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Ruby Inside (14 unread)

Ruby IDE RubyMine 2.0 Beta Released

Posted: September 30th, 2009, 11:37am MDT by Peter Cooper
RubyMine is a Ruby and Rails IDE (for Windows, OS X, and Linux) by JetBrains, the guys behind the popular Java IDE IntelliJ IDEA. We've previously posted about how much people seem to like RubyMine, and it looks like things will get even better, as they've just released the beta of RubyMine 2.0. Notably, RubyMine 2.0 will be free to existing 1.0 users as it falls within the year allowed for free updates!

The New Stuff

RubyMine 2.0 was initially meant to only be RubyMine 1.5 but Eugene Toporov of JetBrains told me that they've considered 2.0 to be more appropriate given the number of updates and additions. Updates include:
- Ruby 1.9 support
- Rails 2.3.3 support
- Rails i18n (internationalization) support and spell checker
- UI improvements
- Cucumber and Shoulda support (in addition to the existing, and now improved, RSpec support)
- Built-in HAML and Sass support
JetBrains' RubyMine 2.0 beta overview page gives full examples of the changes and improvements.
20% Discount Until General Availability
JetBrains are offering a 20% discount on purchases of RubyMine from now until the general release of 2.0 - due sometime in the next few weeks, so this is a great time to try it out and, if you like it, buy a copy. The offer price is currently $79 to US users or £57 in the UK. Not bad considering the parent product, IntelliJ IDEA, weighs in at hundreds of dollars!
Still A Bit Flaky To Me, But A Strong Step Forward
I'm not typically into IDEs and find the lack of a truly native OS X Ruby IDE a little jarring. RubyMine 2.0 does seem to have a somewhat improved interface, though, but I still find it flaky. For example, when you press backspace when filling out fields in the preferences dialogs, it doesn't work, and instead you see characters being deleted from your open code in the background! When filling out other dialog boxes, when I pressed Enter it added lines into my code in the background too rather than close the dialog.

RubyMine isn't a native OS X app from what I can tell (you can reskin it from the preferences pane!) and dialog and UI behavior is not really up to OS X standard in much of the app. Despite reservations about using it myself, though, other users on Twitter are raving about how good it is so it's certainly worth a try. It's certainly improved enough that I'm going to give it a proper try this time.

Disclosure: JetBrains, creator of RubyMine, is a sponsor of Ruby Inside. This post is, however, not contingent on that and I have no other relationship with the company (and, sadly, don't get a cut of any sales - ha!).
Ruby Enterprise Edition 1.8.7 Released – Lower Memory Usage, Increased Speed

Posted: September 29th, 2009, 2:07pm MDT by Peter Cooper

Today Phusion has announced the release of Ruby Enterprise Edition (REE) 1.8.7 (more specifically, 1.8.7-20090928). Once considered a bit of a joke, given the name, REE has proven itself to be anything but, with significant memory usage and speed improvements over the stock "MRI" Ruby implementation (achieved by way of patches to the MRI code). The key development with this release is compatibility with Ruby 1.8.7, rather than the 1.8.6 of previous versions.

While REE has shown itself to be a good performer compared to the unpatched MRI implementation before, this week Evan Weaver of Twitter revealed how a release candidate version of REE 1.8.7 has resulted in a significant throughput increase on the same codebase. He also noted that Ruby is faster when compiled with optimization for size rather than speed due to the benefits of being able to fit more of Ruby into the CPU's cache. REE 1.8.7 is optimized for size by default, so you get the same improvements out of the box. For information on other optimizations and changes from MRI, Phusion's release post has more details.

Installing REE is pretty easy (instructions here) but the latest version of RVM (Ruby Version Manager) already has support for it if you want to seamlessly run multiple versions of Ruby.

Disclaimer: The REE "logo" shown above is not official and was designed by Ahmad Galal. It's CC 3.0 licensed.

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TweetStream: Use the Twitter Streaming API from Ruby

Posted: September 25th, 2009, 3:02pm MDT by Peter Cooper
A couple of weeks ago, popular micro-blogging service Twitter unveiled a beta "streaming API." Twitter's nature means they get hammered with polling requests so they've begun to experiment with the concept of streaming relevant data within a single HTTP request (in a Comet style). TweetStream (or GitHub repo) is a new Ruby library by Michael Bleigh to handle interacting with Twitter streams from Ruby.

