Monthly Archives: April 2008

Gotcha in Ruby for PHP Developers with multiple assignments of array to variables

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The more I work with Ruby and Ruby on Rails, the more I begin to understand (though not necessarily agree with) a lot of the vitriol that has been aimed at PHP over the years by developers using other more rigorous languages.

A few weeks back I ran into this little speed bump while working with Ruby on Rails, where I was  trying to do a multiple assignment like this

x = y = z = []

Most seasoned Rubyists will be waving their arms around and yelling “NOOOOOO!!!”
But coming from a PHP background this seemed perfectly okay to me.

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Ruby on Rails: How to get the output from an action (render_component_as_string)

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This one took a little bit but I finally figured it out …

@xml = render_component_as_string :controller => “quote”, :action => “xml”, :params => {:request_id => 100}

This would run the action “xml” of the controller “quote” and pass the parameter  “100” to it to do so.

Whatever would have been displayed at /quote/xml/100 is now stored in @xml

This allows you get the output from any action …. anywhere, also allowing you to pass parameters to it in the process.

Even better, this actually runs the action and its view (unlike render :action, which just renders the action view).

For more details, go to the Ruby On Rails Manual > Using components

Apache Mod Rails released!!!

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After weeks of anticipation , the apache module that allows you to upload your ruby on rails application to the server and have it “just work” has just been released.

I’ve just downloaded the source code from their git repository (git rocks!!) and am trying to see if it’ll install on windows.

Update: It won’t install on windows and there are no plans to ever allow it to (damned Linux elitists!!! :P).

mod_rails released!