Rails supports time zones, but there are several pitfalls. Most importantly because Time.now and Time.current are completely different things and code from gems might use one or the other.

Especially configuring an application that cares only about one time zone is a bit tricky.

The following was tested on Rails 5.1 but should apply to Rails 4.2 as well.

Using only local time

Your life will be easier if your application does not need to support time zones. Disable them like this:

config.time_zone = 'Berlin' # Your local ...

You can use gem list to list all gems available from a remote gem server:

gem list -r --clear-sources -s 'https://user:password@gemserver.tld/'

This is useful to debug cases where Bundler complains of a gem existing in more than one gem source.

Ruby's standard library is in the process of being gemified. It will soon - Ruby 2.5 - consist of RubyGems, which can be updated independently from Ruby.

This might mean smoother Ruby upgrades in the future. If breaking API changes happen in standard gems, we can update these before upgrading Ruby.

Middleman is a static page generator that brings many of the goodies that Rails developers are used to.

Out of the box, Middleman brings Haml, Sass, helpers etc. However, it can be configured to do even better. This card is a list of improvement hints for a Rails developer.

Gemfile

Remove tzinfo-data and wdm unless you're on Windows. Add these gems:

gem 'middleman-livereload'
gem 'middleman-sprockets' # Asset pipeline!

gem 'bootstrap-sass' # If you want to use Bootstrap

gem 'byebug'

gem 'capistrano'
gem 'capistrano-mid...

Dump this method into your Ruby console to quickly print data in columns. This is helpful for e.g. comparing attributes of a set of Rails records.

def tp(objects, *method_names)
  terminal_width = `tput cols`.to_i
  cols = objects.count + 1 # Label column
  col_width = (terminal_width / cols) - 1 # Column spacing

  Array(method_names).map do |method_name|
    cells = objects.map{ |o| o.send(method_name).inspect }
    cells.unshift(method_name)

    puts cells.map{ |cell| cell.to_s.ljust(col_width) }.join ' '
  end

  nil
end

Usag...

In case you want to require a gem, that is not in the Gemfile of you bundle and therefore not in your loadpath, you need to add the path manually and require the gem afterwards.

Expected error

Requiring a gem, that is not in the Gemfile or .gemspec, will cause an LoadError exception:

require 'example_gem' => LoadError: cannot load such file -- example_gem

Adding a gem to the loadpath temporary

1. You need to install the gem

gem install 'example_gem'

2. Then you need to require the path where the gem was install...

This card compares patterns to store trees in a relation database like MySQL or PostgreSQL. Implementation examples are for the ActiveRecord ORM used with Ruby on Rails, but the techniques can be implemented in any language or framework.

We will be using this example tree (from the acts_as_nested_set docs):

root
|
+-- Child 1
|   |
|   +-- Child 1.1
|   |
|   +-- Child 1.2
|
+-- ...

The parallel-gem is quite easy to use and can speed up rendering time if you want to render the same partial multiple times (e.g. for rendering long lists of things).

Parallel supports execution using forked processes (the default), threads (mind the GVL) and Ractors (some limitations for data sharing).

If your parallelized code talks to the database, you should [ensure not to leak database connections](https://makandracards.com/makandra/45360-using-activerecord-with-threads-will-leak-database-connect...

Barby is a great Ruby gem to generate barcodes of all different sorts.

It includes support for QR codes via rQRCode; if you need to render only QR codes, you may want to use that directly.

Example usage

Generating a barcode is simple:

>> Barby::Code128.new('Hello Universe').to_png
=> "\x89PNG\r\n\u001A..."

Configuration

Barby supports several barcode types and you must require all necessary files explicitly.

For the example a...

Looks like ActiveState is trying to market a new Ruby distribution for Enterprises:

ActiveRuby Enterprise Edition is designed for businesses with large Ruby deployments in essential, mission-critical applications that, when down, could cost your business in lost revenue and a damaged reputation. Deploy Ruby with confidence knowing you're using the most secure, enterprise-grade builds for the platforms that power your business. You'll get priority access to our Ruby experts for technical support and best prac...

There are various ways to run external commands from within Ruby, but the most powerful ones are Open3.capture3 and Open3.popen3. Since those can do almost everything you would possibly need in a clean way, I prefer to simply always use them.

