Random Thoughts by Fabien Penso

12 gems I use in most projects

  1. devise: Flexible authentication, install devise-async if using sidekiq
  2. rspec: Behaviour Driven Development
  3. capistrano: Executing commands in parallel on multiple remote machines, simplify and automate deployment
  4. aasm: Adding finite state machines to Ruby classes. Try state_machine if you need support for multiple columns within the same model
  5. tabs_on_rails: Creating tabs and navigation menus
  6. faker: Generates fake data, very handy with factory_girl for tests
  7. brice: Irb goodness for the masses
  8. webmock: Stubbing and setting expectations on HTTP requests
  9. sidekiq: Efficient message processing, Resque compatible
  10. carrierwave: Flexible way to upload files
  11. will_paginate: Pagination library, I use it with will_paginate-bootstrap as I use bootstrap most the time
  12. whenever: Clear syntax for writing and deploying cron jobs

Which ones do you use yourself? Let me know over Twitter.

Update

Some more I got from you guys:

  • better_errors: Better Errors replaces the standard Rails error page with a much better and more useful error page. It is also usable outside of Rails in any Rack app as Rack middleware.
  • pry: An IRB replacement
  • simple_form: Rails forms made easy.
  • irbtools: Improves Ruby’s irb console. Unlike pry, you are still in your normal irb, but you have colors and lots of helpful methods. It’s designed to work out-of-the-box so there is no reason to not use it!
  • nokogiri: Nokogiri (鋸) is an HTML, XML, SAX, and Reader parser. Among Nokogiri’s many features is the ability to search documents via XPath or CSS3 selectors.
  • bundler: Bundler keeps ruby applications running the same code on every machine. Of course I’d use this in every single projects.
  • kaminari: A Scope & Engine based, clean, powerful, customizable and sophisticated paginator for modern web app frameworks and ORMs. Seems like a nice replacement to will_paginate
  • Active Admin: Framework for creating administration style interfaces.