If you’d like to test out these commands, please do so in the #logga channel, not #rubyonrails.

These are some of the hard-coded commands in helpa. These are in no particular order. Others have been omitted because they serve little to no purpose:

##<lookup>: Used like ##distance_of_time_in_words or ##ActiveRecord::Base or ##ActiveRecord::Calculations#count. Acts like ri. !google [query] or !g [query]: Outputs a link to a google with the search term specified. !gg [query]: Outputs a link to letmegooglethatforyou.com with the search term specified. !railscast [query]: Outputs a link to railscast.com searching for railscasts for the search term specified. !githubs [query]: Outputs a link to the search page for Github for the search term specified. !github [user] [repository] [branch] [path]: Outputs a link to a specified page on github

The rest don’t take any arguments:

!finders – http://guides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_querying.html – ActiveRecord Querying Guide by Ryan Bigg

!routing – http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html – Rails Routing From the Outside In – Rails Guide – by Mike Gunderloy

!associations – http://guides.rubyonrails.org/association_basics.html – Active Record Association Basics by Mike Gunderloy

!rails-view-lookup – http://stuff.lilleaas.net/how_rails_selects_which_view_to_render – Which conditions Rails uses in order to determine which view file to render when controller actions are invoked.

!routing-overview – http://frozenplague.net?p=108 – An introductory guide to RESTful Routing.

!guides – http://guides.rubyonrails.org/ – Ruby on Rails guides, part of the ongoing hackfest

!pastie – http://pastie.org – Paste code examples there, and post the URL of the pastie here when you’re done. http://pastie.org/help/ for more info on usage.

!botsnack – Nom nom. Thanks, {nick}!

!peepcode – http://peepcode.com – Awesome screencasts of very high quality and relevance. The $9 is totally worth it.

!railscasts – http://railscasts.com – Great free screencasts by Ryan Bates. Tips, tricks and best practices.

!lighthouse – http://lighthouseapp.com — beautiful simple issue tracking

!fatmodel – http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2006/10/18/skinny-controller-fat-model – Place the logic where it’s supposed to be placed

!rails-lighthouse – http://rails.lighthouseapp.com – Rails issue tracking

!wwrd – What would Radar do?

!windows – http://frozenplague.net/?page_id=175#windows

!scaffold – http://tpope.us/rubyonrailsfaq.html

!passenger – Passenger (mod_rails) is an Apache module for running Rails applications. It is fast, sexy and very easy to setup. http://www.modrails.com/

Other resources: Peepcode’s setup guide: http://peepcode.com/products/phusion-passenger Railscasts: http://railscasts.com/episodes/122-passenger-in-development

!webhosts – Ruby on Rails hosting can be provided for by any (decent) webhost, for a list of webhosts (we won’t normally recommend them) look here: http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/RailsWebHosts

!rubyonrails-talk – http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk

!yourownblog – http://nubyonrails.com/articles/about-this-blog-memcached – Every beginning Rails developer should write their own blog software.

!select_all – http://guides.rails.info/finders.html#_tt_select_all_tt

!i18n – http://guides.rubyonrails.org/i18n.html – Guide on i18n by Sven Fuchs and Karel Minařík

!howtoaskforhelp – http://frozenplague.net/?p=267

!acl – ACL (Access Control List) System 2 – Great for restricting access to actions – http://github.com/ezmobius/acl_system2

!skitch – http://skitch.com – Image sharing site with related application for Mac OS X

!deploy-ubuntu – Deploying on Ubuntu / Debian using Apache, Rails, Passenger and Capistrano: http://frozenplague.net/?p=230

!quickref – http://www.zenspider.com/Languages/Ruby/QuickRef.html – Quick reference for the Ruby Language

!multi-updates – http://github.com/Radar/multi-updates/tree/master – An example application of how to update multiple rows from the same model at the same time.

!editor – Commonly used Rails editors: Textmate, Vim, Aptana, Emacs, Netbeans, Eclipse and (NOT) Dreamweaver (see !ide for ide lists)

!ide – Eclipse, Netbeans and Aptana. Please note if you are on Mac Os X an IDE is not recommended.

