Hongli’s List

• An intro to ruby on Rails. what a web framework is, why it has been created, what Rails’s philosphy is, etc. not unlike django book’s intro. Not about writing Rails apps.
• A multi-platform installation tutorial
• Simple Rails 2.1 tutorial for total newbies, similar to O’Reilly’s 1.2 tutorial. Most of the existing Rails 2 tutorials assumes that the reader has previous experience with Rails. The new tutorial should also point to Ruby tutorials – learning Ruby must be mandatory, we don’t want newcomers to expect being able to use Rails without knowing Ruby.
• The testing guide needs to be updated with rails 1.2/2.0 stuff, like assert_select. Integration tests also need to be documented.
• The security guide needs to be updated with rails 2.0 stuff, like the new cookies session manager, http basic authentication, cross domain request forgery protection, etc. Also, information from http://olabini.com/blog/2008/08/ruby-security-quick-guide/ might be useful.
• Guide to accessing the database directly with SQL. find_by_sql is nice and all but sometimes you need to go lower level because you need performance, e.g. when bulk importing lots of data. The guide should cover ActiveRecord::Base.connection, connection.select_all, connection.add_limit_and_offset!, ActiveRecord::Column.string_to_time, etc.

Pratik’s List

• Component wise introduction
• A guide to AR associations : bt/habtm/hm/hm:t/ho/ho:t. Very basic, with pictures and real life examples. Lets go back to the basics.
• Exception Handling – rescue_from/various plugings etc./best practices
• A guide to with_scope and named_scope
• Guide to RESTful design
• Howto : Profile/benchmark a rails application
• Howto : Debug rails Applications ruby-debug/debugger option etc.
• Howto : Rails Routing
• Howto : Multipart forms/File uploading. Maybe include info on upload progress bar stuff as well.
• Howto : Secure downloads with X-Sendfile & family

Koz’s list

• Routing from the inside out. Cover the implementation of routing so new developers aren’t too scared to send patches
• Routing from the outside in. Cover the user-facing features of routing.

Xavier’s List

• Caching: This guide explains caching in Rails. Types of caches, options for cache storage, best practices and gotchas, related server configuration, shortcomings, relevant plugins, etc.

• Searching: This guide explains text search in Rails. Which options are currently available? Explain them and compare them, pros and cons of each one. This guide would cover best practices regarding UTF8 and normalization issues you may find interesting. It does not need to cover query languages in detail, it would be enough to give an intro to them and leave pointers to their documentation.

• Multi-account applications: Multi-account applications have their own patterns and best practices. Write a guide about this topic: Explain multi-account interfaces such as account as subdomain, best practices to prevent cross-account vulnerabilities, advice about data modeling, server configuration, SSL certificates, etc.

Notes

• If you have written detailed blog posts on any of the the above topics, it’d really great if you could contribute the writing to Rails guides. You should still receive the same prize as anyone else ( whenever we get prize stuff sorted out :) )
• Guides will be in ASCIIDoc format and will reside in rails core source code somewhere under /railties (currently under /railties/doc/guides). HTML output is generated by Mizuho
• Sample guides : Creating plugins & Testing rails application
• If you use Textmate to write your guide, you can find a very helpful ASCIIDoc bundle here, which includes also a previewer: http://github.com/zuckschwerdt/asciidoc.tmbundle/tree
• Don’t add questions/discussion topics on this page. Feel free to PM “lifo” though