Akshay's Blog (Page 3)

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.

Ruby Handbook 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

Practical Stimulus: Capture User Input

Stimulus is a JavaScript library that works really well with the HTML-over-the-wire approach of building web applications. In this series of articles, we'll learn how to accomplish common front-end tasks using Stimulus. This post shows how to capture user input and display it on the screen.

Practical Stimulus 6 min read

Unix: A History and a Memoir

I recently read Brian Kernighan’s Unix: A History and a Memoir. If his name sounds familiar, Brian is also the author of The C

1 min read

How to Create a Form with Multiple Submit Buttons to Different URL Endpoints

I came upon an interesting problem at work yesterday. A 'search filters' form needed to have two endpoints to which it could submit: one to

2 min read

Generating Secure Tokens on Your ActiveRecord Models

You must have used the `has_secure_password` macro in Rails. Did you know Rails also provides a `has_secure_token` macro to generate unique tokens on your models? In this article, we'll learn how it works and we'll also see how Rails implements it behind the scenes.

Rails Internals 3 min read

A Beginner's Guide to Rails Parameters

Parameters in Rails let you access data sent by the browser, either in the URL or via form submission. In this article, we'll cover the basics of parameters, including what they are, how they work, and why they're important. We'll also learn how you can pass parameters when redirecting a request.

6 min read

How to Render Markdown Views in Rails

This article shows how to create and render markdown views in Rails. This is useful if you have a few static marketing pages in your web application that you'd like to save and edit as markdown along with the rest of your code files.

2 min read

Concerns in Rails: Everything You Need to Know

Concerns are an important concept in Rails that can be confusing to understand for those new to Rails as well as seasoned practitioners. This post explains what concerns are, how they work, and how & when you should use them to simplify your code, with practical, real-world examples.

9 min read

How to Create Custom Flash Types in Rails

While reading the Rails codebase last week, I came across a useful method that lets you create custom flash types. In this post, we'll learn how to use it and also how it's implemented behind the scenes. In the process, we'll also learn a few metaprogramming tricks in Ruby.

4 min read