I am excited that Zach Dennis has taken up last year's cause of ActiveRecord Refactoring, since I never made much progress on my ActiveData efforts. Still, to help him out I've posted my pre-alpha ActiveData code, which builds on my earlier non-SQL ActiveRecord. I've pasted some excerpts below (Read More).

One of the coolest new features of Rails 1.2 is the RESTful routing. In particular, the new scaffold_resource generator makes it really easy to mockup a basic resource-oriented web app with trivial amounts of code. Check it out. # rails 1.2.1# mongrel 1.0.1$ rails restful$ cd !$$ script/generate scaffold_resource Entry title:string content:text published:date# can now... Continue Reading →

Hat tip to David Heinemeier Hansson for pointing me to: http://duncandavidson.com/essay/2006/06/webaspipe James Duncan Davidson basically writes the article I've been meaning to, but (as usual) way better. In particular, he explains precisely why FastCGI is so "weak", and also why the Mongrel/HTTP proxy model is so powerful. Moreover, he even captures how "un-original" (yet revolutionary!)... Continue Reading →

My colleague Luke Burton has posted a wonderful RJS Tutorial. [Read more] for a short list of the new things it taught me. ? You can insert RJS calls in RHTML documents, not just RJS documents ? The relevant documentation is ActionView::Helpers::PrototypeHelper and ActionView::Helpers::PrototypeHelper::JavaScriptGenerator::GeneratorMethods ? RJS handles (most) error catching for me ? You can... Continue Reading →

This presentation (pdf) explains the underlying philosophy and technologies that make Ruby on Rails so compelling (at least IMHO). It includes a tutorial for Rails 1.1.2 that covers: ? creating SQLite databases using migrations ? generating models and scaffolds ? writing controllers by hand (w/o generators) ? rjs and rhtml templates for dynamic HTML (aka... Continue Reading →

For those who find Rails' plethora of files overkill for simple applications, there's always Camping. While still built on Ruby and ActiveRecord, Camping is optimized for the "small-app-in-a-single-file" approach.[Read more] for some links, from a friend who will remain anonymous... It's called "Camping":http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/camping/wiki/http://camping.rubyforge.org/files/README.htmlHere's a wiki implemented in Camping:http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/camping/browser/trunk/examples/tepee/tepee.rbHere's the latest post about Camping developments:http://redhanded.hobix.com/inspect/mosquitoAndDecamp.htmlThe original... Continue Reading →

Understanding Ruby on Rails:"X" Things You Need To KnowRuby on Rails is perhaps the most innovative web application framework since WebObjects , with developers claiming 10x boosts in productivity over J2EE. But, what is it "really"? And why should I care? These notes and sample code complement the enormous number of Ruby and Rails tutorials... Continue Reading →

Somewhat off-topic, but I've recently been doing some research on DNSSEC (aka Secure DNS). I was quite surprised to discover that the current RFCs about this were only published last March, so it is a relatively recent development (not counting the earlier, un-implementable versions :-).[Read more] for a list of interesting resources I've discovered about... Continue Reading →

Based on the encouraging responses to my original post on rails-core, I've put together a plan of action. [Read more] for the details, and stay tuned for the implementation. [Update: Hat tip to Rubert Barrow for suggesting ActiveSalesforce as a possible starting point]Just to summarize, the best plan appears to be:a) Create a plugin ("activedata")http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/HowTosPluginsb)... Continue Reading →

The heart of Ruby on Rails is arguably ActiveRecord (AR), which implements their version of Object-Relational Mapping. For greater generality (and locking across apps) it would be nice to have Rails on Mac OS X talk directly to CoreData. In particular, that would allow it to a) utilize the model file, and b) access data... Continue Reading →