ZURB's Foundation is a front-end for quickly building applications and prototypes. It is similar to Twitter Bootstrap but uses Sass instead of LESS. Here you will learn the basics of the grid system, navigation, tooltips and more.

#415 Upgrading to Rails 4

May 6th, 2013 12m 44s

With the release of Rails 4.0.0.rc1 it's time to try it out and report any bugs. Here I walk you through the steps to upgrade a Rails 3.2 application to Rails 4.

#412 Fast Rails Commands

Apr 4th, 2013 8m 5s

Rails commands, such as generators, migrations, and tests, have a tendency to be slow because they need to load the Rails app each time. Here I show three tools to make this faster: Zeus, Spring, and Commands.

#409 Active Model Serializers

Mar 9th, 2013 10m 58s

The ActiveModel::Serializers gem can help you build JSON APIs through serializer objects. This provides a dedicated place to fully customize the JSON output.

#406 Public Activity

Feb 13th, 2013 10m 59s

Learn how to easily add a user activity feed using the public_activity gem. Here I show both the default setup using model callbacks and a manual way to trigger activities.

#402 Better Errors & RailsPanel

Jan 25th, 2013 8m 6s

Here we take a look at two tools to aid us in development: Better Errors which makes it easier than ever to debug exceptions, and RailsPanel, a Chrome extension to see Rails requests.

#400 What's New in Rails 4

Jan 4th, 2013 20m 23s

Rails 4.0 is still unfinished, but it is shaping up to become a great release. Here I show how to setup a new Rails 4.0 (edge) application and walk through many of its new features.

#396 Importing CSV and Excel

Dec 8th, 2012 10m 19s

Allow users to import records into the database by uploading a CSV or Excel document. Here I show how to use Roo to parse these files and present a solution for validations.

#393 Guest User Record

Nov 21st, 2012 9m 27s

Instead of presenting a sign up form to the user, consider creating a temporary guest record so the user can try out the application without filling in their information up front. They can then become a permanent member afterwards.

#390 Turbolinks

Nov 5th, 2012 7m 45s

Turbolinks can make your Rails app feel faster by using JavaScript to replace the page content when clicking a link. It will be default in new Rails 4.0 applications, but here I show how to use it in Rails 3 and mention some of the gotchas.

#387 Cache Digests

Oct 20th, 2012 7m 39s

The cache_digests gem (also included in Rails 4) will automatically add a digest to the fragment cache key based on the template. If a template changes the cache will auto-expire. But watch out for the gotchas!

#384 Exploring RubyGems

Oct 7th, 2012 7m 20s

RubyGems can make it easy to add a feature to a Rails application, but it can also cause headaches down the road. Here I give some tips on researching gems to decide which one to choose, or when to do it from scratch.

#382 Tagging

Sep 22nd, 2012 11m 3s

There are several gems to help implement tags in a Rails app. Here I show you how to integrate acts-as-taggable-on and then show how to do it from scratch.

#378 FnordMetric

Sep 4th, 2012 10m 4s

FnordMetric allows you to chart events in real time. This is great for keeping track of user activity in your Rails app as demonstrated in this episode.

#376 JRuby Basics

Aug 30th, 2012 10m 47s

JRuby is a polished and stable Ruby implementation. Here I show the basics of setting it up and executing Java from within Ruby. I also see how it compares with MRI at running threads.

#374 Image Manipulation

Aug 16th, 2012 11m 22s

Learn how to do extensive image manipulation with the ImageMagick commands. Also learn how RMagick can be used in combination with CarrierWave to process uploaded images.

#372 Bullet

Aug 9th, 2012 6m 19s

Bullet will notify you of database queries that can potentially be improved through eager loading or counter cache column. A variety of notification alerts are supported.

#370 Ransack

Aug 3rd, 2012 10m 18s

Ransack allows you to easily build complex search forms. It also helps in adding sortable links and building a dynamic advanced search page.

#368 MiniProfiler

Jul 24th, 2012 9m 3s

MiniProfiler allows you to see the speed of a request conveniently on the page. It also shows the SQL queries performed and allows you to profile a specific block of code.

#366 Sidekiq

Jul 18th, 2012 10m 17s

Sidekiq allows you to move jobs into the background for asynchronous processing. It uses threads instead of forks so it is much more efficient with memory compared to Resque.

#364 Active Record Reputation System

Jul 9th, 2012 10m 27s

If you need to calculate an average user's rating or sum up a number of votes, consider using the activerecord-reputation-system gem. Here I will cover the basics and also briefly present a from-scratch solution.

#362 Exporting CSV and Excel

Jul 2nd, 2012 6m 35s

As you will see it is easy to add a CSV export option to Rails. Here I also show how to export for Excel in a variety of formats.

#360 Facebook Authentication

Jun 25th, 2012 12m 8s

This will show how to create a new facebook application and configure it. Then add some authentication with the omniauth-facebook gem and top it off with a client-side authentication using the JavaScript SDK.

#358 Brakeman

Jun 15th, 2012 8m 24s

The Brakeman gem will scan the Ruby code of a Rails application and alert you to common security vulnerabilities.

#356 Dangers of Session Hijacking

Jun 8th, 2012 6m 26s

If a user's authentication cookie is sent over an insecure connection it is vulnerable to session hijacking, or more specifically, sidejacking. Learn how this is done, and how you can prevent it.