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    <title>has_many :thoughts: Plugins we're using</title>
    <link>http://blog.kineticweb.com/articles/2007/06/07/plugins-were-using</link>
    <language>en-us</language>
    <ttl>40</ttl>
    <description>Musings from a Ruby on Rails development team</description>
    <item>
      <title>Plugins we're using</title>
      <description>&lt;p&gt;I thought it might be nice to share what plugins we&amp;#8217;re using in some of our apps:&lt;/p&gt;


	&lt;ul&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;action_mailer_layouts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
Adds some handy functionality allowing ActionMailer to use layouts just like any other view. I was surprised this doesn&amp;#8217;t come out of the box with Rails but this plugin handles it nicely. Makes mailings dry when you want to have layouts that wrap around multiple emails.&lt;/li&gt;
		&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;acts_as_state_machine&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
Interesting little tool that allows you to define various states (aka statuses) and define various events that transition ActiveRecord objects from one state to another. It&amp;#8217;s handy to help organize items that have many states.&lt;/li&gt;
		&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;human_attribute_override&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
Handy when you have columns with legacy naming conventions (or lack of conventions) or even when you change the name of a column but don&amp;#8217;t feel like actually changing the name in the database. Things like validation errors use the human_name of a column to make it friendly looking and this allows you to set it to whatever you want.&lt;/li&gt;
		&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;acts_as_ferret&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
Full text index searching of AR items. Works great and easy to implement!&lt;/li&gt;
		&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;betternestedset&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
This is an improved version of the nested set functionality that comes with Rails. We actually ended up not using this but still have it installed on the project. I don&amp;#8217;t remember why we didn&amp;#8217;t use it&amp;#8230; I think because acts_as_tree sufficed just fine for our needs.&lt;/li&gt;
		&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;fckeditor&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
A decent &lt;span class="caps"&gt;HTML&lt;/span&gt; editor that&amp;#8217;s open source and nicely customizable.&lt;/li&gt;
		&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;geokit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
We use this to detect the country of origin of a visitor via IP address and direct them to a country specific version of their site.&lt;/li&gt;
		&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ssl_requirement&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
Handy tool that allows you to set specific actions on specific controllers as either requiring or not allowing &lt;span class="caps"&gt;SSL&lt;/span&gt;. Really helps you cut down on server load by not allowing &lt;span class="caps"&gt;HTTPS&lt;/span&gt; on pages that really don&amp;#8217;t need it.&lt;/li&gt;
		&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;to_csv&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
Takes a collection of AR objects and spits it out into a line of comma delimited text with one simple method call.&lt;/li&gt;
		&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;redcloth&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
Adds textile lightweight markup capability. I simply adore textile.&lt;/li&gt;
		&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;sparklines&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;
Geoff Grosenbach&amp;#8217;s handy little plugin that makes really neat little graphs. Graphs without keys or even numbers but just enough info to give you context for a chunk of data.&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;/ul&gt;</description>
      <pubDate>Thu, 07 Jun 2007 20:30:00 -0400</pubDate>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">urn:uuid:d4eb77c6-9404-46e8-9540-599bd8ea1b47</guid>
      <author>Colin A. Bartlett</author>
      <link>http://blog.kineticweb.com/articles/2007/06/07/plugins-were-using</link>
      <category>Rails</category>
      <category>plugins</category>
      <trackback:ping>http://blog.kineticweb.com/articles/trackback/39</trackback:ping>
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