Rails Envy

Episode #094. Dan Benjamin (Playgrounder, Hivelogic) is back this week and we had some help from Adam Keys with stories. Also, I shamelessly steal a Mitch Hedberg joke and apply it to Rackspace.

In case you missed it last week, we’re now accepting stories and feedback to @railsenvy on Twitter. You know, if you feel like letting us know about something.

The Rails Envy podcast is brought to you this week by NewRelic. NewRelic provides RPM which is a plugin for rails that allows you to monitor and quickly diagnose problems with your Rails application in real time. Check them out at NewRelic.com.

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Show Notes

• Ruby Enterprise Edition 1.8.7-20090928 released

  A new version of REE has been released. The biggest change is that this new version of REE is based on Ruby 1.8.7-p174. It includes the MBARI patches and the zero-copy context switching patch is optional as well. Snow Leopard users must compile with –no-tcmalloc due to an incompatibility.

• Retrospectiva v2RC 1 is Out

  Written in Rails, Retrospectiva is an open-source project management tool intended to assist the collaborative aspect of work carried out by agile software development teams.

  It’s free (MIT License), has full Development Life-cycle support, nice admin, RSS Support, and an API in XML_REST.

• Spree 0.9.0 Released

  Spree 0.9.0 has been released. Spree is an open source Rails shopping cart and e-commerce solution. Version 0.9.0 includes coupon and discount support, Rails 2.3.4 compatibility, enhanced calculators, and more.

• 10 Must-Have Rails Plugins and Gems (2009 Edition)

  Glenn Vanderburg posts 10 must have rails plugins and gems you should be using in your apps.

• RubyMine IDE 2.0 Beta

  Peter Cooper posts over on Ruby Inside about RubyMine IDE 2.0 beta being released. New features include Ruby 1.9 support, Rails 2.3.3 support, Rails i18n support and spell checker, UI improvements, Cucumber and Shoulda support, and Built-in HAML and Sass support.

• FiveRuns Has Been Acquired by Workthink

  Dash will be discontinued on Friday, October 16th, 2009. There are instructions for exporting your data. They’re also setting up a fake Dash service so that existing apps using Dash won’t suddenly fail.

  http://www.fiveruns.com/
  http://support.fiveruns.com/faqs/dash/dash-shutdown

• Textorize for Generating Headline Images

  Textorize is a command line tool for generating headline images to png format by Thomas Fuchs (scriptaculous). It supports subpixel anti-aliasing and is written in Ruby.

• SVN to Git Protips

  Josh Susser posts some tips about the subversion to git process and performing a smooth migration.

• Request Log Analyzer 1.4.0 Released

  We mentioned it last week but now request-log-analyzer version 1.4.0 is out. Request Log Analyzer is a tool to produce performance reports for web applications based on their log files. Version 1.4.0 can now handle Apache access logs, Rack CommonLogger logs and Amazon S3 access logs. It also has improved database support, added standard deviation to reports, can email reports, and more.

• Using Cookie Based Sessions in Sinatra

  Julio Javier Cicchelli walks you through using cookie based sessions in Sinatra over on the Ruby Learning blog.

• WindyCityRails 2009 Videos

  Videos from the WindyCityRails conference this year have been posted.

• MongoDB: A Light in the Darkness! (Key Value Stores Part 5)

  Kirk Haines posts part 5 of his key/value stores walk through on the Engine Yard blog. This week’s post is on MongoDB.

• Completeness-fu

  Completeness-fu for ActiveRecord allows you cleanly define the way a model instance is scored for completeness, similar to LinkedIn user profiles.

• Rails Logging with MongoDB

  Phil Burrows has written up a recipe for logging to MongoDB from your Rails app. MongoDB has some features that make it an excellent choice for storing and querying your logs. If you’ve jumped on the MongoDB, you are obligated to check this out.

• Kitabu PDF generator

  Nando Vieira recently released Kitabu, a framework for generating PDFs from text sources written in Markdown or Textile. This looks like a great tool for those who are itching to self-publish but don’t typically do print work.

• Who Wants To Be A Munger

  Dana Gray’s presentation at Lone Star Ruby Conference on scraping, transforming and formatting data is a great read for those who might fear the dark but useful art of recombobulating data.

• Testing named scopes

  Named scopes are a funny thing. They’re a core part of your application, but they’re also kinda part of the framework. So how should you go about testing them? Dan Croak, A Giant Robot, sheds some light on the topic.

• Database Taxonomy

  Whether you call it NoSQL, post-relational, or a bunch of annoying whippersnappers trying to undermine your career as a awesomely certified DB2 übergod, lots of people are talking about new and different ways to store your application’s data. Ben Scofield, he of Viget Labs, has written an excellent article trying to categorize and organize these emerging technologies so that we might better discuss when they are appropriate to use.

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