TweetStream is available as a gem from both GitHub and Gemcutter (which, incidentally, got a fresh design today) and installation instructions are given in Michael's blog post about TweetStream. Once you're all installed, though, reading the live stream becomes as simple as:
```
require 'tweetstream'  

TweetStream::Client.new(TWITTER_USERNAME, TWITTER_PASSWORD).sample do |status|
  puts "[#{status.user.screen_name}] #{status.text}"
end  
```
Beyond basic functions, though, TweetStream also include daemonization features that allow you to create scripts that run in the background "out of the box." You could add these features yourself with the daemons library, sure, but having this at hand to quickly throw together Twitter scripts is pretty cool.

Other related stuff: If you're more interested in using Twitter from Ruby generally, check out John Nunemaker's Twitter library. If you want to build a Twitter bot in Ruby, check out Twibot. And, lastly, if you just want to follow some Rubyists on Twitter, check out Satish Talim's list of 50+ Rubyists to Follow on Twitter.

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Watchr: A Flexible, Generic Alternative to AutoTest

Posted: September 24th, 2009, 4:33am MDT by Ric Roberts
Watchr is a continuous-testing tool by Martin Aumont in the vein of Autotest (part of the ZenTest package).

At its heart, Watchr basically watches any (or all!) of your project's files, then executes arbitrary Ruby code of your choice when things change. Watchr configuration takes such a form:
```
watch('pattern') { |match_data_object| command_to_run }
```
For example, to produce Autotest-like functionality, you'd just specify Watchr to run the tests whenever a test or some library code changes, like this (taken from Martin's blog post):
```
watch('test/test_.*\.rb') { |md| system "ruby #{md[0]}"}
watch('lib/(.*)\.rb')     { |md| system "ruby test/test_#{md[1]}.rb"}
```
...but Watchr can be used for much more than just testing. You could use it to automatically generate documentation, build your gem or any other tasks that you can script in Ruby.

To get started with Watchr, just install the gem (from Gemcutter), and run the watchr command from your project root, passing the location of the configuration script:
```
$ gem install watchr --source=http://gemcutter.org
$ cd to/your/project/root
$ watchr path/to/script
```
The source and some documentation (including example scripts) is available on Github, and you can read more on Martin's blog too.

If an even more simplistic route appeals to you, Ruby Inside's editor, Peter Cooper, has a basic Rake task that can run a script of your choice when files change within a project.

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12 Interesting Upcoming Ruby and Rails Events (That Aren’t Sold Out)

Posted: September 21st, 2009, 3:17pm MDT by Peter Cooper
Wanted to go to JRubyConf or RubyConf this year? Tough - they're sold out already. Luckily, though, there are some interesting upcoming events that you can still get in to - some online, some in multiple cities, some held in youth centers, some in hotels, and even one on a tropical island. Whew!

(Update: Removed Aloha on Rails as it has sold out - thanks to Tammer Saleh for the note.)
Free "Optimizing Your Online Store" Webinar (Online; September 24, 2009)

New Relic is running a free webinar event on Thursday, September 24 for developers and customers interested in optimizing e-commerce sites ready for the 2009 holiday season. The webinar will feature New Relic customer SheetMusicPlus.com and will provide tips for getting your online store prepared.

Naturally, being a New Relic event, the focus will be on New Relic's RPM product and a special webinar-only discount will be offered. Given the quality of New Relic's other materials though, I doubt it's going to be a sales pitch from start to finish. Click here to register. (I've just been told the first 20 people to register are entered in a draw to win an iPod nano.)
RubyFoo (London, UK; October 2-3, 2009)

RubyFoo is a Ruby conference taking place in London in October, 2009. It's being put on by Trifork, the company behind the successful JAOO developer conferences. RubyFoo is a sort of follow up to the RubyFools conference they put on in Copenhagen, Denmark last year. Speakers include Sam Aaron, Ola Bini (JRuby), Adam Wiggins, Aslak Hellesoy, and Matz, and the general theme of the conference is "communicative programming." Note: You can use the promotion code of "Rubyinside" to get £50 off registration.
Rails Roadshow (USA; October and November, 2009)
The Rails Roadshow is a series of five free events being organized by esteemed Rails hosting company Engine Yard. In order:
- October 26 - Boston, MA
- October 27 - Chicago, IL
- October 29 - Austin, TX
- October 30 - Los Angeles, CA
- November 2 - Seattle, WA
Despite being an Engine Yard-heavy event, the schedule is quite varied with speakers from Amazon, New Relic, and CVSDude in addition to those from Engine Yard. The theme is "performance in the cloud." For free, it seems like a nice morning out (the event finishes at midday) and you get breakfast - what's not to like?

