Rails

Flowing Text Around Images

Magazines, books, and other print layouts sometimes use images that overlap with the text, and have that text wrap around the shape of the image. It can make for an interesting effect, bringing a feeling of motion into a static medium. Done right, the text and image become conceptually closer in the mind of the viewer than having an image off to the side or otherwise positioned around the text. I use this on a [couple] of [posts] to show off artwork that’s related to the content, and I think it makes for a fun effect.

CSS-only Submenu Navigation with Post Tags

Our posts have categories, which I’ve used as a “collection” or “series” of posts that are on related topics. Recently, I’ve been writing up campaign notes for my D&D session as the characters themselves in a category simply called “Campaign Logs”. I’m also hoping to continue to write this...

A Site Reborn

I’ve moved my Jekyll site into a Rails app, and I’ve done just enough work to have every post render without errors and added just enough style to make things readable. Some of the site still looks pretty bad, and none of it looks good yet. But that’s ok, because my plan is to rebuild and...

Need a Slug?

Rails provides its own slug generator, so you may not need another gem.

Multi-table Full Text Search in Postgres

Easily searching across an application’s data is a pervasive need. If you are lucky, you can get away with simple sorting or searching on a single column, but it is more likely that you need full text search across multiple models, all from a single search <input>.

Thanks to the power of Postgres’ full text search, rolling your own search isn’t too difficult.

Following an actual feature evolution which I worked on for a client, we will start with a search feature that queries a single column with LIKE and build up to finding results across multiple columns on multiple tables using database views, optimizing the query time with full text indices and representing the results as a polymorphic association on an ActiveRecord model in Rails.

Not Invented Here

Rails is a mixture of design patterns, practices, and magic. In this talk, we’ll explore how Rails embraces ideas from other frameworks and projects.

Active Record was born of Martin Fowler. MVC was the brainchild of Trygve Reenskaug. Rails 3 completely absorbed the Merb project, gaining modularity and extensibility that it previously lacked.

We all learn by standing on the shoulders of giants, even Rails. By understanding the inception of design patterns, we are more likely to be able to create ideas of our own. This helps us to not only grow in our own ability, but to help others improve as well.

Store Page Titles in I18n

While the <title> element is one of the only required tags in HTML, it is often overlooked by developers and designers alike until the end of the development process.

Strong Parameters as Documentation

Besides moving attribute whitelisting to the controller rather than the model, Rails 4’s move to Strong Parameters over attr_accessible provides great documentation about the data with which records are being created.