Write Software, Well (Page 8)

Content Security Policy (CSP): What Every Web Developer Must Know

This is a comprehensive guide to Content Security Policy (CSP). If you build websites for a living, CSP is an important concept to know, understand, and implement to protect your users from Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Injection attacks. This post covers (almost) everything you need to know about CSP.

17 min read

Logging in Ruby: (Almost) Everything You Need to Know

Like backups, logging is one of those topics that seems unnecessary until something goes wrong! It's very frustrating to fix a bug that's only reproducible in production without having any logs to help you debug it. This post covers the basics of logging in Ruby and adds logging to our no-rails app.

This article is for Members only

Rails Companion 9 min read

How to Dynamically Create Instance Variables in Ruby

This post shows one way to dynamically initialize multiple instance variables in a Ruby class using metaprogramming. If you need to pass multiple, separate pieces of data to a constructor (and cannot refactor the code for some reason), it's a pretty good technique to reduce all the repetitive code.

3 min read

How to Render SVG Icons in Ruby on Rails

This post shows how I render SVG icons in my Ruby on Rails applications. Instead of littering your HTML with complicated SVG tags, keep them tucked away in a folder as an ERB partial, and use a Rails helper to insert it in your views. Result: reusable, customizable icons and readable HTML.

1 min read

How to Implement Rails-like Dynamic Views in Ruby

In this article, we will learn 'one' way to implement the controller-to-view data handoff using instance variables, just like Rails, and following the same conventions as Rails. Although it's a highly simplified implementation to keep things simple, I hope you'll find it fun and learn something new.

This article is for Members only

Rails Companion 8 min read

Implementing Rails-like Controllers in a No-Rails App

In its essence, a controller class in Rails is a coordinator. It accepts the incoming HTTP request and builds the data required by the view using the domain models. This post shows a highly simplified implementation of the controller pattern for a better understanding of Rails controllers.

This article is for Members only

Rails Companion 9 min read

Understanding the Concept of Binding in Ruby

Binding is an elegant way to access the current scope (variables, methods, and self) in Ruby. Typically, you use it for building view templates and executing strings of Ruby code. The Ruby REPL also makes abundant use of binding. In this post, we'll learn what binding is and how it works.

4 min read

Serving Static Files in Ruby

This is the fourth article in the series where we build a simple, yet complete web app in plain Ruby, without using Rails to better understand how Rails works. In this article, we'll learn how to serve static files in plain Ruby, without using Rails.

This article is for Members only

Rails Companion 7 min read

How to Split a List into N Equal Parts in Ruby (and Rails)

This article shows you can split (or chunk) a list of items into n-equally sized parts using the `each_slice` method in Ruby and `in_groups_of` method in Rails.

2 min read

Blocks, Procs, and Lambdas: A Beginner's Guide to Closures and Anonymous Functions in Ruby

Closures and anonymous functions are very useful concepts, especially in functional programming. Ruby makes working with them a pleasure via its flavors like blocks, procs, and lambdas. This post provides an in-depth tutorial and shows the subtle differences between them.

10 min read

How Module Autoloading Works in Ruby and Rails

Autoloading allows you to speed up the initialization of your library by lazily loading the code only when you need it. This post explains how the autoload method works in Ruby and how Rails overrides this method to provide its own implementation that follows the Rails naming conventions.

Rails Internals 4 min read

Practical Stimulus: How to Toggle CSS Classes

This second article in the 'Stimulus in Practice' series shows how you can work with HTML classes using Stimulus. Specifically, we'll learn how to toggle classes on an element. This is useful when you want to show or hide certain elements or update the design in response to user interaction.

Practical Stimulus 5 min read