Plugins book?

Hello, can anyone recommend good tutorials for Rails plugin development with best practices, etc. I am thinking on purchasing "Rails Plugins (Digital Short Cut): Extending Rails Beyond the Core". Is it good? Any other recommendation?

thanx, Bojan

There's a plugins chapter in Rails Recipes by Chad Fowler. It's an excellent book all around, as well.

Pat

Pat Maddox wrote:

Not sure what kind of detail you're looking for. Plugins aren't very complex at all.

No offense to James Adam at all - he's done a lot of work to make Rails more extendable - but I don't think it warrants a 123 page minibook. The best way to learn how to write plugins is just to actually write a few. They're easy, and if you read the chapter in RR you won't be wasting time.

Pat

Pat Maddox wrote:

Pat Maddox wrote:

Hello, can anyone recommend good tutorials for Rails plugin development with best practices, etc. I am thinking on purchasing "Rails Plugins (Digital Short Cut): Extending Rails Beyond the Core". Is it good? Any other recommendation?

thanx, Bojan -- Bojan Mihelac Informatika Mihelac, Bojan Mihelac s.p. | www.informatikamihelac.com -> tools, scripts, tricks from our code lab: http://source.mihelac.org

There's a plugins chapter in Rails Recipes by Chad Fowler. It's an excellent book all around, as well.

Pat

.

Thanks Pat, I am considering purchasing more books on rails beside Agile development which is great, so I would consider Rails Recipes, it looks it has some great recipes I didnt see covered elsewhere. Looking table of contest I have impression plugins topic is not analyzed in details?

Bojan

Not sure what kind of detail you're looking for. Plugins aren't very complex at all.

I'd like to extract common functionalities of dealing with active records (selecting rows, actions for rows, sorting, etc.) from existing rails application so I would be able to reuse it in another apps as well as maintaint this funcionality only on one place. This at least includes writing extensions both to ActiveRecord and ActionPack, and copying .js, .css and other non-rails documents to directory structure. I already have knowledge of writing simple plugins.

No offense to James Adam at all - he's done a lot of work to make Rails more extendable - but I don't think it warrants a 123 page minibook. The best way to learn how to write plugins is just to actually write a few. They're easy, and if you read the chapter in RR you won't be wasting time.

I saw James Adam wrote RailsEngines, what is current status of engines, is using of them discouraged like components are?

best, Bojan

None taken, Pat :slight_smile: Plugins are certainly simple creatures, but there can be a pretty steep curve figuring out the conventions commonly used (various modules and hooks that Ruby provides), especially for acts_as_* plugins. If you're intimately familiar with Ruby and the interactions between modules and objects, then you're probably fine. If not, you've got some exploring ahead of you.

What you'll get in the plugins short-cut I wrote is basically a no-stone-unturned examination of each aspect of plugins that you can take advantage of, along with discussions of common 'patterns' of implementation. Hopefully the discussions in there can help make existing plugin source code more accessible, and leave the reader in a better position to take inspiration from what's already out there.

Certainly, there's nothing that any enterprising hacker could've figure out given time and effort, but some might appreciate paying a few dollars to hit the ground running :slight_smile:

Certainly, there’s nothing that any enterprising hacker could’ve figure out given time and effort, but some might appreciate paying a

few dollars to hit the ground running :slight_smile:

  • J * ~

It certainly saves time in experimentation. I bought the book yesterday. I like the book because it has structure and gives all the information about plugins in one package. It also gives confidence since you know that it will work.

I have just come accross this very good tutorial :

http://www.railsforum.com/viewtopic.php?id=682

It won first prize in the RailsForum.com October tutorial contest : more details here : http://railsforum.com/viewtopic.php?id=1117

I hope it helps.

Hamza

Thanks Pat, I am considering purchasing more books on rails beside Agile development which is great, so I would consider Rails Recipes, it looks

it has some great recipes I didnt see covered elsewhere. Looking table of contest I have impression plugins topic is not analyzed in details?

Bojan

I bought Ruby Way second edition and Ruby in a Nutshell yesterday. I like the Ruby Way, it covers all the basics and also covers metaprogramming. You can learn how to develop your own DSL which is important if you want to write your own plugins.

I'm glad you like it :slight_smile:

Also be sure to check out http://www.pluginaweek.org Basically they're discussing and releasing around 80 plugins I think..so far they've covered plugin assets and migrations. I have a feeling we'll get some very cool stuff from that site.

Pat

I'm glad you like it :slight_smile:

Also be sure to check out http://www.pluginaweek.org Basically they're discussing and releasing around 80 plugins I think..so far they've covered plugin assets and migrations. I have a feeling we'll get some very cool stuff from that site.

Pat

I am almost done with the book. It is freakin or shall we say thumpin awesome. I will be giving a presentation based on the book for my local Ruby users group soon. So excited about showing off my demo and presentation!

More free publicity for your book! See how quality can make marketing very easy?

Thanx for all the answer I think I would try both Ruby Way and Digital shortcut ebook.

best regards, Bojan Mihelac

The plugin book is excellent. I bought it a month ago and I recommend that to anyone who is not a ruby expert.