Ruby Cookbook

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Ruby Cookbook

Recipes for Object Oriented Scripting

By: Lucas Carlson, Leonard Richardson
Publisher:: O'Reilly Media
Released:: July 2006
Pages:: 912

Description

From data structures and algorithms, to integration with cutting-edge technologies, the Ruby Cookbook has something for every programmer. When you need to solve a problem, don't reinvent the wheel: look it up in the Cookbook.

Full Description

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Strings
1. Building a String from Parts
2. Substituting Variables into Strings
3. Substituting Variables into an Existing String
4. Reversing a String by Words or Characters
5. Representing Unprintable Characters
6. Converting Between Characters and Values
7. Converting Between Strings and Symbols
8. Processing a String One Character at a Time
9. Processing a String One Word at a Time
10. Changing the Case of a String
11. Managing Whitespace
12. Testing Whether an Object Is String-Like
13. Getting the Parts of a String You Want
14. Handling International Encodings
15. Word-Wrapping Lines of Text
16. Generating a Succession of Strings
17. Matching Strings with Regular Expressions
18. Replacing Multiple Patterns in a Single Pass
19. Validating an Email Address
20. Classifying Text with a Bayesian Analyzer
Chapter 2 Numbers
1. Parsing a Number from a String
2. Comparing Floating-Point Numbers
3. Representing Numbers to Arbitrary Precision
4. Representing Rational Numbers
5. Generating Random Numbers
6. Converting Between Numeric Bases
7. Taking Logarithms
8. Finding Mean, Median, and Mode
9. Converting Between Degrees and Radians
10. Multiplying Matrices
11. Solving a System of Linear Equations
12. Using Complex Numbers
13. Simulating a Subclass of Fixnum
14. Doing Math with Roman Numbers
15. Generating a Sequence of Numbers
16. Generating Prime Numbers
17. Checking a Credit Card Checksum
Chapter 3 Date and Time
1. Finding Today's Date
2. Parsing Dates, Precisely or Fuzzily
3. Printing a Date
4. Iterating Over Dates
5. Doing Date Arithmetic
6. Counting the Days Since an Arbitrary Date
7. Converting Between Time Zones
8. Checking Whether Daylight Saving Time Is in Effect
9. Converting Between Time and DateTime Objects
10. Finding the Day of the Week
11. Handling Commercial Dates
12. Running a Code Block Periodically
13. Waiting a Certain Amount of Time
14. Adding a Timeout to a Long-Running Operation
Chapter 4 Arrays
1. Iterating Over an Array
2. Rearranging Values Without Using Temporary Variables
3. Stripping Duplicate Elements from an Array
4. Reversing an Array
5. Sorting an Array
6. Ignoring Case When Sorting Strings
7. Making Sure a Sorted Array Stays Sorted
8. Summing the Items of an Array
9. Sorting an Array by Frequency of Appearance
10. Shuffling an Array
11. Getting the N Smallest Items of an Array
12. Building Up a Hash Using Injection
13. Extracting Portions of Arrays
14. Computing Set Operations on Arrays
15. Partitioning or Classifying a Set
Chapter 5 Hashes
1. Using Symbols as Hash Keys
2. Creating a Hash with a Default Value
3. Adding Elements to a Hash
4. Removing Elements from a Hash
5. Using an Array or Other Modifiable Object as a Hash Key
6. Keeping Multiple Values for the Same Hash Key
7. Iterating Over a Hash
8. Iterating Over a Hash in Insertion Order
9. Printing a Hash
10. Inverting a Hash
11. Choosing Randomly from a Weighted List
12. Building a Histogram
13. Remapping the Keys and Values of a Hash
14. Extracting Portions of Hashes
15. Searching a Hash with Regular Expressions
Chapter 6 Files and Directories
1. Checking to See If a File Exists
2. Checking Your Access to a File
3. Changing the Permissions on a File
4. Seeing When a File Was Last Used Problem
5. Listing a Directory
6. Reading the Contents of a File
7. Writing to a File
8. Writing to a Temporary File
9. Picking a Random Line from a File
10. Comparing Two Files
11. Performing Random Access on "Read-Once" Input Streams
12. Walking a Directory Tree
13. Locking a File
14. Backing Up to Versioned Filenames
15. Pretending a String Is a File
16. Redirecting Standard Input or Output
17. Processing a Binary File
18. Deleting a File
19. Truncating a File
20. Finding the Files You Want
21. Finding and Changing the Current Working Directory
Chapter 7 Code Blocks and Iteration
1. Creating and Invoking a Block
2. Writing a Method That Accepts a Block
3. Binding a Block Argument to a Variable
4. Blocks as Closures: Using Outside Variables Within a Code Block
5. Writing an Iterator Over a Data Structure
6. Changing the Way an Object Iterates
7. Writing Block Methods That Classify or Collect
