better rails app restart with the passenger restart-app tool

passenger-config restart-app restarts a Rails app immediately without touching tmp/restart.txt, avoiding the next-request delay and fitting Capistrano deployments.

Rails 2: Refuse response formats application-wide

Bot traffic can trigger ActionView::MissingTemplate by requesting bogus URL suffixes. Restricting allowed request formats application-wide prevents invalid format parameters from reaching controllers.

Customize and download · Bootstrap

Bootstrap variables can be overridden to customize an application, and bootstrap-sass uses $ instead of @ for variable names.

AngularJS directive to format a text with paragraphs and new lines

Plain text in AngularJS can be rendered as paragraphs and line breaks while escaping HTML fragments, similar to Rails simple_format.

assignable_values 0.9.0 supports virtual attributes

assignable_values can now validate virtual attributes, letting attr_accessor fields accept only approved values without custom validation code.

Linux: How to print PDF files from the command line

Command-line PDF printing is useful for batch jobs and headless systems, with lp sending files to the default or a chosen CUPS printer.

Ruby: How to camelize a string with a lower-case first letter

ActiveSupport String#camelize(:lower) turns snake_case into lowerCamelCase for JavaScript-style naming without custom string handling.

Where is that rake task defined?

rake -W [substring_of_task] locates the source file and line for a Rake task when its definition is hard to find.

Listening to bubbling events in Prototype is easy

Prototype event handling on individual elements is brittle and breaks after AJAX replacement. Delegated document.on bindings keep change handlers working on dynamic content.

Test whether Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) is enabled on a server (using OpenSSL)

openssl s_client can verify whether a server supports Perfect Forward Secrecy by checking if a cipher handshake succeeds or fails.

Heartbleed test

Checks a server hostname for the Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL (CVE-2014-0160).

The Heartbleed Bug

A flaw in OpenSSL and SSL/TLS can expose protected data to attackers and leak secrets from encrypted internet traffic.

No more file type confusion in TextMate2

TextMate2 can misclassify Cucumber step definition files as plain Ruby, and fileType settings in .tm_properties assign them the correct syntax scope.

PDF Generation in Rails

Generating PDFs in Rails often means choosing between text-based reports, HTML-to-PDF rendering, and different trade-offs in layout control and browser fidelity.

What's new in edge Rails: Active Record enums

Integer-backed model attributes can be queried by symbolic names, making state handling clearer and avoiding hard-coded numeric values.

The MariaDB Foundation Announces General Availability of MariaDB 10

MariaDB 10 adds replication, NoSQL capabilities and sharding for web-scale workloads, bringing features developed with major high-traffic users into general availability.

Why Ruby Class Methods Resist Refactoring

Class methods are harder to refactor into smaller units because they cannot hold state, so shared context must be threaded through repeated parameters.

Obfuscating data in Rails applications for screenshots and demonstrations

Real data makes demos and screenshots look convincing, but names and values need masking to avoid exposing sensitive information. Faker can quickly replace personal details with plausible placeholders.

Introducing ActiveType

A gem supports the form model approach for managing form data and validation with a cleaner object-oriented structure.

IE10 / IE11 Metro mode: How to switch tabs or show the address bar

IE10 and IE11 Metro mode can hide the tab bar and address bar when used with a mouse; right-clicking restores the controls.

Thread Safety With Ruby — Luca Guidi

Ruby threads share a writable heap inside one VM process, so unsynchronized access can cause unexpected behavior in concurrent code.

CSS: Vertically center with margin: auto

Absolute positioning with margin: auto centers an element vertically and horizontally inside a relative container, if the element fits within the available space.

Showcases

Directory of popular GitHub projects for discovering widely used repositories and tools.

Why your previous developer was terrible

Judging legacy code by today’s needs hides the uncertainty faced during initial development, where many architecture and technology choices were made with incomplete information.