Ruby Plus

This is the presentation that I gave to Silicon Valley Ruby on Rails. Some of the topics covered were:

• What is REST
• Why REST
• What are resources
• Types of resources
• How to find the resources
  

I also give practical tips on how to make your Rails app RESTful.

I had looked at Gullery, WebAlbum and Photo Album in Ajax on Rails books among others.

I will show you how to create a photo album with slide show in a RESTful way. I will include the source code as part of the download.

Exercise

1. You can extend this album so that the photo upload does not tie up the Mongrel process by using Background DRB, Merb etc.
2. Add the feature where users can only add/edit photos to their album.
3. When a photo is added instead of displaying the album index page, display the album show page so that users can continue uploading photos.

Resources

File uploads via Merb inside a Rails application 

 User Feedback

It seems you didn't copy the slider.js and sound.js files into the javascripts directory for the simple photo album and that is causing 2 errors to be thrown into the log. I'm not sure where you are using scriptaculous, as I was able to just remove that include line and everything still seemed to be working, but since I assume there is a reason you intentionally included I kept tooking and found that the download of scriptaculous does include those files and for some reason the download from you did not. Anyways, thanks for the video and sample project, keep up the good work!

In this episode you will learn how to use the <association_name>_ids=([array of ids]) association proxy method in your controllers. When you have has_many or has_and_belongs_to_many models you can use the association proxy method and simplify code in your controllers.

 Based on the blog post params fu #4 by Stephen Chu

In this episode you learn how to use fields_for and the index option to create a new parent model with multiple child models on one post.

This tip will simplify your code in the controller. Based on the blog post by params ful #3 and #5 by Stephen Chu.

In this episode you will learn how to put attributes into a different params key using fields_for if they belong to a different model than the one you are using in the form_for helper.

This technique is useful in real world projects. Based on the blog post params fu #2 by Stephen Chu.

In this episode you will learn how to wrap all relevant attributes in a single params key. Covers the basics of form_for and params in Rails.

This is based on the blog post params fu #1 by Stephen Chu

In this episode I walk you through a hello world example in jQuery and autocomplete functionality that does not make a server side call.

In this episode you will learn how to implement GoF Command Design Pattern in Ruby.

I cover the concept of closures, scope and  extent that is required to understand the implementation of Command Pattern

In this episode you will learn how to use options_from_collection_for_select when you have a has_one relationship between ActiveRecord objects.

 Note: For create, I was looking at the wrong book because the id was higher than the one we were looking at. (I had created some books before the screencast)

I was surprised when I found that Rails does not provide any helper to create simple drop down box with integer values. I came across the blog post by Brian McQuay

In this episode I will show you how to display and edit a simple drop down box that contains integer values. I have included the source code in the download. This is an opportunity for you to contribute to Rails, check out Ryan Bates screencast on contributing to Rails using GIT and create a patch to include this helper to FormHelper.