Ruby on Rails lets developers create web applications very quickly; part of this is because of Rails idioms like “convention over configuration” and “don’t repeat yourself”. That last idiom is apparent even at the community level, where community members regularly share their code as Rails plugins. Plugins offer a way for developers to extend the core Rails framework with their own custom features, allowing for rapid integration of powerful features such as authentication, user ratings, and search.
Practical Rails Plugins (Apress, 2008) shows you how to leverage a wide variety of plugins in real world example projects. In it you’ll discover how you can quickly and easily create applications involving asynchronous video transcoding, geocoding and mapping, content management, community ratings, and PDF generation. You’ll also learn how to:
This website was created as a companion to the book, providing access to source code for all the examples, errata, and other resources that you may find interesting as a Rails developer. We’ve also created a small plugin directory where you can browse additional plugins that may be useful in your projects.