A lightning talk presented as part of a series at BostonRB project night, February 6, 2013

1. 5 Awesome Gems
...and some fun with MemeGenerator
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

2. Hi!
• I’m Dan
• Co-Organizer @ BostonRB
• Principal Consultant @ LaunchWare
• Head of Instruction @ Launch
Academy
• dpickett on Twitter / GitHub/
everyHub
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

3. Some Favorites
• inherited_resources
• kaminari
• guard
• configatron
• bourbon
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

4. Inherited Resources
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

5. Why?
• Makes writing boilerplate controllers
easier
• Easy internationalization of flash text
with the Responders gem
• Easy API generation for JSON and XML
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

6. Why Not?
• Another DSL/Library to Learn
• Can sometimes get in your way for
nonstandard controller actions
• Not good for beginners - feel the pain
of repetition in your controllers, first
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

7. class
AccountsController
<
ApplicationController
respond_to
:json
inherit_resources
#gives
you
all
RESTful
actions
for
Account
end
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

8. Kaminari
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

9. Why?
• Easily customizable/themed
• great configuration options
• awesome generators
• Scope-Based
• Doesn’t hack core objects
• I18n ready for localization
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

10. Why Not?
• Other engines might express alternative
decisions (refinery, ie)
• Can be painful to paginate non-scope/
AREL collections
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

11. #in
your
controller
@users
=
User.
page(params[:page]).
per(50)
#in your view
<%= paginate @users %>
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

12. guard
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13. Why?
• Don’t constantly have to run tests
manually
• Invokes tests for files that change
• Extensible plugin architecture
• Extensible notification architecture
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

14. Why Not?
• Minor issue where guard plugins can
lag behind on dependencies
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

15. Configatron
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

16. Why?
• Easy, dynamic configuration for gems
and applications
• Configure via manual code, hash or
YAML
• Plays nicely with Rails Application
configuration
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

17. Why Not?
• nulls vs. blanks can be confusing
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

18. module
Facebook
def
self.secret_key=(key)
configatron.facebook.secret_key
=
key
end
def
self.secret_key
configatron.facebook.secret_key
end
end
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

19. Bourbon
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

20. Why?
• Handy shortcuts for common CSS
idioms
• Beautiful documentation
• Exposes you to lots of great/creative
CSS uses
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Wednesday, February 6, 13

21. Why Not?
• Can be difficult to install/configure as
part of the asset pipeline
• You still need to be an informed
consumer of experimental CSS
features
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22. http://bourbon.io
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23. To Learn More...
http://launchacademy.co
The Fun Begins May 1st
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24. For More Gems...
• Ignition, our rails template is available
• http://github.com/LaunchWare/ignition
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25. Questions?
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Wednesday, February 6, 13