Most useful Rails plugins, Ruby libraries and Ruby gems?

Question

I have seen many sites which provide the whole list of Rails plugins, Ruby libraries and Ruby gems, but we hardly use few of them and some may not suit our requirement and we spend a whole lot of time searching for useful Plugins which suits our requirement.

I have created this poll, people can post useful libraries, gems and plugins which they have come across. It would be great help for newbies like me and to the entire Ruby on Rails community.

Note: to keep this poll as useful as possible, please remember:

Post only one library, gem, or plugin per answer
Mention the name of the library, gem, or plugin which you find it useful.
URL of the location of the resource
We don't want duplicate answers, so before posting check if the library has been mentioned already.

Edit: Any new plugins/Gems for Rails 3 ?

Thanks!

Here is my list of gems in development group that helps to make things faster or sometimes bring simplicity to the development process http://www.codebeerstartups.com/2013/04/must-have-gems-for-development-machine-in-ruby-on-rails/ — Mohit Jain, Jun 10 '13 at 09:57

score 21 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 17 '09 at 08:36

21

Will Paginate - essential for pagination.

answered Jul 17 '09 at 08:36

Codebeef

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score 19 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 26 '11 at 08:50

19

HAML and SASS

edited Feb 26 '11 at 08:50

NARKOZ

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answered Jul 17 '09 at 12:28

Reuben Mallaby

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3

disagree with this, I think most people (especially on large projects) would rather have their html as html. – Omar Qureshi Jul 17 '09 at 12:37
1

The question didn't say large projects 8) And most people I know working on large Rails based projects ten to use HAML and SASS. – Reuben Mallaby Jul 17 '09 at 12:41
How many of the people who work on these projects are people who come from a completely front end background. JUST XHTML and CSS? Even if its 1, the benefits(?) of HAML and SASS are negated by that person who spent their entire career learning CSS and XHTML because of the differences in Syntax. – Omar Qureshi Jul 17 '09 at 13:23
Luckily this question was tagged "subjective" as in your opionion it's not good, but in mine it is very good. Vote up the gems/plugins that you do like 8) – Reuben Mallaby Jul 17 '09 at 13:48
6

I love HAML and SASS. You get much more readable views with it. You also can't miss closing your tags while using it over (X)HTML, since it does it for you. All in all, it's worth the extra 20 minutes it'll take a designer to learn. – Robert Rouse Jul 17 '09 at 14:36
1

Indeed, I've used HTML -> XHTML -> CSS for over 10 years, and HAML made me finally fall in love with my job 8) Even so, I teach use of ERB and HTML and add HAML for students to choose as they feel more comfortable. – Reuben Mallaby Jul 17 '09 at 18:53

score 18 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 30 '10 at 09:33

18

devise - a more comprehensive authentication gem

answered Apr 30 '10 at 09:33

ohho

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score 17 · Answer 4 · edited Jul 20 '09 at 15:31

17

Authlogic - Easy Authentication

edited Jul 20 '09 at 15:31

Codebeef

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answered Jul 17 '09 at 12:29

Robert Rouse

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+1 for Authlogic .Please provide the link to the Resource , so that i would be helpful for users ,Thanks – Srinivas M.V. Jul 20 '09 at 10:22

Codebeef · Answer 5 · 2009-07-17T13:03:40.060

15

Formtastic - Awsome form helpers.

It lets you do things like this:

<% semantic_form_for @user do |f| %>
    <% f.inputs do %>
        <%= f.input :email %>
        <%= f.input :password %>
        <%= f.input :password_confirmation %>
    <% end %>

    <% f.buttons do %>
        <%= f.commit_button 'Sign Up' %>
    <% end %>
<% end %>

and get decent, semantic HTML:

edited Jul 17 '09 at 13:03

answered Jul 17 '09 at 08:35

Codebeef

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Never seen this before - I'll have to take a look through! – Reuben Mallaby Jul 17 '09 at 12:51
I stumbled across this the other day in a thoughtbot blog post, figured I'd see if anyone had mentioned it on SO. This really is one of the best plugins I've ever used. It is so awesome it hurts. – jonnii Aug 11 '09 at 18:02

score 15 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 17 '09 at 08:37

15

Rspec - for BDD.

answered Jul 17 '09 at 08:37

Codebeef

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score 14 · Answer 7 · answered Jul 10 '10 at 06:08

14

FactoryGirl : Fixture replacement for focused and readable tests.

answered Jul 10 '10 at 06:08

Akshay Rawat

4,714
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score 13 · Answer 8 · answered Jul 17 '09 at 08:38

13

Paperclip - Simple file uploads

answered Jul 17 '09 at 08:38

Codebeef

43,508
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score 11 · Answer 9 · answered Jul 17 '09 at 12:32

11

Nokogiri - for all your XML and HTML parsing and searching needs.

answered Jul 17 '09 at 12:32

Greg Campbell

15,182
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score 9 · Answer 10 · answered Jul 17 '09 at 13:06

