When I started learning Ruby on Rails a little over a year ago someone in the Ruby community told me there were currently on 164 developers in the United States. Over the course of the last year that number has grown exponentially. As with many next generation technologies the challenge is how to learn it. Often times the only resources for learning are workshops, seminars, books or online tutorials and examples. “This article will present the best Ruby tutorials, examples and downloads I’ve found over the course of the last year. I’ve spent numerous hours searching google, del.icio.us, digg etc.. looking for usable and relevant examples. This list only exists, because of the time and energy of the developers spent providing this information to all of us for free. If you find these tutorials and examples helpful please drop by the developers site’s and let them know how much you appreciate their great work.”If you know of other Ruby tutorials, examples or downloads please submit a comment or email me. Thanks!”

Downloads

“Rails Blog AppsrnAjax Hierarchical Category and Calendar browserrnFor a Typo blog”TypornRuby on Rails blog software. (Related post: Ruby on Rails Blog Software)”Rails Wiki AppsrnHierakirnOpen source, wiki-like system.”Instant Rails“Drop it in your directory – and you’re done”InstikirnA wiki clone which is very easy to use.”

Tutorials

rnRuby Activity IndicatorsrnProgress Bars with GD2 and RubyrnI went milling about for source for progress bars that would be suitably embedded within a Ruby on Rails application I’m working on and came up with nada.”Ruby CalendarrnCalendarGrid“Ruby based calendar”Ruby ChatrnAJAX powered chat in 3 hours on Ruby on RailsrnA simple Web based chat built with Ruby on Rails. It seems to work okay, but I’ve only tested on FireFox and Safari. On IE it’s bound to look totally out of wack as I’m not sure it supports position: fixed, which I used for the IRC-esque layout.”Ruby Image ManipulationrnrmagickrnThumbnailer method for a Rails ‘Photo’ controller “Ruby Learning and BasicsrnTry Ruby“An interactive ruby tutorial where you can learn some basics right in your browser, “Tutorial in Ruby on RailsrnAs a newbie, getting started with Rails was tricky without some help from the IRC folks. If you get stuck, that’s a good place for help, as the author hangs out in there pretty regularly. That said, some sample code is worth its weight in gold, so here’s how I got a basic Rails application running.”Learning RubyrnA very good article on the basics of ruby.”Introduction to RubyrnFor Perl programmers “Introduction to RubyrnFor Mac OS X”rnRuby Live GridrnAJAX Live Data Grid Examplern Historically, data sub-forms are not something that have been presented well on the web. Pop-up windows and browser page refreshing are a significant regression from the interfaces which have been provided by client/server desktop applications for over a decade. Luckily, with the advent of Rails and its partials rendering, we are in a position to do something about this usability shortfall.”Ruby LoginrnLoginGeneratorrnLogin & Authentication Generator “Ruby Text Editors“Integrate FCKEditor with your Ruby on Rails applicationrnFCKEditor is an open source Javascript application for embedding a rich text box into an HTML form. I will show you have to integrate this application with your Ruby on Rails application.”Integrating a Rich-text Widget with StrutsrnThe problem was straightforward, all I needed was a rich-text editor that would allow me to create XHTML that I could then send back to the client. I already had a textarea, and I just wanted a rich-text replacement. I thought this was going to be simple, but the problem cost me hours. In this entry, I show the process I used to identify a suitable AJAX/Javascript library, read on…”Ruby Shopping CartrnOpen Source Ruby On Rails Shopping Cart | SublogrnThe first and only Ruby”

Ruby Helpers

rnRuby Calendar Helpers“CalendarHelperrnSelect dates from a calendar popup or in-page”DynamicCalendarHelper rnRenders a basic calendar in HTML. Highly configurable and allows for databinding as well as formatting”Ruby Drag and DroprnHowToUseDragAndDropSortingrnHow to use drag and drop Sorting in Ruby on Rails”Ruby File Uploader“TinyFilernFor the longest time I just wanted a quick, ready-to-go example of how to do some basic file uploads in a real rails app. Welcome to TinyFile.”Ruby Live Trees HelpersrnLiveTreernDHTML tree widget that can load data asynchronously as-needed”Ruby Pagination HelpersrnPaginationHelperrnPaginate large tables”Ruby Sorting Helpers“SortHelperrnClick column headings to sort tables (uses Ruby to handle sorting)”SortHelper2rnAnother take on sort via clickable headers (uses SQL to handle sorting)”Sort Helper the thirdrnSort database result sets with clickable column headers (also uses SQL to handle sorting)”MovtablernA port to rails of Movtable, full featured sort table, filterable, with context menus.”JavascriptSortableTables “Not a Ruby helper as such, but it doesnt require Ajax, Ruby or SQL to work – it’s all in client side Javascriptrn