Topic Archive: plugin

Review of fixture_replacement2 plugin

Jason Sendelbach, Wednesday, November 12, 2008 @ 10:39 am

We have been using fixture_replacement2 on some of our Ruby on Rails projects. I am writing an internal application and finally switched over from using fixtures. It took a bit of time to get the tests that I had written modified to stop using the fixture data, but now I am completely fixture free. The tests are a lot easier to write, and I created a few helper methods that setup common datasets. This way, I can call a setup method to configure my data, and then - it's all good. At first I called the method test_data_blah, and was wondering why I was getting an error running any test, so now it's called data_blah.  Doh!

At first I didn't like the fact that I needed to explicitly create the data for what I was working on, but then I realized that (especially for unit tests)  you don't need much dependent data; usually it's one or two records. For functional tests, I found that the data setup methods rocked, as I could quickly get the data set up that I needed.I could quickly assert the content of the response, based on the data in my setup. I missed fixtures at first, but now realize that over time, they are a pain.

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Five jQuery plugins that are a joy to use

Brian Dillard, Tuesday, July 22, 2008 @ 3:15 pm

Yesterday I discussed how to separate the jQuery plugin wheat from the chaff. Today, I offer a completely subjective and biased list of jQuery plugins to know and love.

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jQuery plugins: Five tips for separating the good from the bad and the ugly

Brian Dillard, Monday, July 21, 2008 @ 4:41 pm

I opined recently that jQuery plugins can be more trouble than they're worth. That said, they're often indispensable. True, the worst plugins suffer from bloated code, confusing APIs and too many features. But the best provide instant black-box functionality with just a little configuration. The trick is figuring out which plugins are worth the effort and which ones aren't. Here are five tips for doing just that.

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