Stupid things I’ve done

Stupid things I’ve done
In Ruby and Rails

Bert Goethals

Bert Goethals

We all make mistakes
That drink, that girl, the morning after
That chicken, the biting, mom laughing her ass off

But we learn
Drink less or pass out
Don’t pee on chickens

Ruby and Rails

8
Mistakes for you to learn from

acts_as_inherit

Hacking rails to
combine 2 models in
one model

• Modify default queries
• Provide setters / getters for “inherited”
attribbutes
• Allow validation and errors on “inherited”
attribbutes
• All transparent

Rails goes from
1.1 to 1.2

• Modify default queries
• Provide setters / getters for “inherited”
attribbutes
• Allow validation and errors on “inherited”
attribbutes
• All transparent

Don’t hack rails internals

acts_as_taggable
_on_steroids

Lot of overhead for a list of words
• Two extra tables
• SQL isn’t meant for search
• ActiveRecord Model overload!

Save the list of words
• No extra query for tags
• Search with Sphinx
• Generate tagclouds separately

Fighting ::NameSpaces

REST principal
But not always

attr_protected
and
attr_accessible

Controllers should
control requests

Flame shield Up!

Prototype

Use jQuery
or MooTools

Mephisto

Anything else!
or Wordpress (PHP)

ActiveRecord

ActiveRecord
For batch processing

ActiveRecord = Lots of memory
Batch = Lots of stuff
ActiveRecord + Batch =
Lots and Lots of Memory

Use DataMapper
or write your own queries

alias_attribute

alias_attribute
Not using it

def name
read_attribute(:title)
end
def name=(value)
write_attribute(:title, value)
end

alias_attribute :name, :title

R.T.F.M.

Conclusions
and questions?