Rails Summit Latin America 2009 (São Paulo, Brazil; October 13-14, 2009)
Rails Summit Latin America comes back for a second run in 2009 - taking place between October 13-14 in sunny São Paulo, Brazil. Last year's event attracted 550 attendees, so for a regional Ruby/Rails conference it did amazingly. This year it costs 400 Brazilian Real to attend (about $200).

Speakers lined up to speak so far include Bryan Liles, Carlos Brando, Chad Fowler, Gregg Pollack, Ilya Grigorik, Jason Seifer, Matt Aimonetti, Obie Fernandez, Pratik Naik, Rich Kilmer, and several prominent South American Rubyists. It's a bit of an all-star affair!

Rails Camps (Margate, UK and Melbourne, Australia; October / November 2009)
Rails Camps is a series of Rails related get-togethers, run in a lo-fi style in, usually, Australia and the United Kingdom. Two Rails Camps are on the calendar for late 2009. The first in Margate, UK (an interesting seaside resort, to say the least) on October 16-19 and the second in Melbourne, Australia on November 20-23. Previous reports show that these events seem to go down really well, especially if you want to get away from it all for a few days and hang out with fellow geeks - so check it out.
RubyEnRails (Amsterdam, Netherlands; October 30-31, 2009)

Where Euruko is Europe's equivalent of RubyConf, RubyEnRails is starting to look like Europe's answer to RailsConf. This year, RubyEnRails takes place in Amsterdam on October 30 and 31 and speakers include Jeremy Kemper, Yehuda Katz, Jonathan Weiss, Eloy Duran, Bart ten Brinke, Willem van Bergen, and Edwin Vlieg. It only costs 79 euro (about $120 or £70) and it sounds like it's been a fun event in previous years.

Note: I always seem to miss some awesome events in these roundups so, as always, please leave comments recommending your own events, those I've forgotten, etc.
Learnivore: Ruby Focused Screencast Aggregator

Posted: September 21st, 2009, 2:27pm MDT by Peter Cooper

Learnivore is a new(ish) site by French Rubyist Thibaut Barrère that aims to aggregate all of the best screencasts in any easy to navigate, searchable manner. Learnivore is worth following (you can even follow it on Twitter) because unlike blog posts, screencasts from disparate sources haven't really been specifically indexed and presented well before.

Currently, Learnivore has a very strong Ruby and Rails focus though it's not exclusively Ruby - there are some Web design and iPhone videos mixed in there (though mostly still of interest to the average Rubyist, IMHO). The sources are BDDCasts, EnvyCasts, New Relic, SitePoint, Peepcode, Railscasts, RubyPulse, and the Pragmatic Programmers - all Ruby-leaning sources.

Naturally, Learnivore isn't the only Ruby screencast aggregator in town - RubyTu.be is another new-ish site in the same niche, though Learnivore takes the presentation crown in my opinion. Two great resources nonetheless.

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How To Create Your Own Programming Language (Using Ruby and/or Java)

Posted: September 18th, 2009, 6:29pm MDT by Peter Cooper

Create Your Own Programming Language is a interesting new information product and community by Marc-André Cournoyer (of Thin fame) that promises to teach you how to create a simple programming language. The official site is well worth checking out, even if you don't want to buy it, as it's a great example of how to sell a product like this. Create Your Own Programming Language costs $39.99 and has a two month money back guarantee.
What You Get - 2 Different Approaches
The package includes a 53 page PDF (only 44 pages in the earlier copy I received), a pile of source code (for two different types of bootstrapped languages), and a screencast, along with access to a community of other users. Out of the box, you can create your own "programming language" (of sorts) with a single shell script.

