What Advice Would You Give A Rails Newbie?

[Brad Lindsay]

I'm new to Ruby and to Rails, but have been very impressed by the
tutorials I've gone through for each. They have convinced me that
these are the best tools for the solutions I need to create, but
before I really got started, I thought I'd query the wisdom of this
list.

Note, I plan on starting with Ruby 1.9 and Rails 3.0.

Is there a better template engine than the default ERB? What do people suggest?

Is there an overview of best-practices when it comes to User
management and account authorization and authentication? Is there a
gem that I should look at that may implement some of this?

Are there other issues or best-practices that I should know about or
gems that you would suggest I investigate?

Thanks,
Brad

[Chris Mear]

On 7 August 2010 19:54, Brad Lindsay <brad.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm new to Ruby and to Rails, but have been very impressed by the
> tutorials I've gone through for each. They have convinced me that
> these are the best tools for the solutions I need to create, but
> before I really got started, I thought I'd query the wisdom of this
> list.

Always good to hear someone excited about Rails!

One bit of 'wisdom': the out-of-the-box Rails defaults are very
capable. We've all written substantial apps using bog-standard ERb and
Test::Unit, so don't feel pressured to use fashionable alternatives
just because they're fashionable. Of course, if you're keen to learn
and try out new stuff, then go for it, and use things that stick and
make sense for you.

With that said...

> Is there a better template engine than the default ERB? What do people suggest?

For a less repetitive and more structured templating experience, Haml
is pretty popular these days:

http://haml-lang.com/

> Is there an overview of best-practices when it comes to User
> management and account authorization and authentication? Is there a
> gem that I should look at that may implement some of this?

The Rails Security Guide has a fairly good section on User Management:

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/security.html#user-management

As for gems/plugins, I've lately seen a lot of projects using Authlogic:

http://github.com/binarylogic/authlogic

It's well designed and extensible, and you should be able to get up
and running pretty quickly.

It's an instructive exercise to try writing a basic user auth system,
though, even if it's just once as a toy project. You just need methods
in the User to hash their password (with a salt, of course), and to
look up a user based on a supplied username and password. And then
some convenience methods in the controller to store the logged-in user
in the session object. It's good to have an understanding of how the
basic pieces fit together, so that the gem you end up using isn't just
a piece of 'magic'.

> Are there other issues or best-practices that I should know about or
> gems that you would suggest I investigate?

You might want to explore RSpec as an alternative test (sorry,
behaviour) framework -- it's very popular, and provides a new
perspective on testing. Again, not required; just interesting.

Chris

[Gudleik Rasch]

Here are some other resources you might want to look into:

# see what gems/tools other uses
* http://ruby-toolbox.com/

# various screencasts
* http://railscasts.com/
* http://rubytu.be/
* http://teachmetocode.com/screencasts/
* http://www.rubypulse.com/

# other
* http://rails-bestpractices.com
* http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/

Enjoy :)

--
gudleik

[Brad Lindsay]

Great stuff so far. Thanks Chris & Gudleik!

Brad

[Marnen Laibow-Koser]

Chris Mear wrote:
> On 7 August 2010 19:54, Brad Lindsay <brad.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm new to Ruby and to Rails, but have been very impressed by the
>> tutorials I've gone through for each. They have convinced me that
>> these are the best tools for the solutions I need to create, but
>> before I really got started, I thought I'd query the wisdom of this
>> list.
>
> Always good to hear someone excited about Rails!
>
> One bit of 'wisdom': the out-of-the-box Rails defaults are very
> capable. We've all written substantial apps using bog-standard ERb and
> Test::Unit, so don't feel pressured to use fashionable alternatives
> just because they're fashionable.

At the same time, don't get wedded to the defaults just because they're
the defaults. I hope I never again have to use Rails' standard test
framework for new development -- the Test::Unit API is crap, and
fixtures are somewhere between moronic and dangerous. The Rails team
broke some great new ground with the testing framework, but like all
pioneers, they made some big mistakes.

Best,
--
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
mar...@marnen.org
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

[Agoofin]

I found a couple of good books, Simply Rails 2 by Lenz is my favorite.
Of course it's for Rails 2. You may have to wait for a while for the
new crop of Rails 3 books to come out. Or try to update the examples
to work in Rails 3.

Judging by your questions about template engines and user management,
I'd recommend a more advanced book like The Rails Way.

Other than that, try to build your own app. Nothing really works
better than that.

[Iain Davis]

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 8:35 PM, Agoofin <thebs...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I found a couple of good books, Simply Rails 2 by Lenz is my favorite.

That was pleasing to me to know; I have a Books24x7 subscription, so I
selected (the newest, I think) book on Rails from the selection
available to me, which turned out to be Patrick Lenz's Simply Rails 2.
:)

> Judging by your questions about template engines and user management,
> I'd recommend a more advanced book like The Rails Way.

Would you say that "The Rails Way" would be a good follow up to Lenz's
book? I'm about 75% through it, so I should perhaps think about 'what
to do next'. :)

My thanks for Brad for great question; All sorts of useful information
about resources in the responses.

Iain

[Peter De Berdt]

On 13 Aug 2010, at 21:05, Iain Davis wrote:

Judging by your questions about template engines and user management,

I'd recommend a more advanced book like The Rails Way.

Would you say that "The Rails Way" would be a good follow up to Lenz's
book? I'm about 75% through it, so I should perhaps think about 'what
to do next'. :)

The Rails Way is a really nice read, go ahead. You could also look into the RSpec book from Pragmatic Programmers. It's very good.

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

[Bob]

My first Rails projects were built ignoring the concept of automated
tests. The result was a lot of manual checks and debugging whenever
changes were required. If I could go back in time, and were just
starting out with Rails, I wouldn't make this mistake again. Getting
a good grasp on something like RSpec early will provide you great
benefits and save you much in the way of time and hair.

The RSpec book looks very promising.

Bob