Eric Tarn

One cool thing about wordpress is that you can get a feed of a specific category by going to /category/category-name/feed or a specific tag by going to /tag/tag-name/feed

require 'open-uri'
require 'hpricot'

doc = Hpricot.parse(open("http://myawesomeblog.com/category/welcome/feed"))
(doc/:item).each do |xml_product|
  puts xml_product.search("/title").first.children.first.raw_string
  puts xml_product.search("/pubDate").first.children.first.raw_string
end

Stolen from: 10 Awesome Ruby on Rails Techniques to Get You Started

Group operations in a transaction: ActiveRecord wraps the creation or update of a record in a single transaction. Multiple inserts will then generate many transactions (one for each insert). Grouping multiple inserts in one single transaction will speed things up.

Insead of:

diners_in_nj.each do |d|
  Diner.create({:disco_fries => d.disco_fries})
end

Use:

Diner.transaction do
  diners_in_nj.each do |d|
    Diner.create({:disco_fries => d.disco_fries})
  end
end

or for rolling back the whole transaction if any insert fails, use:

Diner.transaction do
  diners_in_nj.each do |d|
    diner = Diner.new({:disco_fries => d.disco_fries})
    diner.save!
  end
end

A less annoying database.yml file when you use the same database for all three environments

defaults: &defaults
    adapter: mysql
    encoding: utf8
    reconnect: false
    pool: 5
    username: admin
    password: welcome1

development:
    database: friendster_dev
    <<: *defaults

test:
    database: friendster_test
    <<: *defaults

production:
    database: friendster
    <<: *defaults

How come its always so hard to find documentation for the database.yml file?

/test/fixtures/users.yml

<%
  def auto_increment
    @id ||= 0; @id += 1
  end
%>
tommy:
  id: <%= auto_increment %>
  email: tommy@thedocks.com
  created_at: <%= 6.months.ago.to_s(:db) %>
gina:
  id: <%= auto_increment %>
  email: gina@jerseydiner.com
  created_at: <%= 1.minute.ago.to_s(:db) %>

/test/unit/user_test.rb

fixtures :users

def test_can_access_tommy_fixture
  assert(users(:tommy) != nil)
end

Import your fixture records into the current environment: rake db:fixtures:load

Sometimes when things get crazy, you need to reference the default stuff.

class ArticlesController < ApplicationController
  # GET /articles
  # GET /articles.xml
  def index
    @articles = Article.all

    respond_to do |format|
      format.html # index.html.erb
      format.xml  { render :xml => @articles }
    end
  end

  # GET /articles/1
  # GET /articles/1.xml
  def show
    @article = Article.find(params[:id])

    respond_to do |format|
      format.html # show.html.erb
      format.xml  { render :xml => @article }
      format.json { render :json => @article }
    end
  end

  # GET /articles/new
  # GET /articles/new.xml
  def new
    @article = Article.new

    respond_to do |format|
      format.html # new.html.erb
      format.xml  { render :xml => @article }
    end
  end

  # GET /articles/1/edit
  def edit
    @article = Article.find(params[:id])
  end

  # POST /articles
  # POST /articles.xml
  def create
    @article = Article.new(params[:article])

    respond_to do |format|
      if @article.save
        flash[:notice] = 'Article was successfully created.'
        format.html { redirect_to(@article) }
        format.xml  { render :xml => @article, :status => :created, :location => @article }
      else
        format.html { render :action => "new" }
        format.xml  { render :xml => @article.errors, :status => :unprocessable_entity }
      end
    end
  end

  # PUT /articles/1
  # PUT /articles/1.xml
  def update
    @article = Article.find(params[:id])

    respond_to do |format|
      if @article.update_attributes(params[:article])
        flash[:notice] = 'Article was successfully updated.'
        format.html { redirect_to(@article) }
        format.xml  { head :ok }
      else
        format.html { render :action => "edit" }
        format.xml  { render :xml => @article.errors, :status => :unprocessable_entity }
      end
    end
  end

  # DELETE /articles/1
  # DELETE /articles/1.xml
  def destroy
    @article = Article.find(params[:id])
    @article.destroy

    respond_to do |format|
      format.html { redirect_to(articles_url) }
      format.xml  { head :ok }
    end
  end
end