Workshop Survival Kit

Get Started with Rails

In-depth starter kit from the creator of Nuby on Rails

Photo of Eric Meyer Geoff Grosenbach is one of the most highly-respected Rails programmers in the world. He is known for his popular website Nuby on Rails and the Rails Podcast.

Everybody is talking about Rails and with this starter kit put together by one of the foremost Rails developers, you can get off to a flying start. Developed as part of an in-depth workshop presented in London and NYC this kit is a cornucopia of code, applications hints, tips and links.

Geoffrey Grosenbach is highly respected in the Rails community. "Geoffrey has been one of the most enthusiastic members of the Rails community for a long time," says David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Rails. "Between running the Rails Podcast and releasing great plugins like Gruff, Sparkline, and CSS Graphs, he's a big-time, valuable contributor."

Highlights on the kit include: The TopFunky Rails Cheatsheet, Eight plug-ins, Rails documentation and much more. For full rundown of what's on the kit see the panel below.

Past Reviews

"Super, Smashing, Great" -Anthony Ramm, OpenAdvantage

"This is what the whole training experience should be" -James McCarthy, American Express

"Thoroughly enjoyable" -Roman Marszalek, DoctorLogic

"I really learnt a lot in a short space of time" - Laurent Maguire, Kyanmedia

"Great Resource" - Dave Mercer, Reuters

"'l'm inspired to dive into Rails and put into practice everything I've learned" - Max Mitchell, LearnDirect

"Sharp, crisp, insight on Ruby on Rails" - Romain Eude, eFree.fr

"Took me a step forward from newbie to being more Rails aware" - Matthew Blest, NTLWorld

What's on the Kit?

Code

Ruby: Ruby variables, methods and objects
Rails Views: Templates for generating HTML and XML
Rail Controllers: Code for connecting data and preparing it for presentation
Rails Models: Connecting to a database (requires a database)
Rail Photo gallery: An entire project using some of the features of Rails 1.1. (requires database)
Rails RJS:A Rails 1.1 feature for generating Javascript.
Rails Deployment:Cleanly copy your code to the server or do maintenance.
Rails Rake: A tool for automating tasks.

Plug-ins

acts_as_authenticated - A customizable authentication generator for logins and access control.
acts_as_paranoid - soft delete instead of erasing rows from the database.
acts_as_versioned — Keeps multiple versions of database rows for easy rollback or future reference.
ar_fixtures — Makes it easy to create test fixtures from an existing database table.
css_graphs — Create pure CSS bar graphs with a single method
date_slider — Use a Flash-based date-range selector
mini_magick — A lightweight library for resizing images
mint — An experimental Rails plugin for querying the contents of your Mint stats installation. Also parses httpd logs into Mint's tables

Documentation

The TopFunky Rails Cheatsheet
Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby
Amy Hoy's Rails Files Cheatsheet
Amy Hoy's ActiveRecord Cheatsheet
Amy Hoy's Form Helpers Cheatsheet

Articles

Pluraliser
Help! My CSS Isn't Working!
Gruff Graphs
Sparkline Graphs
Gullery Photo Gallery
CSS Graphs
Task Management
Ruby on Rails Workshops and Conferences
Geoff's Rails Workshop Ma.gnolia Links
Geoff's General Rails Ma.gnolia Links
...and 23 more links

More on the author

Geoff Grosenbach

Geoffrey Grosenbach has been designing and developing web applications since 1997. He is the host of the wildly popular Ruby on Rails Podcast and will be speaking at Canada on Rails and other upcoming Rails conferences around the world. His Gruff graphing library for Ruby is in use on many Rails-powered applications around the world.

He is writing two chapters for an upcoming book on Rails Deployment, to be published by the Pragmatic Programmers.

You can keep up on his current endeavors and Rails epiphanies or contact him via the Topfunky Corporation.