On 7 August 2010 19:54, Brad Lindsay <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm new to Ruby and to Rails, but have been very impressed by the > tutorials I've gone through for each. They have convinced me that > these are the best tools for the solutions I need to create, but > before I really got started, I thought I'd query the wisdom of this > list.
Always good to hear someone excited about Rails! One bit of 'wisdom': the out-of-the-box Rails defaults are very capable. We've all written substantial apps using bog-standard ERb and Test::Unit, so don't feel pressured to use fashionable alternatives just because they're fashionable. Of course, if you're keen to learn and try out new stuff, then go for it, and use things that stick and make sense for you. With that said... > Is there a better template engine than the default ERB? What do people > suggest? For a less repetitive and more structured templating experience, Haml is pretty popular these days: http://haml-lang.com/ > Is there an overview of best-practices when it comes to User > management and account authorization and authentication? Is there a > gem that I should look at that may implement some of this? The Rails Security Guide has a fairly good section on User Management: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/security.html#user-management As for gems/plugins, I've lately seen a lot of projects using Authlogic: http://github.com/binarylogic/authlogic It's well designed and extensible, and you should be able to get up and running pretty quickly. It's an instructive exercise to try writing a basic user auth system, though, even if it's just once as a toy project. You just need methods in the User to hash their password (with a salt, of course), and to look up a user based on a supplied username and password. And then some convenience methods in the controller to store the logged-in user in the session object. It's good to have an understanding of how the basic pieces fit together, so that the gem you end up using isn't just a piece of 'magic'. > Are there other issues or best-practices that I should know about or > gems that you would suggest I investigate? You might want to explore RSpec as an alternative test (sorry, behaviour) framework -- it's very popular, and provides a new perspective on testing. Again, not required; just interesting. Chris -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.
