Add Rails Support to Netbeans 7.0

I always liked Netbeans for coding: it supports ton of languages, can be installed in Windows, Linux and MaC, and is stable in all of them. Even it demands more resources than a text editor, this is not a problem in current computers.

The latest release (7.0) dropped official support for Rails :( .
However you can continue using it via a community maintained plug-in:

•  Install Netbeans from http://netbeans.org/downloads/index.html (I picked PHP distribution since it is the lighter one)
• Add a plugin repository : 
• Tools -> Plugins -> Settings 
• click 'Add' and write a name (e.g: Beta rails) and a url 'http://updates.netbeans.org/netbeans/updates/7.0/uc/beta/stable/catalog.xml.gz'
• refresh available plugins, filter by 'rails' and install it
• Restart IDE, rescan Ruby platforms:
• Tools -> Ruby Platforms --> Autodetect Platforms

 
Profit

 here are some links for more information on NB + Rails:

• http://blog.enebo.com/
• http://wiki.netbeans.org/RubyCommunityInformation 

Rendering from a Model in Rails 3

Call me 'rebel', but it happened to me that I had to render text from a ruby class.
I was composing text withing a regular class to send personalized SMS's and I wanted to use 'erb' templates and some other view utilities. Even it is not the Rails way, I wanted to do so.

Here are the tricks I used to build the logic. Key points are:
- how to get access to the view context
- how to get access to the path and the erb templates
- hot to get access to the url helpers in case you need form an url

class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base

 

   # Use the my_models/_my_model.txt.erb view to render this object as a string

  def to_s

    url = helpers.new_user_url :host => default_host

    view = ActionView::Base.new(views_path)

    text = view.render(

      :partial => 'my_models/my_model', :format => :txt,

      :locals => { :my_model => self, :url => url}

    )

  end

 

  private

  def views_path

    @views_path ||= Rails.configuration.paths.app.views.first

  end

  def self.helpers

    @helpers ||= Rails.application.routes.url_helpers

  end

  def default_host

    #you need to configure it in your /config/environments/*.rb files

    # for example:   config.action_mailer.default_url_options = { :host => 'localhost:3000' }

    @default_host ||= Rails.configuration.action_mailer.default_url_options[:host]

  end

 

 

end