I’m looking to move from PHP to Ruby as my web development platform of
choice. Over the years, I’ve become very fond of PHP’s documentation
simply because it’s easy to find the information your after, and the
user comments can really come in handy. I used the documentation as an
API reference mainly, which is exactly what I plan to use Ruby’s
documentation for. I’m a little unimpressed however by the API reference
found here on the Ruby website: RDoc Documentation
I’m wondering if this is what everyone refers to when checking up on the
API, or if there’s another means by which you access this information. I
personally am finding the documentation linked to above a pain in the
ass to search and navigate so I’m hoping there’s something better out
there somewhere, preferably that doesn’t use god damn frames; god damn
usability nightmare they are.
I’m looking to move from PHP to Ruby as my web development platform of
choice. Over the years, I’ve become very fond of PHP’s documentation
simply because it’s easy to find the information your after, and the
user comments can really come in handy. I used the documentation as an
API reference mainly, which is exactly what I plan to use Ruby’s
documentation for. I’m a little unimpressed however by the API reference
found here on the Ruby website: RDoc Documentation
Ruby is usually bundled with docs (usually, for the included ri tool,
though RubyInstaller on Windows has CHM docs, instead.)
Another issue with the documentation is that it doesn’t seem to mention
class inheritance; something which I’d consider to be important enough
to mention.
If you go the API reference for the “File” class for example, there’s no
indication that it inherits from the IO class. Without running
“File.superclass” at the irb, I wouldn’t know that File inherits this
class.
Ruby just seems to be such a kick ass language that it seems a shame the
documentation is so poor.
I’m a little unimpressed however by the API reference
found here on the Ruby website: RDoc Documentation
I’m wondering if this is what everyone refers to when checking up on the
API, or if there’s another means by which you access this information.
A new way to see the doc appeared some weeks ago with http://rubydoc.info/, but it seems to be out at the moment I write
this…
Another tool I use is http://railsapi.com/. There is a link “build your
custom package” where you can prepare your pakcage (Rails, Ruby and/or
other gems), download it and have it online with a search field as the
one online for Rails : http://railsapi.com/doc/rails-v3.0.0/
A new way to see the doc appeared some weeks ago with http://xxx.info/, but it seems to be out at the moment I write
this…
I believe the correct url is http://rdoc.info but even this appears to
be down.
I use 1.9.2 but am sadly stuck looking at 1.8.4 docs downloaded long ago
from the ruby site, viewed using “links” inside a “screen” tab.
Ruby is usually bundled with docs (usually, for the included ri tool,
though RubyInstaller on Windows has CHM docs, instead.)
Thanks Chris. I just found the CHM documentation on my Windows 7 box as
it’s much much better than the online documentation. It actually
mentions class inheritance.
I was talking about ruby core and stdlib’s for 1.9.2. It seems the above
link is for rails documentation only.
Nope, have a look of my first entry on this topic, you can build the
package you want, so only Ruby 1.9.2 if you want. I diid it so you
should be able to do so ;-))
