[LRUG] Links from last night - charts, REST, and more

[Martin Sadler]

Several people asked for these links in chats that followed last  
nights meeting
so I thought i'd post to the list so that everybody might benefit.

The first up is a rather nifty Chart library for Ruby/Rails called  
ChartDirector:

http://www.advsofteng.com/
It's extremely comprehensive and easy to use. Outputs in all popular  
graphics
formats, there is no reliance on RMagick or third party lib.

The only catch it that it is not free but pricing is very reasonable  
(~ £50 to start)
and the licensing is not that restrictive either



Second is  SimplyPresentable: http://simply_presentable.richcollins.net/

It does away with masses of functional helpers in Rails and allows  
you to do things like:
   <%= link_to 'Show Foo', present(@foo).url %>

Thus greatly simplifying your views.



And finally a few quick ones:

Acts as Enumerated - Use virtual to save having loads of skeleton  
models sitting in your models dir
http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/acts_as_enumerated

RESTful Rails development - one of the best guides to REST for Rails
http://www.b-simple.de/documents

Interview with Rich Collins the author of SimplyPresentable (this is  
how I found out about SP)
http://weblog.workingwithrails.com/2007/3/13/hackfest-winner- 
interviews-rich-collins



Martin.