RailsCasts

ZURB's Foundation is a front-end for quickly building applications and prototypes. It is similar to Twitter Bootstrap but uses Sass instead of LESS. Here you will learn the basics of the grid system, navigation, tooltips and more.

With the release of Rails 4.0.0.rc1 it's time to try it out and report any bugs. Here I walk you through the steps to upgrade a Rails 3.2 application to Rails 4.

Rails commands, such as generators, migrations, and tests, have a tendency to be slow because they need to load the Rails app each time. Here I show three tools to make this faster: Zeus, Spring, and Commands.

The ActiveModel::Serializers gem can help you build JSON APIs through serializer objects. This provides a dedicated place to fully customize the JSON output.

Learn how to easily add a user activity feed using the public_activity gem. Here I show both the default setup using model callbacks and a manual way to trigger activities.

Here we take a look at two tools to aid us in development: Better Errors which makes it easier than ever to debug exceptions, and RailsPanel, a Chrome extension to see Rails requests.

Rails 4.0 is still unfinished, but it is shaping up to become a great release. Here I show how to setup a new Rails 4.0 (edge) application and walk through many of its new features.

Allow users to import records into the database by uploading a CSV or Excel document. Here I show how to use Roo to parse these files and present a solution for validations.

Instead of presenting a sign up form to the user, consider creating a temporary guest record so the user can try out the application without filling in their information up front. They can then become a permanent member afterwards.

Turbolinks can make your Rails app feel faster by using JavaScript to replace the page content when clicking a link. It will be default in new Rails 4.0 applications, but here I show how to use it in Rails 3 and mention some of the gotchas.

The cache_digests gem (also included in Rails 4) will automatically add a digest to the fragment cache key based on the template. If a template changes the cache will auto-expire. But watch out for the gotchas!

RubyGems can make it easy to add a feature to a Rails application, but it can also cause headaches down the road. Here I give some tips on researching gems to decide which one to choose, or when to do it from scratch.

There are several gems to help implement tags in a Rails app. Here I show you how to integrate acts-as-taggable-on and then show how to do it from scratch.

FnordMetric allows you to chart events in real time. This is great for keeping track of user activity in your Rails app as demonstrated in this episode.

JRuby is a polished and stable Ruby implementation. Here I show the basics of setting it up and executing Java from within Ruby. I also see how it compares with MRI at running threads.

Learn how to do extensive image manipulation with the ImageMagick commands. Also learn how RMagick can be used in combination with CarrierWave to process uploaded images.

Bullet will notify you of database queries that can potentially be improved through eager loading or counter cache column. A variety of notification alerts are supported.

Ransack allows you to easily build complex search forms. It also helps in adding sortable links and building a dynamic advanced search page.

MiniProfiler allows you to see the speed of a request conveniently on the page. It also shows the SQL queries performed and allows you to profile a specific block of code.

Sidekiq allows you to move jobs into the background for asynchronous processing. It uses threads instead of forks so it is much more efficient with memory compared to Resque.

If you need to calculate an average user's rating or sum up a number of votes, consider using the activerecord-reputation-system gem. Here I will cover the basics and also briefly present a from-scratch solution.

As you will see it is easy to add a CSV export option to Rails. Here I also show how to export for Excel in a variety of formats.

This will show how to create a new facebook application and configure it. Then add some authentication with the omniauth-facebook gem and top it off with a client-side authentication using the JavaScript SDK.

The Brakeman gem will scan the Ruby code of a Rails application and alert you to common security vulnerabilities.

If a user's authentication cookie is sent over an insecure connection it is vulnerable to session hijacking, or more specifically, sidejacking. Learn how this is done, and how you can prevent it.

Squeel provides a comprehensive DSL for writing SQL queries in Ruby. It is built upon Arel giving you access to many of its powerful features.

There are many approaches to locking down an API. Here I start off with HTTP Basic authentication then move on to generating a unique token which can be passed through a URL parameter or HTTP header.

APIs should be consistent, but it is difficult to do this when returning a JSON response along side the HTML interface. Here I show how to add a versioned, RESTful API. The version can be determined from either the URL or HTTP headers.

It is often asked: Is Rails a good fit if I only need to serve an API? In this episode I show how to use the Rails API gem to create a slimmer Rails application designed to respond with JSON.

Deploying to Amazon EC2 allows you to scale an application quickly. Learn how to use Rubber to deploy to the cloud with just a few commands and monitor the cluster with various web tools.

Creating a wizard form can be tricky in Rails. Learn how Wicked can help by turning a controller into a series of multiple steps.

PostgreSQL can act as a worker queue which can replace the need for a separate process to manage the background jobs. Here you will learn how to do this with the queue_classic gem.

Postgres is a feature-packed relational database that every Rails developer should consider using. Here you will learn how to install it, add it to a new application, and transition from an existing SQLite app using the "taps" gem.

DataTables makes it easy to convert a plain HTML table into one with pagination, sorting, and searching - all done with JavaScript and jQuery. Here I show how to set this up and use a Rails application as the data source.

Rails has great internationalization (I18n) support making it easy to translate static text into other languages, but how do we translate database content? Learn how using Globalize 3 in this episode.

Copycopter provides a nice interface that clients can use to edit the text in a Rails application. Learn how to deploy a Copycopter server using Heroku and integrate it in a Rails application through I18n.

Compass improves the Sass experience by providing useful mixins, functions, and more. You will also learn how to make CSS sprites with it in this episode.

If you need to quickly create an informational site that can be easily edited, consider using a content management system. Here I show how to build a site using Refinery CMS.

If you are tired of the browser vendor prefixes in CSS, check out Bourbon. It provides Sass mixins and functions to make CSS more convenient.

Twitter Bootstrap can help make beautiful web apps quickly by providing you with useful CSS and JavaScript. Here you will learn how to include it into Rails with the twitter-bootstrap-rails gem.

ActiveAttr provides what Active Model left out. If you need to create a table-less model with features similar to Active Record, watch this episode.

There are a variety of ways to pass variables from a Rails application to JavaScript. Here I show three techniques: a script tag, a data attribute, and the Gon gem.

RABL - Ruby API Builder Language - provides a DSL for generating JSON or XML responses in a Ruby application. Learn how to share and configure complex JSON data in this episode.

Jbuilder provides a DSL for generating JSON. It includes a template engine which allows you to create complex responses with helpers and conditions.

Rails 3.2 sports many new features including automatic explain queries, tagged logging, key-value store in Active Record, improved migration generator and more. Learn all about these new features in this episode.

Private Pub makes it easier than ever to publish and subscribe to real-time events in a Rails app. You can use publish_to with a block of JavaScript or supply a hash for use with JSON.

If you are tired of model ids in the URL, overriding to_param can only get you so far. The friendly_id plugin can help by making it easy to generate a URL slug and maintain a history.

HTML email can be difficult to code because any CSS should be made inline. Here I present a few tools for doing this including the premailer-rails3 and roadie gems.

Learning Ruby on Rails can be overwhelming, especially if you are new to programming. Here I will take you on a tour through various resources to help get started with Rails.

As Rails developers, we frequently use the command line. Here I will show how to switch to Z Shell using Oh My ZSH including how to make your own theme and plugins.

Add full text searching using ElasticSearch and Tire. Here I will show the steps involved in adding this search to an existing application. This is the first part in a two part series.