This document lists mistakes the author has made when working with Ruby on Rails. It provides 8 examples of things the author hacked or forced Rails to do that caused problems later. The examples are meant to teach lessons to avoid hacking Rails internals and to use alternative gems or approaches when Rails defaults cause issues. The conclusion encourages readers to ask any other questions.

1. Stupid things I’ve done

2. Stupid things I’ve done
In Ruby and Rails

3. Bert Goethals

4. Bert Goethals

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

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

7. Ruby and Rails

8. 8
Mistakes for you to learn from

9. acts_as_inherit

10. Hacking rails to
combine 2 models in
one model

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

12. Rails goes from
1.1 to 1.2

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

14. Don’t hack rails internals

15. acts_as_taggable
_on_steroids

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

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

18. Fighting ::NameSpaces

19. REST principal
But not always

20. attr_protected
and
attr_accessible

21. Controllers should
control requests

22. Flame shield Up!

23. Prototype

24. Use jQuery
or MooTools

25. Mephisto

26. Anything else!
or Wordpress (PHP)

27. ActiveRecord

28. ActiveRecord
For batch processing

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

30. Use DataMapper
or write your own queries

31. alias_attribute

32. alias_attribute
Not using it

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

34. alias_attribute :name, :title

35. R.T.F.M.

36. Conclusions
and questions?