Jul 26
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Introduction to Ruby on Rails 2
Presentation given to introduce Rails for URUG Rails Workshop 2009.
In this screencast, you can learn about Rails from an outside-in approach.
Jul 26
Rails CRUD Example
This is a walkthrough on how to create a simple address book using Ruby on Rails v2.1.
Aug 02
Creating a Simple Plugin
Learn how to create a simple plugin using Ruby on Rails. This video will teach you how to turn a view helper into it's own plugin, and extend the ActionView::Base.
Sep 06
Introduction to Outside-in Development with Cucumber
This is a basic introduction to integration testing with cucumber. In it, I describe how to use cucumber and rspec to implement a feature in a web application, emphasizing the importance of writing tests before code, which is often referred to as TDD (test-driven development) or BDD (behavior-driven development, a refinement of the original TDD).
Sep 06
Creating a Twitter Clone in Rails - Part 1
In this series, I attempt to recreate a twitter style application called 'Flitter'. In this installment, I show you how to create an authenticated system easily using existing tools. I also show how to generate test data to simulate an active application. Finally, you will learn how to set up self-referencial associations.
Sep 11
Ruby Essentials - Blocks
This is a screen-cast explaining how to use blocks in ruby.
Sep 18
Getting Connected to Twitter with OAuth
In this screencast, I show you how to use the Twitter gem to connect to Twitter, and we clarify some of the difficulties that comes with learning OAuth.
Sep 25
Basic Ruby on Rails Routing
Ruby on Rails gives you some simple but powerful tools for mapping URL's and HTTP Verbs to your Controllers and Views. Here is a simple walkthrough of 4 of these 'Routes': default routes, regular routes, named routes, and RESTful routes.
Sep 29
Storing Encrypted Data Securely using Active Record
Learn how to save data such as bank information, social security number, or other sensitive information in your Rails application securely by encrypting the data. By using spikex's gem Strongbox, you can use private and public keys to secure your data in your database to where you must have the password to decrypt them.
Oct 07
Rails Shell Application in 10 easy steps
In this screencast you will see how to make a rails application capable of parse and execute shell commands using the ruby function %x
The screencast start with basic shell commands, creation of a ruby script demonstrating the concept and finally follow the recipe of 10 easy steps to build your rails shell application.
Oct 11
Creating a Twitter Clone in Rails - Part 2
Now that we have a backbone to our 'Flitter' application, we learn how to create the front end and tie it all together. In this screencast, I cover a lot of CSS and getting your site to look good. I apologize for it lasting 1 hour, but I decided it's better than chopping it up.
Oct 19
Creating a Twitter Clone in Rails - Part 3
In this screencast, we continue our challenge of creating a Twitter clone called 'Flitter' using Ruby on Rails. We learn how to use jQuery to create a countdown for the text area box. We also set up adding and removing friends via the interface. Oh... you hear my baby cry and my sister-in-law call. Fun stuff :D
Oct 21
Easy Rails Runner Application
Have you ever wanted to run a script or command from the command line and insert data into your rails application?, watch this this screencast and you will see the basics of how to interact with your rails application, starting from the irb ruby shell to the usage of the rails console and entering data into a rails application form a Linux shell prompt using the runner.
To ilustrate this screencasts some basic ruby scripts are used to generate our base of characters for a very simple dictionary generation using nested blocks.
Nov 04
Styleize your Rails App with Themes
Don't want to take the time to create a layout for your new Ruby on Rails application? Don't worry. Use the Themes plugin! In this screencast, I show you how to easily add a layout with built-in menus to your existing Rails application using only 1 line of code.
Nov 09
Creating a Twitter Clone in Rails - Part 4
We're almost done! The remaining screencasts are already recorded, but not edited yet. To speed things up, I split it up into 3 or 4 screencasts. This one shows how to make the site look and feel like Twitter and also populates the right side column content. A bit of CSS, lots of Rails, and more of my ramblings :D
Nov 14
Creating a Twitter Clone in Rails - Part 5
The saga continues. Here we learn how to add the friends list to your application and we use AJAX to add/remove friends.
Nov 14
Monitor Twitter with Ruby and Growl
As I run the final stretch to see if I can get a RubyConf ticket, I decided to create a little tool to help me out. If you visit http://search.twitter.com, you will see that they have a search page that auto updates when new tweets have been posted with certain keywords. I can't watch the site all day, so I decided to write a little tool that will flash the messages on my screen using Growl. Here's how I did it.
Nov 15
Creating a Twitter Clone in Rails - Part 6
In this concluding episode, we go over how to add search functionality to our Flitter application, and add a 'follow / unfollow' button which uses AJAX. This is the last of the 6-part series on how to create a Twitter Clone using Ruby on Rails.
Nov 30
Introduction to MongoDB - Part II
This is the second part of the series on MongoDB. In this screencast, we create a small Sinatra app called YASI that accesses the data using MongoDB. Get the code at http://blog.rubyhead.com/files/yasi.zip
Dec 07
Introduction to MongoDB - Part III, MongoMapper & Rails
This is the third and final episode on introduction to MongDB. In this screencast, we demonstrate MongoMapper and how to use it in a Rails app.
Dec 21
Background Processes with Ruby
Learn how to spawn background processes using Ruby and the Process class. Here we discuss the difference between 'wait' and 'detach'.
Jan 19
Creating an Admin using Nested Controllers
In this screencast, I cover how to create an admin section with a separate login, and describe how nested controllers work.
Feb 17
Ruby Essentials - Strings, Arrays and Hashes
Are you new to Ruby and want to get a head start? In this screencast, I discuss some of the most common methods and techniques that have to do with strings, arrays and hashes. This is also excellent for those coming from other languages.
Mar 10
Gem Bundler
Having two gems that require different versions of the same dependency can sometimes cause runtime errors. Yehuda Katz and Carl Lereche have created an elegant solution in the Gem Bundler.