Two different types of approach are provided. The first is a pure Ruby lexer, parser, and interpreter that lets you build your programming language using mostly Ruby. This is what the PDF covers. The second is a JVM (Java Virtual Machine) based language that provides a bootstrap and execution environment upon which you can build a higher performance language; this is what the screencast covers. In both cases, the default languages are ultra-bare Ruby variants of sorts.

Quick Results Rather Than Detail

The PDF is short but well produced. It leads you through building a new Ruby-like language called "Awesome" upon the Ruby powered lexer, parser, and interpreter supplied in the package. It lacks detail but covers the broad concepts well with a focus on quick results rather than detail or inane computer science.

Likewise, the screencast video isn't a "everything from start to finish" production in the PeepCode manner. It's only 11 minutes long and moves incredibly quickly. The screencast covers adding a "while" construct to the JVM-backed language, as well as a "substring" string method and "eval". The video is good to get a "high level" view of what's involved (and is probably worth watching before opening the book, just to get a feel) but to get the most out of it you need to be either familiar with the terminology and concepts being covered (partially covered in the PDF) or ready to hit the pause button a lot.
It Whets The Appetite; Great For Dabblers
Create Your Own Programming Language is suitably titled but potentially misleading, since although it does let you create your "own" programming language, the resulting language is within a small gamut of what could be considered to be a "programming language." No, CYOPL isn't going to meet lofty technical expectations but it provides a great way to dip your toes into the waters of creating a language, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to those who want to have a dabble and learn a few things.

If, however, you consider yourself a bit of a hotshot and want to really dig deep into building compilers and programming languages, the materials in CYOPL lack the detail and the frankly intimidating level of knowledge you'd need to really design and build a robust programming language. If that's you, buy a copy of Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools by Aho, Lam, Sethi, Ullman and enjoy the ride - it's an awesome book and considered canonical in the compiler construction field. Alternatively read Loren Segal's awesome (free) online Writing Your Own Toy Compiler Using Flex, Bison and LLVM series.

Disclaimer: I requested and received a free review copy of CYOPL from the author, but otherwise have no financial connection with the product or its author.
Coulda: A Cucumber-like DSL for BDD

Posted: September 14th, 2009, 11:30am MDT by Ric Roberts
Evan Light has recently pushed his Coulda project to Github - it's a test framework based on Test::Unit, inspired by Cucumber, Shoulda and Thor.

Coulda works like Cucumber in that it's a Domain Specific Language for capturing the behaviour expected by your code, as part of the Behavior Driven Develoment approach (BDD). Others have noted it's a little like the RSpec story runner.

Where Coulda differs is that instead of using Gherkin to convert your statements about the behavior to code using regular expressions, it uses standard method calls. This is less of a cognitive leap for the developer... with Coulda, you can test like you code.
```
require 'rubygems'
require 'coulda'
include Coulda

Feature "feature name" do
  in_order_to "foo"
  as_a "bar"
  i_want_to "blech"

  def something
  end

  def expectation
  end

  Scenario "pending scenario"

  Scenario "another scenario" do
    Given "a pending prereq"
    When "something happens" do
      something
    end
    Then "expect something else" do
      expectation
    end
  end

  Scenario "that is live" do
    Given "foo" do; end
    When "bar" do; end
    Then "blech" do; end
  end
end
```
To be honest, I'm not a big user of Cucumber, so I'm not able to give much of an intelligent commentary here - I suggest you read more about Coulda on Evan's blog. You can get the code on Github.

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6 Ruby Jobs To Check Out for September 2009

Posted: September 10th, 2009, 2:51pm MDT by Peter Cooper

Looking for a Ruby/Rails job in Texas, California, Florida, Illinois, or Texas? We might have want you want in this post. This is perhaps the most diverse set of states featured in a Ruby Inside job post - usually it's just California and New York! It seems Ruby and Rails are now finding a full-time billing in a whole new set of companies.
Ruby Application Developer - EquityMetrix LLC - Dallas, Texas
EquityMetrix LLC, a Dallas based business services company, is looking for a Ruby application developer to work alongside experienced developers building applications for internal and client use. You'll be working with Ruby, Linux, Postgresql and other open source software. Your job will consist of developing Web applications, libraries, scripts, and building data mining systems. You need a working knowledge of Ruby, Rails and JavaScript, as well as Linux and source control (svn or git).