!git – Git is a version control system used for both Ruby on Rails and most plugin / gems. See http://git.or.cz/ for Git, http://codebase.com or http://github.com/ or http://unfuddle.com for hosting and http://railscasts.com/episodes/96 for managing Rails applications with git

!beginner – Resources for beginning in Ruby on Rails: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/ – http://peepcode.com/ – http://railscasts.com/

!cms – Content Managmenet Systems for Ruby on Rails: Typo http://typosphere.org – Mephisto http://mephistoblog.com/ – RadiantCMS http://radiantcms.org/

!haml – Haml is an alternative markup to HTML, for help and information please see the documentation http://haml.hamptoncatlin.com/docs/ or ##haml

!docs – Rails: http://api.rubyonrails.org/ Ruby: http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/

!hosts – Ruby on Rails hosting can be provided for by any (decent) webhost, for a list of webhosts (we won’t normally recommend them) look here: http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/RailsWebHosts

!ask – Don’t ask to ask, just ask! http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

!capistrano – Capistrano is a neat deployment method for Rails applications, see the capistrano site for more details http://www.capify.org/getting-started/rails

!contributing – How to contribute to Rails, written by Mike Gunderloy: http://afreshcup.com/2008/10/27/contributing-to-rails-step-by-step/

!wwod – What would Obama do?

!ajax – New to Ajax / Javascript? Before asking a million questions in the channel please have a look through some great resources: http://peepcode.com/products/javascript-with-prototypejs http://peepcode.com/products/ajax-with-prototypejs

!association-basics – http://guides.rubyonrails.org/association_basics.html by Mike Gunderloy

!notabug – It’s probably not a bug: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#id306810

!pebkac – PEBKAC: Problem Existing Between Keyboard And Chair. Also known as \”User Error\”

!used – Don’t ask \”has anybody used ?\”. It’s better to just ask your problem and if anyone has used they will most likely answer.

!best – \”Best\” and \”better\” are subjective. Try to use a different term.

!cte – You must remove the line from config/environments/development.rb and config/environments/production.rb in order to get your app to function correctly: http://frozenplague.net/2008/11/cache-template-extensions-error/

!textmate – Kick-ass text editor for Macs. If you have a Mac, code, and don’t use TextMate you’re a fool. http://macromates.com/

!zen – Relax, take a deep breath, find your center – peace is waiting for you there.

!rails-ubuntu – How to set up and deploy on Ubuntu: http://frozenplague.net/2008/09/ubuntu-rails-apache-passenger-capistrano-you/

!scale – Ruby on Rails doesn’t scale – nothing to see here – move along. http://twitter.com/

!try – Why don’t you try it?

!pickaxe – http://rubycentral.com/book – Programming Ruby is a free online book on Ruby.

!everused – just post the fucking bug already

!rtft – This channel has a topic that contains helpful links. One of these links may help you. If you cannot see the topic, type /topic and press enter.

!version – Please tell us what version of Ruby, Rubygems and Rails you’re running on so we can better help you. Also if you haven’t already tell us your operating system too.

!logs – Check your logs. Namely everything in the log folder of your rails app and the error and access logs from Apache or whatever else you’re using.

!section – Please section your pasties using the syntax of \”## section header\”, for more information see this: http://skitch.com/radarlistener/9d6i/new-pastie

!paperclip – http://www.thoughtbot.com/projects/paperclip/ – A file upload plugin for Rails. w/ example http://github.com/anathematic/paperclip_example/tree/master

!attachment_fu – http://github.com/technoweenie/attachment_fu/tree/master – A file upload plugin for Rails.

!rboard – http://github.com/radar/rboard – A forum system built in Rails. It’s compatible with Rails 2.2 and includes internationalization support.

!tutorial – you can probably find a tutorial on it on either, http://www.railscasts.com or http://www.peepcode.com

!migrations – http://guides.rubyonrails.org/migrations.html – Migrations Guide by Frederick Cheung

!gettingstarted – http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html – Getting started with Ruby on Rails guide written by Mike Gunderloy

!restful-routing – http://frozenplague.net/2008/01/restful-routing-an-overview/ – Shorter guide to RESTful routing with Rails.