8. Stopping an Iteration
9. Looping Through Multiple Iterables in Parallel
10. Hiding Setup and Cleanup in a Block Method
11. Coupling Systems Loosely with Callbacks
Chapter 8 Objects and Classes8
1. Managing Instance Data
2. Managing Class Data
3. Checking Class or Module Membership
4. Writing an Inherited Class
5. Overloading Methods
6. Validating and Modifying Attribute Values
7. Defining a Virtual Attribute
8. Delegating Method Calls to Another Object
9. Converting and Coercing Objects to Different Types
10. Getting a Human-Readable Printout of Any Object
11. Accepting or Passing a Variable Number of Arguments
12. Simulating Keyword Arguments
13. Calling a Superclass's Method
14. Creating an Abstract Method
15. Freezing an Object to Prevent Changes
16. Making a Copy of an Object
17. Declaring Constants
18. Implementing Class and Singleton Methods
19. Controlling Access by Making Methods Private
Chapter 9 Modules and Namespaces
1. Simulating Multiple Inheritance with Mixins
2. Extending Specific Objects with Modules
3. Mixing in Class Methods
4. Implementing Enumerable: Write One Method, Get 22 Free
5. Avoiding Naming Collisions with Namespaces
6. Automatically Loading Libraries as Needed
7. Including Namespaces
8. Initializing Instance Variables Defined by a Module
9. Automatically Initializing Mixed-In Modules
Chapter 10 Reflection and Metaprogramming
1. Finding an Object's Class and Superclass
2. Listing an Object's Methods
3. Listing Methods Unique to an Object
4. Getting a Reference to a Method
5. Fixing Bugs in Someone Else's Class
6. Listening for Changes to a Class
7. Checking Whether an Object Has Necessary Attributes
8. Responding to Calls to Undefined Methods
9. Automatically Initializing Instance Variables
10. Avoiding Boilerplate Code with Metaprogramming
11. Metaprogramming with String Evaluations
12. Evaluating Code in an Earlier Context
13. Undefining a Method
14. Aliasing Methods
15. Doing Aspect-Oriented Programming
16. Enforcing Software Contracts
Chapter 11 XML and HTML
1. Checking XML Well-Formedness
2. Extracting Data from a Document's Tree Structure
3. Extracting Data While Parsing a Document
4. Navigating a Document with XPath
5. Parsing Invalid Markup
6. Converting an XML Document into a Hash
7. Validating an XML Document
8. Substituting XML Entities
9. Creating and Modifying XML Documents
10. Compressing Whitespace in an XML Document
11. Guessing a Document's Encoding
12. Converting from One Encoding to Another
13. Extracting All the URLs from an HTML Document
14. Transforming Plain Text to HTML
15. Converting HTML Documents from the Web into Text
16. A Simple Feed Aggregator
Chapter 12 Graphics and Other File Formats
1. Thumbnailing Images
2. Adding Text to an Image
3. Converting One Image Format to Another
4. Graphing Data
5. Adding Graphical Context with Sparklines
6. Strongly Encrypting Data
7. Parsing Comma-Separated Data
8. Parsing Not-Quite-Comma-Separated Data
9. Generating and Parsing Excel Spreadsheets
10. Compressing and Archiving Files with Gzip and Tar
11. Reading and Writing ZIP Files
12. Reading and Writing Configuration Files
13. Generating PDF Files
14. Representing Data as MIDI Music
Chapter 13 Databases and Persistence
1. Serializing Data with YAML
2. Serializing Data with Marshal
3. Persisting Objects with Madeleine
4. Indexing Unstructured Text with SimpleSearch
5. Indexing Structured Text with Ferret
6. Using Berkeley DB Databases
7. Controlling MySQL on Unix
8. Finding the Number of Rows Returned by a Query
9. Talking Directly to a MySQL Database
10. Talking Directly to a PostgreSQL Database
11. Using Object Relational Mapping with ActiveRecord
12. Using Object Relational Mapping with Og
13. Building Queries Programmatically
14. Validating Data with ActiveRecord
15. Preventing SQL Injection Attacks
16. Using Transactions in ActiveRecord
17. Adding Hooks to Table Events
18. Adding Taggability with a Database Mixin
Chapter 14 Internet Services
1. Grabbing the Contents of a Web Page
2. Making an HTTPS Web Request
3. Customizing HTTP Request Headers
4. Performing DNS Queries
5. Sending Mail
6. Reading Mail with IMAP
7. Reading Mail with POP3
8. Being an FTP Client
9. Being a Telnet Client
10. Being an SSH Client
11. Copying a File to Another Machine
12. Being a BitTorrent Client
13. Pinging a Machine
14. Writing an Internet Server
15. Parsing URLs
16. Writing a CGI Script
17. Setting Cookies and Other HTTP Response Headers
18. Handling File Uploads via CGI
19. Running Servlets with WEBrick
20. A Real-World HTTP Client
Chapter 15 Web Development: Ruby on Rails
1. Writing a Simple Rails Application to Show System Status
2. Passing Data from the Controller to the View
