Thoughts

Rails wiki lists a number of libraries that can be used to generate PDF files in ruby . Prawnto was very suitable for my need (generating PDF files that contain text with differentfont-size and adding some formatting). Prawn is able to generate more complex PDF documents including adding photos. You can check the installation steps online Prawnto requires you to add code to your controller and to a .prawn layout file. There are several demos available online and can be used as guidance. Below is an example for generating a PDF format of an article. The article has a title and an array of blocks , each block has title and content . The controller code is: def show    @title="My Article"    @blocks= [          {:title=>'Block One', :content=>'content one'},          {:title=>'Block Two', :content=>'content two'},         ...

instance_eval is a method of ruby Object class that lets you pass a string of ruby code or a block to be evaluation in the scope of that object. Through instance_eval you can actually add new methods to a particular object. This can help you write more pretty and readable code. for example, we can define a new average method for an array of numbers >> a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] => [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] >> a.sum => 36 >> a.size => 8 >> a.average NoMethodError: undefined method `average' for [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]:Array     from (irb):14 >> a.sum / a.size => 4 >> With instance_eval we can add that new method here a.instance_eval do     def average ; sum/size end end >> a.average => 4 In a lot of cases this approach can be useful.

Rcov is one of the tools we use at eSpace to measure automated tests coverage for our rails applications. By rcov through gem install rcov , I had rcov(0.8.1.2.0) installed. After upgrading to the latest ubuntu 8.10, I realized that the installed rcov is not compatible with ruby 1.8.7 that i have. Rcov failed at generating the html reports with this stacktrace /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/formatters/pretty.rb:131:in `[]': no implicit conversion from nil to integer (TypeError)     from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/formatters/pretty.rb:131:in `wrap'     from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/formatters/pretty.rb:131:in `wrap'     from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/formatters/pretty.rb:90:in `write_text'     from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/formatters/default.rb:50:in `write'     from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/formatters/pretty.rb:75:in `write_element'     from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rexml/formatters/prett...

At eSpace we stress on having automated tests to cover our code. If you are using Restful Authentication plugin in your rails application, You will have to bypass the authentication filter that is processed before your controller actions.Restful authentication helps you does that through the login_as() method of the AuthenticatedTestHelper module. Let me show you how. In your functional test, login before you send the request.    class PublicationsControllerTest        fixtures :users        def test_method           login_as (:user_one)           Your test code...        end    end That user is loaded from the users fixtures and will act as the current logged in user. The fixtures must have something like: user_one:     id: 1     login...