Articles tagged “gems”

• Short and Sweet: Why You Should Use Ancestry

  ~ by Jonathan Martin

  I know I know, it’s been close to a month since I last blogged — that’s because I’ve been working and feeling hobby-lazy on the weekends, and I’m still in the middle of writing an approximately 6–8 page (single spaced!) essay, so I’m a little preoccupied…

  Okay, what’s the deal with Ancestry?

  First off, it’s a slick and polished gem — strike one. Second, it addresses a very common need — strike two. Finally, it is Rails 3 savvy and efficient — home run!

  In all seriousness, Ancestry is perhaps one of the handiest gems I’ve used of late. Typically, setting up trees with ActiveRecord is relatively easy — but as the model logic grows, the ease of use/implementation fails. Query calls increase recursively with every layer of the tree, and scopes have to be manually called at each layer.

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• Ruby on Rails: Top 10 Gems

  ~ by Jonathan Martin

  After developing a number of Rails 3 apps, I’ve come to build up a list of “prerequisite” gems that I must install before I decide to include anything else.

  Without further ado, here are my top 10 must have gems for RESTful, DRY development.

  simple_form

  Let’s face it: as awesome as Rails is, form building is not exactly its forte. That’s why I recommend simple_form, a gem that makes form partials a breeze to customize, generate, and understand. With support for native I18n, inline validations, nested models, extensive options, and unbeatable customization, simple_form is a serious deal for forms.

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