9

Capistrano - for easy deployment.

answered Jul 17 '09 at 13:06

Codebeef

43,508
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score 9 · Answer 11 · answered Jul 17 '09 at 15:30

9

Faker - for creating valid, fake data. Great for populating an empty dev DB / testing.

answered Jul 17 '09 at 15:30

Codebeef

43,508
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score 9 · Answer 12 · answered Jul 12 '10 at 11:52

Annotate - simple gem which adds something like

#== Schema Information
#
#Table name: buttons
#id           :integer(4)      not null, primary key
#text         :string(255)
#font_size    :integer(4)
#user_id      :integer(4)
#created_at   :datetime
#updated_at   :datetime
#button_stats :integer(4)      default(0), not null

to your model definitions and fixtures

score 7 · Answer 13 · answered Jul 20 '09 at 15:33

7

Thinking Sphinx - for integrating with Sphinx for dead-simple text-searching in your app.

answered Jul 20 '09 at 15:33

Codebeef

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score 6 · Answer 14 · answered Oct 24 '09 at 18:46

6

Clearance for authentication.

answered Oct 24 '09 at 18:46

hgmnz

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Are you sure it's really good? I mean compared to other auth gems? – Joshua Partogi Jul 10 '10 at 06:47

score 5 · Answer 15 · answered Jul 17 '09 at 15:32

5

Populator - for pushing data into the DB when populating it. Used in conjunction with Faker. More info here.

answered Jul 17 '09 at 15:32

Codebeef

43,508
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ohho · Answer 16 · 2010-04-30T09:27:35.727

5

cancan - for roles, companion of authlogic

edited Apr 30 '10 at 09:27

answered Apr 30 '10 at 09:22

ohho

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score 4 · Answer 17 · answered Jul 17 '09 at 13:07

4

Capistrano-ext - allows you to setup separate deploy recipes for staging / production / whatever other environment you have

answered Jul 17 '09 at 13:07

Codebeef

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score 4 · Answer 18 · answered Jul 17 '09 at 14:38

4

Seed-Fu - Easy database seeding gem. Please don't use migrations to seed your database! :)

answered Jul 17 '09 at 14:38

Robert Rouse

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We use a combination of populator and faker for this. Need to take a closer look at Seed-Fu. – Codebeef Jul 17 '09 at 15:29

score 4 · Answer 19 · answered Apr 30 '10 at 09:24

4

prawn - PDF generation

answered Apr 30 '10 at 09:24

ohho

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score 4 · Answer 20 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

4

Cucumber - BDD and testing

It lets software development teams describe how software should behave in plain text. The text is written in a business-readable domain-specific language and serves as documentation, automated tests and development-aid - all rolled into one format.

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

1
1

answered Jan 21 '11 at 19:58

Andrei

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score 3 · Answer 21 · answered Jul 17 '09 at 12:31

3

grosser-rpx_now - Interface into RPXNow.com, which provides an interface into OpenID, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and much more in terms of authentication. A great companion for Authlogic.

answered Jul 17 '09 at 12:31

Robert Rouse

4,801
1
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19

Srinivas M.V. · Answer 22 · 2009-07-20T13:22:54.647

3

Mofo gem - A ruby microformat parser , Helps to import Profile data from networking sites which implements microformats using hResume,hCard . ex LinkedIn , Xing ,Twitter etc .

Very useful gem .

edited Jul 20 '09 at 13:22

answered Jul 20 '09 at 13:14

Srinivas M.V.

6,508
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Swanand · Answer 23 · 2009-07-21T05:48:19.967

3

soap4r: A must have for making soap calls!

Source: http://rubyforge.org/projects/soap4r/

edited Jul 21 '09 at 05:48

answered Jul 20 '09 at 13:38

Swanand

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Please provide the link to the Resource , so that it would be helpful for users ,Thanks – Srinivas M.V. Jul 21 '09 at 05:27

score 3 · Answer 24 · answered Aug 05 '09 at 04:53

3

Contacts is a universal interface to grab contact list information from various providers including Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo.

answered Aug 05 '09 at 04:53

Srinivas M.V.

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score 3 · Answer 25 · answered Oct 27 '09 at 07:53

3

jRails is a drop-in jQuery replacement for the Rails Prototype/script.aculo.us helpers.

answered Oct 27 '09 at 07:53

Srinivas M.V.

6,508
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score 3 · Answer 26 · answered Oct 27 '09 at 08:01

3

Delayed Job for background processing.

answered Oct 27 '09 at 08:01

shinzui

281
2
7

score 3 · Answer 27 · answered Apr 30 '10 at 09:23

3

calendar_date_select - calendar pop-up

answered Apr 30 '10 at 09:23

ohho

50,879
75
256
383

score 3 · Answer 28 · answered Apr 30 '10 at 09:25

3

thin, a faster http server

answered Apr 30 '10 at 09:25

ohho

50,879
75
256
383

score 3 · Answer 29 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

3

Webrat - testing

is a Ruby integration test library. It has two main purposes:

Implement a browser simulator to allow fast, reliable integration testing (sans JavaScript) without requiring Selenium or Watir and their associated issues.
Define a ubiquitous DSL for describing interacting with a web application from the perspective of an end user.

