Good notes posted by noxyu3m

render_collection

You can wrap render in helpers. For example, render_collection. In app/helpers/application.rb:

module ApplicationHelper
  def render_collection(name, collection)
    render :partial => "shared/#{name}", :collection => collection
  end
end

In views:

<h2>Comments</h2>
<%= render_collection :comments, @photo.comments %>

Keep your controllers clear

When you use redirect_to or render with flash[:notice] or flash[:error], you can define some helper methods in your ApplicationController (or somewhere you want):

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

  protected

    %w(notice error).each do |message|
      class_eval <<-END_EVAL
        def redirect_#{message}(url, message)
          flash[:#{message}] = message
          redirect_to url
        end

        def render_#{message}(action, message)
          flash[:#{message}] = message
          render :action => action
        end
      END_EVAL
    end
end

Now you have four methods - redirect_notice, redirect_error, render_notice and render_error.

Custom annotation types

For group work you may need something more than FIXME, OPTIMIZE and TODO. Just create new rake file and place it to lib/tasks:

require 'source_annotation_extractor'

task :notes do
  SourceAnnotationExtractor.enumerate "WTF|OMG", :tag => true
end

namespace :notes do
  desc "Enumerate all WTF annotations"
  task :wtf do
    SourceAnnotationExtractor.enumerate "WTF"
  end

  desc "Enumerate all OMG annotations"
  task :omg do
    SourceAnnotationExtractor.enumerate "OMG"
  end
end

or create an array of new types and generate tasks dynamicaly.

Loading fixtures in migrations

This helper is wrapper around Fixtures#create_fixtures and just load fixtures from specified directory (db/migrate/data by default):

class ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.load_data(filename, dir = 'db/migrate/data')
    Fixtures.create_fixtures(File.join(RAILS_ROOT, dir), filename)
  end
end

It is usefull for tables with data like country list:

class CreateCountries < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :countries do |t|
      t.string :name, :code, :null => false
      t.timestamps
    end
    load_data :countries
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table :countries
  end
end

Migration helpers

You can add your own migration helpers as references:

Code example

class ActiveRecord::ConnectionsAdapters::TableDefinition
  def counter_caches(*args)
    args.each { |col| column("#{col}_count", :integer, :default => 0) }
  end
end

class CreateUsers < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :users do |t|
      t.string :first_name, :last_name, :email
      t.counter_caches :photos, :messages
      t.timestamps
    end
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table :users
  end
end