Rails Engineer (for games) - Serious Business - San Francisco, California
Serious Business is a social games developer located in downtown San Francisco and they're looking for an experienced Rails developer to not only build cutting edge Web interfaces, but to work on their server side game logic, internal tools, and database systems. Located in San Francisco and with a staff of 19, this is an opportunity to work with a close knit team on cool stuff. Perks include 30" monitors, Aeron chairs, MacBook Pros, and full health, vision and dental benefits.

Rails Savvy Software Engineer - Spatial Networks, Inc - Clearwater, Florida
Spatial Networks, Inc is looking for a challenge-seeking quick learner with a few years' Rails experience to work in its Clearwater, FL office. Bonus points for familiarity with Amazon Web Services, HAML/SASS, and testing. Note: This job listing expires on Friday, September 11, 2009 - so act fast!

Ruby Software Developer - Braintree Payment Solutions - Chicago, Illinois
Braintree Payment Solutions wants a developer to help do greenfield development in the payment solutions space. You'll be working from their Chicago, IL office in a new, highly collaborative team which you'll help to define. Rails will make up most of the work to start with but they want to leverage other technologies over time, such as Erlang and Clojure, so an experimental nature would come in handy. Note: This job listing expires on Sunday, September 13, 2009 - so act fast!

Ruby Application Developer - The Scruggs Group - Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas
The Scruggs Group, a Texas based data mining consultancy, is looking for an experienced Ruby and Rails developer to work full time in the Dallas / Fort Worth area. You'll be working on Rails Web apps and integrating them with other Web services. You'll need a strong working knowledge of modern software development techniques and methodologies including UML architecture models and automated unit testing.

If you want to post your own job to the Ruby Inside job board or just follow it separately from these posts, click here. The current rate is $299 for 45 days of exposure - often including being featured in a post like this one!
Interesting Ruby Tidbits That Don’t Need Separate Posts #28

Posted: September 9th, 2009, 3:14pm MDT by Peter Cooper

Welcome to the latest in the series of random Ruby related links I've picked up over the past few weeks. It's a crazy grab-bag of links this time around! Whatever your job, interest, or fetish, there's bound to be something in here that tickles your fancy if you're a Rubyist. Enjoy!

Note: Don't forget that if you like quick-fire links like this, check out our sister site RubyFlow. There are usually anywhere between 3 and 15 Ruby and Rails related links each day coming from developers just like you :)
eval Isn't Quite Pure Evil
James Edward Gray II looks at a case where he used eval and got chastized for it. He then notes that eval isn't necessarily always evil and that our reactions to seeing it in code might be a little quick off the mark.
Sketches - Have Editor-Based Ruby Code Reloaded By IRB Automatically
Sketches is a Ruby tool (available as a gem - gem install sketches) that lets you create and edit Ruby code in your favorite text editor while having it safely reloaded in IRB whenever the code is saved/updated. If you're a bit braver, though, check out Hijack, which gets you a live IRB prompt for any existing Ruby process.
Sumo - One-Off Amazon EC2 Instance Launcher
Sumo (or GitHub repo) is a cute little Ruby-powered command line app to quickly launch and manage Amazon EC2 instances. As an aside, the code provides a small and well formed example of building a command line app around Thor. (If you need something more intense, check out PoolParty, which can manage whole clusters of EC2 instances for you.)
On Rake
On Rake is a perfectly formed blog post by John Barnette about rake (Ruby's "make"). In it he claims most people use Rake simply as a tool to launch tasks (which is true, in my experience) but then quickly demonstrates how Rake's dependency resolution features can radically improve the code you use to define those tasks.
FakeFS - Transparently Get A Fake Filesystem For Ruby
FakeFS is a Ruby library by GitHub extraordinaire Chris Wanstrath that transparently makes the File, Dir, and FileUtils class use an in-memory "virtual" file system. The main benefit of this is for speeding up (and simplifying) test environments.
Getting Started with MacRuby
Getting Started with MacRuby is a great "walkthrough"-style blog post that explains what MacRuby is (an OS X-focused Ruby implementation), how to get it running and how to test it. This is a great guide. We've previously written about MacRuby on Ruby Inside before, if you want to learn more.
Ruby's Metaprogramming Toolbox
Corban Brook has put together a comprehensive article on metaprogramming in Ruby. The highlight is in its conclusion with the implementation of a "poor man's ActiveRecord" where he rolls an ActiveRecord-lite in less than 50 lines of code.
A Native Callback Object for Ruby 1.8.6/7 (MRI) and Ruby 1.9.2
The guys at MethodMissing have come up with a clever Ruby library that provides a native callback system that offers performance superior to lambdas (though not as fast as regular method dispatch). Some interesting "playing with Ruby's guts" work going on in here.
P2P Using TCP & Ruby
Over two years ago on Ruby Inside, I demonstrated how to "punch" a hole through your firewall using Ruby and UDP. Now, Alex MacCaw demonstrates how to implement a P2P-style system in a similar way but using TCP! This is an interesting tactic and works on the majority (though not all!) of routers. I was delighted to see Alex got the idea from an academic paper - there are some great ideas in papers you can pull across into your Ruby work (my library WhatLanguage was based on some ideas in a paper).

