I'm looking for a Wiki Gem for RoR that has:
basic Wiki features (obviously),
a history feature on all entries,
uses MySQL (no SQLite),
optionally, instead of using articles, we would like to define some fields to use, in a template…
If I had to cite an example of a website using similar kind of features, it would be CrunchBase. It is a wiki-like system, with predefined fields.
Thank you so much for your help!
There is no Wiki gem for Rails, per-se. What you do have are a few gems that will facilitate developing a Wiki much like what you're looking for here.
For versioning, I would recommend vestal_versions, and for rendering Markdown, I would recommend BlueCloth. Both of these gems have been out for a while, and are quite mature and well tested.
vestal_versions is also DB agnostic, as it piggybacks on ActiveRecord features, so it will work in whatever RDBMS you throw it at.
Related
Looks like Act_as_taggable_on is the more established gem, but Rocket_tag is the newer and hotter one.
Which one would you recommend, and why?
Most of the posts I found that compared Rails tagging were fairly outdated, and I was wondering if anyone knew something about Rocket_tag (not much info on it out there).
I used both.
I am very happy with act_as_taggable, but for Rails 3.1 I switched to rocket_tag.
On every project that is in rails <3.1 act_as_taggable.
Sorry, I do not have any oline resources, just my own opinion.
I'm the author of rocket_tag so I'm a bit biased. The reason I wrote rocket_tag was that I found the code for the other taggable gems to be messy and unreadable and thus hard to extend and play with. I generally use Ernie Millers excelent Squeel GEM for writing and composing database queries. Squeel is a super clean and powerful ruby DSL for putting together SQL.
If you have a need for some custom tagging query then I suggest taking a look at how rocket_tag is put together and trying to roll your own tagging analysis method.
FAQs seem to be a pretty commonly needed feature in a web application..
but it seems like there are no gems or plugins available for Rails.
Can you recommend a gem or plugin which provides FAQs to a Rails app?
Obviously you could make a simple FAQ very quickly with Rails, but there is much
more functionality that can be added: votes, search, categories, roles,
comments, markup, embedded links, tags, ... just to name a few.
Seems like people are re-inventing the wheel a lot for FAQs
I just published a gem for it.
https://github.com/railscash/how_to
Hope that helps, Its in development phase but we are using it actively. Your comments/feedback will be highly appreciated
I think either using BrowserCMS (http://browsercms.org) or RefineryCMS (http://refinerycms.com/) fits the bill for when you need more generic content pages. I prefer to just use a generic CMS instead of creating a gem/plugin for FAQS as you'll have other pages that could easily be thrown into a CMS engine as well. Saves developer time from having to update mostly static HTML pages.
Absolutely - Check out https://oraguide.com - Everything is streamlined / hosted in the cloud. It runs directly on the page as a floating div.
I'm redesigning my site currently and replacing all the old plugins. For tags I use acts_as_taggable_on_steroids and I'm wondering if there are any newer/better gems for Rails 3.
You'll want to use the similarly named acts-as-taggable-on instead. Better support, and the code originated from that gem you mentioned.
It's pretty good and feature rich AND easy enough to use.
Some ruby gems like jekyll, toto and webby offer out of the box blog-type integration into your ruby app. Another way of developing a rich web blog-type application is to build and model the application yourself using pure ruby and rails practices. (e.g creating an Article and User model). The first offers out of the box features the 2nd option offers more customization and control.
In people's experience on Stack Overflow, which would be the best route and what would people consider when making the decision to use a gem out of the box versus going alone?
All of the gems you mentioned take static, markdown/textile/etc files and turn them into HTML websites. They take different approaches to it, with jekyll spitting out the finished website for hosting, toto doing the converting and routing on request, and webby doing the same as jekyll mostly.
If you're using Rails, it's important to note that none of these will integrate into your application well. They're built to more-or-less operate on their own.
Generally speaking, if a gem has the functionality you need, use it. They are not equivalent to plugins you find for Wordpress and Drupal where they are typically low-quality, buggy, poorly documented, etc. More often than not, gems simply add a couple modules that you can integrate into your application how you like.
On the other hand, a basic blog is pretty quick and simple in Rails, especially considering you've got a handy walkthrough guide straight from the Rails documentation on how to do it.
If you're new to Rails and want tight integration with your app, it's probably best to bake your own blog features.
This will take some time to do, but its worth it to learn how things really work.
If you're more seasoned, just look at the gem's API and documentation and decide if it does what you want it to do and if you're comfortable with how to integrate it. If so, it'll save you time.
One other consideration: who will be using the blog? Is it for internal use, and programmers will be the ones updating it? If that's the case, then you can make it very easy by not worrying about a lot of aesthetic polish in the back-end. Conversely, if you're making an app that includes a blogging component for the general public you might want it to feel more polished. In this case a gem might save you a lot of time.
It depends on your application.
Is there a pattern or a gem (Ruby on rails) for modeling the wiki-like behaviour of a StackOverflow like web site?
I'm working on Ruby-on-Rails project so a gem or something in RoR would be appreciated but a well defined pattern is just as good.
Thanks
Did you try act_as_versioned? It is available as a gem, and adds simple versioning to any ActiveRecord model.
If you need more features, act_as_revisable might be interesting. According to the link, it adds the following features on top of act_as_versioned:
Pervasive Callbacks
Branching and Changesets
Deletes can be stored as a revision
Explicit is better than implicit
All data for a model is stored in one table
Wrapping up, requirements and installing