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

1
1

answered Jan 21 '11 at 20:02

Andrei

10,918
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Michael Durrant · Answer 30 · 2011-10-16T01:43:03.460

3

simple_form - built on top of formtastic, and despite its name it's even better giving you better control (by being agnostic) over layout and everything is configurable. I'm surprised it wasn't listed already as it's very popular.

edited Oct 16 '11 at 01:43

answered May 11 '11 at 04:27

Michael Durrant

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score 2 · Answer 31 · answered Jul 20 '09 at 15:35

2

Validation Reflection - when used with formtastic, it frees you from having to specify which fields of a form are required, as it infers it from your model validations.

answered Jul 20 '09 at 15:35

Codebeef

43,508
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score 2 · Answer 32 · answered Jul 20 '09 at 15:38

2

Nested Layouts - Great when you have sections of your site that sit inside their own wrappers. My account (in many apps) has a series of controllers that may have a common navigation header. Nested layouts allows you to use a my_account layout that sits inside your application layout, preventing the need for duplicate layout code or spurious navigation partials.

answered Jul 20 '09 at 15:38

Codebeef

43,508
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This was broken as of Rails 2.2 but I fixed it in my fork of it: http://github.com/radar/by_star – Ryan Bigg Mar 30 '10 at 11:19

score 2 · Answer 33 · answered Aug 05 '09 at 05:01

2

I really enjoy harsh for syntax highlighting. It gives you access to all of the TextMate themes also, which I love.

answered Aug 05 '09 at 05:01

Anon

5,103
11
45
58

score 2 · Answer 34 · answered Oct 24 '09 at 20:26

2

More, the rails plugin for Less, the CSS extension. I prefer Less to Haml; there's no learning curve for Less.

answered Oct 24 '09 at 20:26

August Lilleaas

54,010
13
102
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Codebeef · Answer 35 · 2009-08-12T06:52:39.207

1

Backup-fu - in conjuction with capistrano, we always backup before a deploy to Amazon S3, and set cron jobs that periodically backup the database and asset directories.

edited Aug 12 '09 at 06:52

answered Jul 17 '09 at 13:09

Codebeef

43,508
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score 1 · Answer 36 · answered Oct 31 '09 at 06:20

1

state_machine: adds support for creating state machines with a lot of very useful features. It has great ActiveRecord integration and even supports automatic named scope for states.

answered Oct 31 '09 at 06:20

shinzui

281
2
7

score 1 · Answer 37 · answered Jan 22 '10 at 21:14

1

tracked_plugins keeps track of plugin install information/updates/local-modification for all plugins you install

answered Jan 22 '10 at 21:14

grosser

14,707
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score 1 · Answer 38 · edited Dec 30 '13 at 17:10

1

Oddly self-serving but I find these helpful:

by_star - Helpful for finding records based on time ranges.
lookup - Ever wanted to look up a Rails method in the API from the command line?

Use lookup has_many to be taken to that method in the API. Also supports fuzzy matching.

edited Dec 30 '13 at 17:10

Dhaval Marthak

17,246
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answered Mar 30 '10 at 11:22

Ryan Bigg

106,965
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score 1 · Answer 39 · answered Apr 30 '10 at 09:07

1

youtube-g is a pure Ruby client for the YouTube GData API. It provides an easy way to access the latest YouTube video search results from your own programs

answered Apr 30 '10 at 09:07

Big Bang Theory

311
1
4
16

score 1 · Answer 40 · answered Apr 30 '10 at 09:31

1

smerf - dynamic forms for surveys and questionnaires

answered Apr 30 '10 at 09:31

ohho

50,879
75
256
383

score 1 · Answer 41 · answered Jun 24 '10 at 06:32

1

Savage Beast 2 Based on the very popular Rails message forum, Beast, this is a Rails forum that implements multiple topics, posts, moderators, RSS feeds, localization, and most all the niceties you've gotten to know on the Beast forums.

answered Jun 24 '10 at 06:32

Srinivas M.V.

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score 1 · Answer 42 · answered Feb 26 '11 at 08:38

1

Spree - open source e-commerce solution for Ruby on Rails

answered Feb 26 '11 at 08:38

NARKOZ

27,203
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68
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score 0 · Answer 43 · answered Aug 20 '10 at 02:13

0

ruote - Work flow Engine in Rails

answered Aug 20 '10 at 02:13

Srinivas M.V.

6,508
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Most useful Rails plugins, Ruby libraries and Ruby gems?

43 Answers43

Cucumber - BDD and testing

Webrat - testing

Linked