ActionController seems to be quite easy.

Extending ActionController - Roby on Rails

Intype code editor

For all of those people that want to use TextMate on Windows. This editor might be the answer.

From Intype's website:

"Intype is a powerful and intuitive code editor for Windows with lightning fast response. It is easily extensible and customizable, thanks in part to its support for scripting and native plug-ins. It makes development in any programming or scripting language quick and easy."

If you are having problem with the new RubyGems

If you are getting

ERROR: While executing gem … (NoMethodError) undefined  
 method `refresh’ for #

lately then here might be a fix to your problem.

In case you're having trouble installing gems

Using Captchator service in Rails

Here is an article, Captchator on Rails, from ERR THE BLOG on how to use the Captchator web service within your Rails application. If for some reason you can't use a local captcha method or don't want to host your own captcha then this might be a good alternative.

Paging in Rails

The author of ERR THE BLOG finds paging in Rails not up to his standard so he wrote his own paging code. He packed it up as a plugin and now we all can enjoy the fruit of his labor. There are some interesting comments to his blog entry that you might want to take a look.

I Will Paginate - ERR THE BLOG

Hpricot - HTML Parser for Ruby

Hpricot - HTML Parser for Ruby

Active Merchant

Active Merchant is a payment library extracted from Shopify. Here is an article, Processing Credit Cards with Ruby on Rails, on how to use it with Authorize.net payment gateway from OmniNerd.

The list of supported payment gateways from Active Merchant website.

Direct payment gateways:

• Authorize.net
• Moneris
• TrustCommerce
• LinkPoint
• Psigate
• Paypal Payments Pro
• Eway
• USA ePay
• Paypal Payflow Pro (Testing)

Offsite payment gateways:

• Paypal
• Chronopay
• Nochex

Steps to setup Ruby, Rails, and MySQL on MAC OS X

Link to an article with detail instructions for setting up Ruby, Rails, and MySQL on MAC OS X.
Building Ruby, Rails, Subversion, Mongrel, and MySQL on Mac OS X from HIVELOGIC.

Rails deployment help

If you have problems with deploying your rails application, you might want to go to this Google Group's rails-deployment for some help.

Presentations from San Diego ruby users group

sd.rb podcast

The San Diego ruby users group posted various videos of presentations at their meetings on ruby.

RadRails 0.7.2

RadRails is up to version 0.7.2 now.

Piston

Piston

If you use svn:externals to manage plugins for your rails application then this utility will definitely make your life easier. It allows you to keep a copy of the plugin in your local repository and also allows you to update it with the external source.

What is the benefit of having a local copy of the plugin in your repository versus using svn:external? When you do svn update, it will be a lot faster since it doesn't need to go out to external repositories to check for updates.

When you want to sync the plugin with the external source, all you have to do is type:

$piston update vendor/rails

and then

$svn commit --message "sync up plugins with external source"

Life couldn't be easier.