Rack is Ruby’s standard web interface. Rails uses it, Sinatra uses it, basically every Ruby web server and framework use it.
And Rack adds “middleware,” pieces of software that you can build an app out of. They see requests and responses, and they can modify both. Middleware is so powerful that Rails...
You know the Golden Child Engineer, the favourite of the Director of Engineering? He’s that guy (and it’s basically always a guy) who’s the company Teacher’s Pet? The software developer who gets promotion after promotion?
You’re not that guy. With one fun exception, I haven’t been either. And I’ve...
Lots of you loved my old post on this. Thanks! But thanks to many fine questions, especially by one guy on Twitter, it’s time for an update! And also, naturally, the same things you loved last time. I’m not heartless.
Sometimes you’re sure that’s not the right place for that piece of code, but where...
You’ve made it mostway through your free Ruby on Rails Internals class. Today we’ll be poking around the Rails source code. If you have money but not time, Rebuilding Rails lets you find a lot quickly… But in case you have more time, we’ll see where in the Rails source you can learn the same things...
I hate all the “requires” at the front of Ruby files. I know what methods I’m using, but I have to write it in both places. Not exactly DRY. Rails skips them — you just use the classes you want. How can I automatically load my files like Rails does? Read on.
Ruby has method_missing. When you call...
[Update: Rebuilding Rails is finished, and yes, the exercises are in it. So are solutions to them.]
A reader asked me whether the book was entirely cut and paste or if there would be exercises that required actually writing new code in Rebuilding Rails, or only cut-and-paste. Here’s my response:
Rack comes with a fair bit of built-in middleware that you can use to put together a simple app frame. Unfortunately, Rack authentication’s documentation is pretty bad, so let’s see some simple, self-explanatory examples, shall we?
We’ll need a config.ru file for this, and you’ll need Rack...
If you do Ruby web programming, you’ll often hear about “Rack.” You might hear about it from a Ruby dev you respect, and that you won’t get better at Ruby web stuff until you know what’s underneath.
Or you might have to write a config.ru to use Heroku and you’re thinking, “what’s config.ru?”. It...
Rails parameter parsing can be hard to understand, but it goes beyond that.
Just understanding the “params” object in your controller actions is a little tricky. Ever notice how params[:bob] and params[“bob”] both work? The magic type behind that is called HashWithIndifferentAccess. Yeah, it’s a...
