Ruby On Rails Blog

Quick and easy static pages in Rails

admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:39:12 +0000

Sometimes you have a Rails app, the core functionality is not a CMS, and you need to add some static pages to your app that don’t get changed often, eg, an about us page, privacy policy, etc. This post shows you a quick and easy way to do that in about 60 seconds, without using a [...]

Rails 3 Beta is out – check out Rails Upgrade plugin

admin — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:22:50 +0000

In case you haven’t heard, Rails 3 is now in Beta. Just a quick post to say, if you haven’t already, check out the Rails upgrade plugin, this will quickly show you what bits of your code need to be updated to work with Rails 3. Also, check out the full release notes, lots of juicy stuff [...]

Sometimes the best way to create is to remove

admin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 10:05:23 +0000

Over the life cycle of a project many features may be developed, sometimes just to account for one variation or tiny use case, get used once, and are then not used again for the next 5 years (if ever). One of my personal pet peeves is overly complicated software with too many redundant, old, unused features. [...]

Decrypt/Reverse MD5 / SHA1 Password Hashes

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 10:42:50 +0000

There is a nice little tool over on tmto.org that allows you to decrypt (or should I say, reverse) MD5 or SHA1 hashes. Essentially, someone has forward hash’ed all a-z letters, put them in a database, then matches your hash against what is in the DB to find what the original string was. This is [...]

Installing AutoTest

admin — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:14:28 +0000

I think autotest is one of the best things about developing in Rails. If you don’t know, autotest runs in the background watching all of your application files. When you edit any of them, it automatically runs the sections of your test suite that apply to the modified file, and can then give you feedback [...]

Wireframing your Rails Apps

admin — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 21:49:07 +0000

A really useful way to mockup your applications before coding is to use wire framing software to create the screens and layout of your application. By doing this, you can ensure everyone working on the project can help to decide upon what the first version should functionally look like, and everyone will know what [...]

Is your conversion rate good?

admin — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 12:47:37 +0000

Something I have been asked a few times by online retailers is, “how does my conversion rate compare to others in my industry?“. Speaking to one online retailer a few weeks ago, they specifically mentioned having access to lots of data from Google analytics, but they have no idea if they are doing better or [...]

Google Analytics and Rails in 60 Seconds

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:23:10 +0000

This quick post will show you how to install Google Analytics into your Rails powered website in less than 60 seconds. Before I start, I need to ask you… In real terms, what is each visitor to your website worth? Do you know? Would you like to find out how you can find out? What is [...]

Rails: Black Box Testing Complex Models

admin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:31:27 +0000

In this article I will show you how you can perform complete end-to-end testing of very complex models using a method called Black Box Testing. I will demonstrate a solution that scales to hundreds of tests and upwards, without having to write any additional code or fixtures for each one. The method I am going to [...]

Correct Format Plugin Released

admin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:25:51 +0000

I have released a new Plugin for Rails, called Correct-Format. Github URL: github.com/mendable/correct-format This plugin allows you to automatically correct simple user input mistakes and format user-input without raising an ActiveRecord Error and without inserting inconsistently formatted data into your database. Using this plugin will enhance the usability and user-friendlyness of your application and increase your data integrity. You can automatically: Make a [...]