I’m up in Chicago for some Rails training and I’m learning some new things left and right. It’s nice to get together with other people and see what they’re doing - even if you already know some of the basics.
One ‘trick’ I learned yesterday that made me so mad I didn’t know a YEAR ago was using the gem_server (you have to have rubygems installed, but you already knew that…right?) to run a local webserver on port 8808. Browse to http://localhost:8808 and see your API docs for your installed rubygems.
Note that if some of your gems don’t have rdocs installed, you can nudge them to install using the gem rdoc –all command.
This is so handy for me. No more going off and trying to find the docs online, or having to browse to my hard drive and find them manually.
Thanks a lot for the "Trick". Ruby and gem are awesome.
I learnt that trick at the first local Ruby User Group meeting. That activism sure paid off. (And, I also would've liked to have found out about this years ago.)
You get this server setup for you "for free" in the Ruby One-Click Installer (verified on Windows version 1.8.2-15). Once installed, start the program at Start -> (All Programs)\Ruby\Ruby182-15\RubyGems\Start RubyGems RDoc Server.
It's also very instructive to look at a quick reference guide (all in one page) for Ruby programming:
http://www.zenspider.com/Languages/Ruby/QuickRef.html