!will_paginate – http://github.com/mislav/will_paginate/tree/master – Pagination plugin for Rails.

!howlong – http://www.google.com.au/search?q=how+long+is+a+piece+of+string

!ohgoditburns – Your HTML skills are inferior: http://catb.org/esr/html-hell.html

!jquery – Main site: http://jquery.com/ Docs: http://visualjquery.com/

!rubygems – http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=126 – The latest version of Rubygems (and all other versions) can be found here. Download the archived version, extract it and run \”ruby setup.rb\” to install it.

!rspec – http://rspec.info – RSpec is a Behaviour Driven Development framework for Ruby.

!cucumber – Cucumber – Successor to stories for rspec http://github.com/aslakhellesoy/cucumber/tree/master

!texteditor – Windows – \”E Text Editor\” – http://www.e-texteditor.com/

Linux – Vim (http://www.vim.org/) or Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/) Mac – TextMate (http://macromates.com/) or Vim, Emacs (as above)

!arrayconditions – How to use array conditions in find statements ([\"field = ?\", some_variable]) http://guides.rubyonrails.org/finders.html#_array_conditions

!rest – REST – (REpresentational State Transfer) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer

!thinkingsphinx – http://ts.freelancing-gods.com/ – Thinking Sphinx – Plugin for Rails, uses Sphinx (full-text search engine for MySQL and PostgreSQL)

!wrong – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrjwaqZfjIY

!dry – Don’t repeat yourself. Asking the same question repeatedly will not give you more answers.

!books – What book should you get? – http://is.gd/hYWq

!gist – http://gist.github.com – Put your codes online with pretty syntax highlighting and the ability to embed it into other pages.

!slicehost – http://slicehost.com – A hosting company that provides a box that you can install Ruby on Rails on to.

!ruby191 – Ruby 1.9.1 does NOT work with certain Rubygems and may not be fully compatible with Rails yet. For more information see : http://frozenplague.net/2009/01/ruby-191-rubygems-rails/ and http://isitruby19.com

!activemerchant – Activemerchant provides you with a way to interact between your application and supported payment gateways: http://github.com/Shopify/active_merchant/tree/master

!saasy – SaaSy: Scaffold-like application for payment gateways (uses ActiveMerchant): http://github.com/maccman/saasy/tree/master

!auth – If you want to implement user’s with passwords in your application, you can use AuthLogic: http://github.com/binarylogic/authlogic/tree/master or Restful Authentication: http://github.com/technoweenie/restful-authentication/tree/master

!survivalguide – http://tore.darell.no/doc.html – Survival guide for Ruby. Must read.

!wiki – http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/

!ducktyping – Learn about Duck Typing here: http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/100511

!tags – tag plugins : http://github.com/mbleigh/acts-as-taggable-on/tree/master w/ plugin example: http://github.com/anathematic/taggable-example/tree/master

!application – As of Rails 2.3 ApplicationController has been moved from app/controllers/application.rb to app/controllers/application_controller.rb to better follow convention. Rename your application.rb file using ‘rake rails:update:application_controller’.

!render – Layouts and Rendering Guide by Mike Gunderloy

!layout – Layouts and Rendering Guide by Mike Gunderloy

!cache_template_loading – cache_template_loading= is a deprecated method. Remove this from all files in config/environments

!tasks – Have you checked the rake tasks for your project, yet? Simply type ‘rake -T’ inside your application’s directory to list the available rake tasks.

!expectedgot – If you’re getting Model(#[num]) expected, got String(#[num]) this is because you’re passing in from the form a parameter with the name of a belongs_to association. Make sure you change the field name to association_id.

!elaborate – Instead of simply saying ‘something is broken’ please elaborate on this by showing us the code and the error that you are getting by making a pastie (http://pastie.org) about it.

!files – Storing files in the database will only lead to misery and heartbreak. Store files where they belong, in the filesystem. Use a file-upload plugin such as Paperclip to acheive this.

!caching – How to scale your Rails application: http://railslab.newrelic.com/scaling-rails

!topic – Read the topic. It contains useful information. Failure to read the topic will result in horrible consequences.

!validations – How to make your own custom validations: http://august.lilleaas.net/creating_your_own_validations