Rails - Jul 2005 - RE: Newbie: Anything like [www.php.net/manual/] for Ruby & RoR

I will have to agreee with Dean Matsueda on what he said regarding the 
"Pragmatic Programmer: Agile Web Development with Rails" book - it is
an
excellent primer for anyone new to Ruby and Rails. I''m still working
through
the book, but it does help solidify a lot of the conversion questions you 
may have. I''m by no means a "programmer". I''m more
of a "hack-it-together"
type of person. The PDF is something like $25 or you can get both PDF and 
physical books for $45. If there were to be something like 
http://www.php.net/manual, it would have to be for the Ruby language. Gem is 
like Pear and RoR would be akin to PHPCodeGenie or another framework 
(although I don''t know of any pure PHP MVC frameworks).

The hardest thing I have had to come to terms with is the MVC model as I am 
coming from PHP myself. I learned PHP by the exact rules RoR is trying to 
keep developers away from: cookie dough code (logic combined with 
presentation). Most PHP Developers are self-taught and most
''beginner''
tutorials teach cookie dough coding. Rails breaks that from step one and 
while it feels a bit restrictive, I''m beginning to see the light. If
you
can''t find or don''t have access to the books, the Wiki is a
good start
although I sometimes think I''m losing my mind when I can''t
find articles I
just read the day before :) 

And I do have one question: PayPal just released a new API suite under their 
Website Payments Pro featureset. I know there is a "paypal" gem out
there -
has anyone seen or heard of any gems for rails for the API? All of the 
sources I have for RoR, Ruby and so on are a bit short of a full explanation 
of how to work with XML. I know there are specifics for Google and Amazon 
but PayPal''s is all done using a .pem file in the request to validate
the
account. In PHP I would build and XML file that just substituted variables 
for the required fileds, included it when I needed to send the request, 
packed it up in cURL using SSL with the .pem file attached and I would get a 
response. Any suggestions or direction would be appreciated!

-- 
cheers.
-c
http://www.somewhat-hypothesis.com


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> Gem is like Pear and RoR would be akin to PHPCodeGenie or another 
> framework (although I don''t know of any pure PHP MVC frameworks).
I actually have a coworker that has built a PHP MVC framework that 
mimics Rails almost exactly.  The directory structure is the same, along 
with lots of other stuff.  At work here, we just can''t ditch PHP, but
if
we can make it look like Rails, we''ll all be a bit happier. 
Can''t get
to much of a good thing.

Anyway, it''s called PHP on Trax.  I believe it''s up on
sourceforge, but
I know he''s also got it in an SVN repository somewhere.  Don''t
know the
current state of all the documentation.  If anybody is interested, let 
me know and I''ll see if I can pull some more information together.

Ben Robison


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