Support from: Brightbox; - Europe's leading provider of Ruby on Rails hosting. Now with Phusion Passenger support, each Brightbox server comes with access to a managed MySQL cluster and redundant SAN storage. Brightbox also provides managed services for large scale applications and dedicated clusters.
Review of The Merb Way by Foy Savas

Posted: September 8th, 2009, 2:31pm MDT by Ric Roberts

I've been reading the Merb Way by Foy Savas (Addison Wesley). I was a little sceptical about this book at first, because of the recent marriage of the Merb and Rails core teams and the announcement that the Merb codebase would be merged with Rails as part of the march towards Rails 3. As Yehuda Katz put it, "Merb 2 is Rails 3".

So, is this book now redundant? I don't think so. As Obie Fernandez explains in the foreword, knowing about Merb is still valuable as it is a fairly widely used framework, and it will probably continue to be seen in the wild for a good while after Rails 3 is released. Additionally, learning how Merb works and exploring the underpinning philosophies will aid your understanding of some of the changes happening in Rails.

The book itself is engaging and well written, and serves as a great reference guide for developing Merb applications. It's quite code-heavy, but this is by no means a criticism - Foy guides the reader through the Merb source, revealing how things are done in Merb, in order that the Ruby community can learn from it for developing our applications and future frameworks.

With under 300 pages of actual content, this is by no means a weighty tome, but it covers most things a Merb developer needs to know. Foy starts with the fundamentals, explaining how Merb apps are structured and configured, as well as providing an introduction to some of the internals of Merb. The first part of the book is concerned with routing and MVC, which will be familiar to Rails developers. It then moves onto more Merb-specific topics such as slices (self-contained mini-apps that can be packaged as gems) and parts (for reusable logic used in partials throughout your app). Sessions, authentication, and mailers are also covered, before the book concludes with a chapter on testing.

The Merb Way is available now from Amazon for $29.19 (or £23.19 from Amazon UK).
Ruby5: A Twice-Weekly 5 Minute Ruby News Podcast

Posted: September 5th, 2009, 5:00pm MDT by Peter Cooper

Ruby5 is a new twice weekly podcast dedicated to Ruby and Rails news. It's headed by Gregg Pollack (formerly of the RailsEnvy podcast which Jason Seifer has now taken over) and Nathan Bibler. They aim to cover several bits of Ruby and Rails news in five minutes. You can also leave comments about the stories on their site as you listen. As of today, there are 7 episodes in the archives if you want to catch up, all in the 5-6 minute range.

I'm not a big fan of listening to news, but Ruby5 has done a great job of also making it possible to learn about what they've featured without listening to the audio if you don't want to.
Why’s “Try Ruby” (Web Version of irb) Back Online

Posted: September 2nd, 2009, 12:28pm MDT by Peter Cooper

Try Ruby was a Web site by Why The Lucky Stiff that provided a Web-based version of irb (the interactive ruby prompt) and a 15 minute tutorial for people to learn and play with Ruby. With Why's disappearance, however, the site went down and an invaluable Ruby community resource was lost.

