Rails Plugins: Extending Rails Beyond the Core

Chapter 1. Introduction

This short cut about Rails—and more specifically, about Rails plugins—aims to provide a comprehensive overview of what Rails plugins are, what they can be useful for (and they can be extremely useful!), and, most importantly, how to start developing plugins yourself.

Ruby on Rails	6
Oh Plugin, Where Art Thou?	7
Overview of This Short Cut	8
Ruby and Rails Versions	9
A Short Essay about Reusable Code	10

Plugins exist primarily to help you reuse your code, but learning how to write them can help you write more modular applications and understand how Rails itself is implemented. Before starting to examine plugins in detail, it will serve you well to look at them in the wider context of their immediate environment, framework, and language ...