3. Creating a Layout for Your Header and Footer
4. Redirecting to a Different Location
5. Displaying Templates with Render
6. Integrating a Database with Your Rails Application
7. Understanding Pluralization Rules
8. Creating a Login System
9. Storing Hashed User Passwords in the Database
10. Escaping HTML and JavaScript for Display
11. Setting and Retrieving Session Information
12. Setting and Retrieving Cookies
13. Extracting Code into Helper Functions
14. Refactoring the View into Partial Snippets of Views
15. Adding DHTML Effects with script.aculo.us
16. Generating Forms for Manipulating Model Objects
17. Creating an Ajax Form
18. Exposing Web Services on Your Web Site
19. Sending Mail with Rails
20. Automatically Sending Error Messages to Your Email
21. Documenting Your Web Site
22. Unit Testing Your Web Site
23. Using breakpoint in Your Web Application
Chapter 16 Web Services and Distributed Programming
1. Searching for Books on Amazon
2. Finding Photos on Flickr
3. Writing an XML-RPC Client
4. Writing a SOAP Client
5. Writing a SOAP Server
6. Searching the Web with Google's SOAP Service
7. Using a WSDL File to Make SOAP Calls Easier
8. Charging a Credit Card
9. Finding the Cost to Ship Packages via UPS or FedEx
10. Sharing a Hash Between Any Number of Computers
11. Implementing a Distributed Queue
12. Creating a Shared "Whiteboard"
13. Securing DRb Services with Access Control Lists
14. Automatically Discovering DRb Services with Rinda
15. Proxying Objects That Can't Be Distributed
16. Storing Data on Distributed RAM with MemCached
17. Caching Expensive Results with MemCached
18. A Remote-Controlled Jukebox
Chapter 17 Testing, Debugging, Optimizing, and Documenting
1. Running Code Only in Debug Mode
2. Raising an Exception
3. Handling an Exception
4. Rerunning After an Exception
5. Adding Logging to Your Application
6. Creating and Understanding Tracebacks
7. Writing Unit Tests
8. Running Unit Tests
9. Testing Code That Uses External Resources
10. Using breakpoint to Inspect and Change the State of Your Application
11. Documenting Your Application
12. Profiling Your Application
13. Benchmarking Competing Solutions
14. Running Multiple Analysis Tools at Once
15. Who's Calling That Method? A Call Graph Analyzer
Chapter 18 Packaging and Distributing Software
1. Finding Libraries by Querying Gem Respositories
2. Installing and Using a Gem
3. Requiring a Specific Version of a Gem
4. Uninstalling a Gem
5. Reading Documentation for Installed Gems
6. Packaging Your Code as a Gem
7. Distributing Your Gems
8. Installing and Creating Standalone Packages with setup.rb
Chapter 19 Automating Tasks with Rake
1. Automatically Running Unit Tests
2. Automatically Generating Documentation
3. Cleaning Up Generated Files
4. Automatically Building a Gem
5. Gathering Statistics About Your Code
6. Publishing Your Documentation
7. Running Multiple Tasks in Parallel
8. A Generic Project Rakefile
Chapter 20 Multitasking and Multithreading
1. Running a Daemon Process on Unix
2. Creating a Windows Service
3. Doing Two Things at Once with Threads
4. Synchronizing Access to an Object
5. Terminating a Thread
6. Running a Code Block on Many Objects Simultaneously
7. Limiting Multithreading with a Thread Pool
8. Driving an External Process with popen
9. Capturing the Output and Error Streams from a Unix Shell Command
10. Controlling a Process on Another Machine
11. Avoiding Deadlock
Chapter 21 User Interface
2. Getting Input One Line at a Time
3. Getting Input One Character at a Time
4. Parsing Command-Line Arguments
5. Testing Whether a Program Is Running Interactively
6. Setting Up and Tearing Down a Curses Program
7. Clearing the Screen
8. Determining Terminal Size
9. Changing Text Color
10. Reading a Password
11. Allowing Input Editing with Readline
12. Making Your Keyboard Lights Blink
13. Creating a GUI Application with Tk
14. Creating a GUI Application with wxRuby
15. Creating a GUI Application with Ruby/GTK
16. Creating a Mac OS X Application with RubyCocoa
17. Using AppleScript to Get User Input
Chapter 22 Extending Ruby with Other Languages
1. Writing a C Extension for Ruby
2. Using a C Library from Ruby
3. Calling a C Library Through SWIG
4. Writing Inline C in Your Ruby Code
5. Using Java Libraries with JRuby
Chapter 23 System Administration
1. Scripting an External Program
2. Managing Windows Services
3. Running Code as Another User
4. Running Periodic Tasks Without cron or at
5. Deleting Files That Match a Regular Expression
6. Renaming Files in Bulk
7. Finding Duplicate Files
8. Automating Backups
9. Normalizing Ownership and Permissions in User Directories
10. Killing All Processes for a Given User