Luckily, Andrew McElroy has made a great effort in getting Try Ruby back online. It's not precisely the same, but it's as close as you're going to get for now (one key difference is that the irb process is not persistent - instead the history is re-run on each new line). There's even the 15 minute introductory Ruby tutorial! An extra bonus is that Andrew has released all of the code he has for Try Ruby in a Github repository. Why's code was never open sourced but Andrew has done a good job in starting to rebuild the backend.

Note that this is not a Why-approved project (yet). To the best of my knowledge there is still no further information on Why's disappearance.

Support from: Brightbox - Europe's leading provider of Ruby on Rails hosting. Brightbox is currently looking for a Senior Developer to take a lead developing their customer control panel and other backend systems. They want a great coder and project manager with experience of RSpec and Capistrano.
CouchRest: CouchDB, Close to the Metal

Posted: September 1st, 2009, 6:14pm MDT by Ric Roberts
I have been contemplating the use of document-stores in my Ruby apps for a few months (you might remember my MongoMapper post from back in June), and I've been following developments in the No-SQL movement. George Palmer's presentation at Rails Underground on his couch_foo gem inspired me to explore the possibilities further, and I've recently started work on incorporating CouchDB into some projects that I'm working on.
What is a "document store?"
Couch is one of several available document oriented databases (the other main contender being MongoDB, for which there's a good comparison on the Mongo website). Document stores go some way to bridging the gap between traditional functionality-rich relational databases (like MySQL, Postgres) and fast, highly scalable key/value stores (such as Toyko Cabinet). I think I should make it clear at this point that I'm not a SQL-hater: I worked as a DBA for a while a few years ago, and if you have truly relational data with a fixed schema and complex transaction requirements then you can't beat a good RDBMS.

With CouchDB and friends, data is held in documents. These documents don't have a fixed schema - they can have any number of arbitrary properties. This makes document stores great for holding collections of similarly (but not identically) stuctured items. CouchDB stores the data as JSON hashes, and provides a REST interface for creating, updating and querying.
Using CouchDB in your Ruby App
I've already mentioned couch_foo as one option for interacting with a CouchDB from Ruby app but after a bit of investigation, I eventually decided against it. Although it provides a familiar ActiveRecord-style interface and seems well-written, I wanted something that was a bit closer to couch's RESTful HTTP and JSON interface. Also, I wasn't convinced that extending the ActiveRecord paradigm to a document-based database was a good fit. I also dabbled with Alex Lang's couch_potato library, but finally decided on CouchRest.
CouchRest
CouchRest lightly wraps CouchDB's HTTP API (via RestClient, Heroku's Ruby HTTP wrapper), and provides a simple, Object-Mapper agnostic framework on which to build your application. Things just work as you'd expect: the JSON that comes back from CouchDB queries are presented as objects based on Ruby Hashes.
Models, Properties and Views
With CouchRest, you can define models for documents that share similar structures, deriving from CouchRest::ExtendedDocument. Properties that are common to each Model can be declared with CouchRest's property method. It also supports the automatic setting of created_at and updated_at properties, callbacks and validations.

In Couch, you query and filter your data via views. Views are declared as javascript map-reduce functions that iterate through all documents in the database, building an ordered index of key-value pairs. CouchRest lets you declare simple views in Ruby, so that you can look up documents by that property. If you need more control, there's also the option of passing the raw javascript to the Ruby method.
```
class Article < CouchRest::ExtendedDocument

  include CouchRest::Validation

  property :date
  property :title
  property :slug

  view_by :slug

  validates_present :title

  timestamps!

  save_callback :before, :generate_slug_from_title

  def generate_slug_from_title
    self.slug = title.downcase.gsub(/[^a-z0-9]/,'-').squeeze('-').gsub(/^\-|\-$/,'') if new?
  end
end
```
Hopefully this has given you a taster of what CouchDB might be good for, and how CouchRest can help you with integrating it into your Ruby app. Obviously there's much more too it than I've covered here, but this (draft) online O'Reilly book is a great place to start learning about CouchDB ...and it's co-written by J. Chris Anderson, author of the CouchRest Ruby library.

Also...Jumpstart Lab is offering Ruby Jumpstart, an introduction to programming for total beginners, on 9/26-9/27 in Washington, DC. Save $30 with code "rubyinside"!