Akshay Khot

I run an independent software studio/agency specializing in Ruby on Rails. This blog is my attempt to spread the joy of programming in Ruby and building web apps in Rails with the world.

Victoria, BC

184 Articles

How to Access Variables Outside Scopes in Ruby

In C# and Java, variables from the outer scope are visible to the inner scope. In Ruby, scopes are sharply separated, and nested visibility is

1 min read

Ruby is a Meritocracy

I recently read Russ Olsen's book Design Patterns in Ruby. In it, the author makes a wonderful distinction between statically vs. dynamically typed languages, which is different from all other comparisons I've seen.

1 min read

How to Benchmark Rails Views

This post explores the Benchmarkable module provided by Active Support to measure the execution time for rendering Rails views.

1 min read

How to Benchmark Ruby Code

The Benchmark module in the Ruby standard library helps you measure and report the time used to execute your code. This post explores three useful

1 min read

Understanding Authenticity Tokens in Rails

This post explores CSRF vulnerability and how Rails mitigates it using authenticity tokens. We will will learn why they're needed, how they're generated, how Rails uses them to verify the requests, and how to disable them for specific requests.

1 min read

Metaprogramming in Ruby

Metaprogramming in Ruby enables you to produce elegant, clean, and beautiful programs as well as unreadable, complex code that’s not maintainable. This book teaches you the powerful metaprogramming concepts in Ruby, and how to use them judiciously.

6 min read

How to Get an Object's Class Name in Rails

This post explores a few different ways in which you can get an object's class name in both Ruby and Rails.

1 min read

A Deep Dive Into Database Migrations in Rails

Like source code, database schema changes and evolves over time. Migrations are a feature of Active Record that allows you to manage the database schema

4 min read

Attributes API in Rails

Sometimes, you want to set default values on your ActiveRecord objects and convert them to a different type. Rails provides a handy attribute method that

1 min read

How to Get the Current Absolute URL in Rails

Every Rails controller includes two accessor methods pointing to the request and the response objects associated with the current HTTP request cycle. The request method

1 min read

How to Rename a Database Column in Rails

Solution 1: Undo Last Migration If it is a simple typo in the last migration, use the db:rollback command to undo the last change.

2 min read

Metal Controller in Rails

The ActionController::Base class is the great-grandfather of all Rails controllers, but doesn't get much attention. In this post, we will examine this Metal class and how it works. We'll also trace the path of an incoming HTTP request to Rails controllers.

1 min read