Practical Ruby Gems [Paperback]

David Berube (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1590598113 | ISBN-13: 978-1590598115 | Publication Date: April 16, 2007 | Edition: 1

Practical Ruby Gems is a comprehensive guide to utilizing and creating Ruby Gems—ready-made Ruby code modules that can be easily added to Ruby and Rails projects. This book is ideal for Ruby programmers as well as web developers who use Rails and wish to extend the functionality of their projects.

You'll get a prime selection of 34 of the best and most useful Gems, which makes up the core of this book. Each of these also comes complete with actual use cases and code examples that you can use immediately in your own projects.

Table of Contents

1. What Is RubyGems?
2. Installing RubyGems
3. Using RubyGems in Your Code
4. Managing Installed Gem Versions
5. Data Access with the ActiveRecord Gem
6. Easy Text Markup with the BlueCloth Gem
7. Creating Web Applications with Camping
8. Creating Command-Line Utilities with cmdparse
9. HTML Templating with erubis
10. Parsing Feeds with feedtools
11. Creating Graphical User Interfaces with fxruby
12. Retrieving Stock Quotes with YahooFinance
13. Parsing HTML with hpricot
14. Writing HTML as Ruby with Markaby
15. Parsing CSV with fastercsv
16. Multiple Dispatch with multi
17. Serving Web Applications with mongrel
18. Transferring Files Securely with net-sftp
19. Executing Commands on Remote Servers with net-ssh
20. Validating Credit Cards with creditcard
21. Writing PDFs with pdf-writer
22. Handling Recurring Events with runt
23. Building Websites with Rails
24. Automating Development Tasks with rake
25. Manipulating Images with RMagick
26. Speeding Up Web Applications with memcache-client
27. Managing Zip Archives with rubyzip
28. Speeding Up Function Calls with memoize
29. Tagging MP3 Files with id3lib-ruby
30. Shortening URLs with shorturl
31. Creating Standalone Ruby Applications with rubyscript2exe
32. Cleaning Dirty HTML with tidy
33. Parsing XML with xml-simple
34. Creating Our Own Gems
35. Distributing Gems

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Berube is a Ruby developer, trainer, author, and speaker. He's used both Ruby and Ruby on Rails for several years, starting in 2003 when he became a Ruby advocate after he wrote about the language for Dr Dobb's Journal. Prior to this, he worked professionally with PHP, Perl, C++, and Visual Basic.

His professional accomplishments include creating the Ruby on Rails engine for CoolRuby.com, a site that tracks the latest Ruby developments, and working with ThoughtBot.com on the Rails engine that powers Sermo America's Top Doctor contest. Additionally, he has worked on several other Ruby projects, including the engine powering CyberKnowHow's BirdFluBreakingNews search engine, and he also created the Slueshi text adventure game system, a multiplayer text game engine written in Ruby.

David's journalism has been in print in over 65 countries, in magazines such as Linux Magazine, Dr Dobb's Journal, and PHP International Magazine. He's also taught college courses and spoken publicly on topics such as "MySQL and You" and "Making Money with Open Source Software."

He lives in New Hampshire and his hobbies include basketball, yo-yos, and sleep.

Product Details

• Paperback: 271 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (April 16, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590598113
• ISBN-13: 978-1590598115
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,417,300 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fundamentals of Gems, and a guided tour of what's available, July 22, 2007

By 

D. P. Cahill (Wexford, Ireland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Practical Ruby Gems (Paperback)

Practical Ruby Gems does exactly what it says on the tin. The first few chapters cover what gems are, how to install them and manage versions. The final chapters cover how to create and distribute your own gems.

Sandwiched between these fundamentals are a slew of concrete examples with code, covering topics like html parsing (hpricot) and RSS parsing (feedtools), zip and pdf manipulation, as well as topics more familiar to Rails people, such as the use of mongrel, rake, and ActiveRecord.

My first impression was that info on specific gems could easily be found by checking their documentation online.

However, after reading more, I realised I had missed the point. In theory, you could get this stuff online, but in practice, the often poor online documentation can't replace clear explanations and concrete code examples. This book fills you in on the fundamentals, then gives an interesting tour of some of the major gems available, with ready to use code. By bringing this all together, it will almost definitely spark some ideas on how to use gems to improve your Ruby code or your Rails apps.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for expanding the power of ruby, December 7, 2007

By 

Andrew Drane "Andrew" (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Practical Ruby Gems (Paperback)

I'm learning Ruby and building Rails applications. This book offers a valuable overview of some of the Gems available for expanding the power of Ruby, including detailed descriptions of a selection of popular Gems. Things like online image manipulation and PDF creation are possible to easily implement with some of the Ruby Gems described in this book.

3.0 out of 5 stars Now dated, but foundationally solid., November 9, 2010

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Practical Ruby Gems (Paperback)

David Berube, Practical Ruby Gems (Apress, 2007)

If you've been following my reviews and you've seen the Ruby and Rails books go by for the past year, you probably know exactly what I'm going to say about this one before I even say it. So I'll keep this short and sweet: it's dated, but you'll learn some interesting stuff from it. Which is true of pretty much every Ruby book I've seen come across my path that was printed more than a year ago. Such is the curse of only being able to afford used copies of computer books, I guess. (Hey, Apress: if a few Rails 3 books were to come Amazon Vine's way, no one would complain.) ***