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Product Details

Title:

Ruby Cookbook

By:

Lucas Carlson, Leonard Richardson

Publisher:

O'Reilly Media

Formats:

Print
Ebook
Safari Books Online

Print Release:

July 2006

Ebook Release:

February 2009

Pages:

912

Print ISBN:

978-0-596-52369-5

| ISBN 10:

0-596-52369-6

Ebook ISBN:

978-0-596-15831-6

| ISBN 10:

0-596-15831-9

Customer Reviews

About the Authors

Lucas Carlson

Lucas Carlson is a professional Ruby programmer who specializes in Rails web development. He has authored a half dozen libraries and contributed to many others, including Rails and RedCloth. He lives in Portland, Oregon and maintains a website at http://rufy.com/.

View Lucas Carlson's full profile page.
Leonard Richardson

Leonard Richardson has been programming since he was eight years old. Recently, the quality of his code has improved somewhat. He is responsible for libraries in many languages, including Rubyful Soup. A California native, he now works in New York and maintains a website at http://www.crummy.com/.

View Leonard Richardson's full profile page.

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O'Reilly Books & Videos

Ruby Cookbook

Recipes for Object Oriented Scripting

Chapter 1 Strings

Building a String from Parts

Substituting Variables into Strings

Substituting Variables into an Existing String

Reversing a String by Words or Characters

Representing Unprintable Characters

Converting Between Characters and Values

Converting Between Strings and Symbols

Processing a String One Character at a Time

Processing a String One Word at a Time

Changing the Case of a String

Managing Whitespace

Testing Whether an Object Is String-Like

Getting the Parts of a String You Want

Handling International Encodings

Word-Wrapping Lines of Text

Generating a Succession of Strings

Matching Strings with Regular Expressions

Replacing Multiple Patterns in a Single Pass

Validating an Email Address

Classifying Text with a Bayesian Analyzer

Chapter 2 Numbers

Parsing a Number from a String

Comparing Floating-Point Numbers

Representing Numbers to Arbitrary Precision

Representing Rational Numbers

Generating Random Numbers

Converting Between Numeric Bases

Taking Logarithms

Finding Mean, Median, and Mode

Converting Between Degrees and Radians

Multiplying Matrices

Solving a System of Linear Equations

Using Complex Numbers

Simulating a Subclass of Fixnum

Doing Math with Roman Numbers

Generating a Sequence of Numbers

Generating Prime Numbers

Checking a Credit Card Checksum

Chapter 3 Date and Time

Finding Today's Date

Parsing Dates, Precisely or Fuzzily

Printing a Date

Iterating Over Dates

Doing Date Arithmetic

Counting the Days Since an Arbitrary Date

Converting Between Time Zones

Checking Whether Daylight Saving Time Is in Effect

Converting Between Time and DateTime Objects

Finding the Day of the Week

Handling Commercial Dates

Running a Code Block Periodically

Waiting a Certain Amount of Time

Adding a Timeout to a Long-Running Operation

Chapter 4 Arrays

Iterating Over an Array

Rearranging Values Without Using Temporary Variables

Stripping Duplicate Elements from an Array

Reversing an Array

Sorting an Array

Ignoring Case When Sorting Strings

Making Sure a Sorted Array Stays Sorted

Summing the Items of an Array

Sorting an Array by Frequency of Appearance

Shuffling an Array

Getting the N Smallest Items of an Array

Building Up a Hash Using Injection

Extracting Portions of Arrays

Computing Set Operations on Arrays

Partitioning or Classifying a Set

Chapter 5 Hashes

Using Symbols as Hash Keys

Creating a Hash with a Default Value

Adding Elements to a Hash

Removing Elements from a Hash

Using an Array or Other Modifiable Object as a Hash Key

Keeping Multiple Values for the Same Hash Key