Behind the scenes, Open3 actually just uses Ruby's spawn command, but gives you a much better API.

Open3.capture3

Basic usage is

require 'open3'

stdout_str, error_str, status = Open3.capture3('/some/binary', 'with', 'some', 'args')
if status.success?...

A collection of code snippets which return a boolean value for a regex comparison.

regexp.match?(string) # Recommended for Ruby >= 2.4

!!(string =~ regexp)  # Recommended for older Rubies

regexp === string

!(regexp !~ string)

The Ruby 2.4 method Regexp#match? does not set globals like $~ or $1, so it should be more performant.

Adding a gem means you take over the liability towards the external code.

Checklist

Based on "To gem, or not to gem":

• Gem is really needed (prefer writing your own code for simple requirements without many edge cases)
• Gem is tested well (coverage and quality)
• Gem has a good code quality
• Gem's licence fits to the project requirement
• Try to avoid gems that do much more than your requireme...

Why

We have projects that have been developed using many different versions of Ruby. Since we do not want to constantly update every old project, we need to have many Ruby versions installed on our development machines.

Rbenv does that for us.

How it works

Rbenv installs ruby version and ruby gems to ~/.rbenv/versions/VERSION_NUMBER/.... This way many different Rubies can be installed at once.

When you run ruby or gem or bundler or any other Ruby binary

• rbenv looks for a file...

On application servers, gems are usually bundled into the project directory, at a location shared across deployments.

This is usually shared/bundle inside your project's root directory, e.g. /var/www/your-project/shared/bundle/.
If you can't find that, take a look at current/.bundle/config and look for BUNDLE_PATH.

When you are changing the version of RubyGems or Bundler on a system where gems are installed this way, you must wipe that bundle directory in addition to the user and system gems or gems that are already ins...

Error

deadlock 0x7f8a4160a360: sleep:- (main) - /home/me/.rbenv/versions/1.8.7-p375/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/bundler-1.14.3/lib/bundler/worker.rb:43
deadlock 0x7f8a38c03b08: sleep:-  - /home/me/.rbenv/versions/1.8.7-p375/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/bundler-1.14.3/lib/bundler/worker.rb:56
*** longjmp causes uninitialized stack frame ***: /home/me/.rbenv/versions/1.8.7-p375/bin/ruby terminated

... followed by a backtrace, memory map and more.

Fix

The culprit seems to be Bundler 1.14 when used with Ruby 1.8.7. [Downgrade to the maximu...

This error message may occur when rspec gets loaded by rake, e.g. when you migrate the test database.

NoMethodError: undefined method 'last_comment' for #<Rake::Application:0x0055a617d37ad0>

Rake 11 removes a method that rspec-core < 3.4.4 depends on. To fix, lock Rake to < 11 in your Gemfile:

  gem 'rake', '< 11', # Removes a method that rspec-core < 3.4 depends on

There are some inconvenient Gem dependencies. Resolve them by adding/modifying these lines in your Gemfile:

  gem 'guard-livereload', '>= 2.5.2', require: false # Fixes a security issue
  gem 'listen', '< 3.1' # 3.1 requires Ruby 2.2.5

It is not possible to install guard-livereload 2.5.2 on Ruby 1.8.7 because it depends on guard 2.8, which requires Ruby 1.9.

The rack-contrib gem brings a JSONP middleware that just works™. Whenever a JSON request has a callback parameter, it will wrap the application's JSON response appropriately.

The project is a bit dated, but the JSONP middleware is ok.

TruffleRuby is an experimental Ruby implementation that tries to achieve ~10x performance over MRI.

This has been on our radar for a while. They seem to have made significant progress running Rails, reducing start-up time and becoming runtime-independent of the JVM.

Also see [Running Optcarrot, a Ruby NES emulator, at 150 fps with the GUI!](https://eregon.me/blog/2016/11/28/optcarrot.htm...

Sometimes huge refactorings or refactoring of core concepts of your application are necessary for being able to meet new requirements or to keep your application maintainable on the long run. Here are some thoughts about how to approach such challenges.

Break it down

Try to break your refactoring down in different parts. Try to make tests green for each part of your refactoring as soon as possible and only move to the next big part if your tests are fixed. It's not a good idea to work for weeks or months and wait for all puzzle pieces ...