ducktyped

This is cross-posted as a comment on YC news. This post has some additions/edits.

Here's why I love ramaze: multi-app, multi-db app, ~50 lines, one file, zero proprietary plugins, rake tasks, generators, etc. No bending of the framework whatsoever. Use require, use modules, pure ruby, pure joy. :)

Here's the code:

Prelude

I want to start out this post with a big thank you to Jeremy Evans, the author of Scaffolding Extensions (SE) and the maintainer of the Sequel ORM. He is an exemplar of an OSS project leader. I've contacted him regarding both SE and Sequel via forums, bug trackers, irc, mailing lists, and on every single occasion, he's been extremely responsive and helpful. These are big reasons to use software he's involved with, especially in the often "just read the source and specs" Ruby documentation culture. (In fact, he should publish what he does to run his projects so that other OSS project owners can learn from him).

Scaffolding Extensions rock

Scaffolding Extensions rock for developing apps and for building admin interfaces (or even for allowing users to edit only their own data). They are very ORM and web framework agnostic, and offer powerful and flexible customization options. There are, however, a few pitfalls when you start using SE.

...and a valuable programming lesson

Preface

This post got longer than anticipated, because I refactored my code in the middle of writing this very post. The refactored code is at the bottom. Explanations are carelessly strewn about.

Main

I was going to write a post about how great Ramaze is and about how I have some ideas for coding conventions that could help with code reuse, sharing, and multi-app capabilities without requiring any new framework-specific code.

But not now - I need to write shorter posts to get some writing out the door at all. Therefore, I'm just posting some code that implements a simple (primitive?) content management system to keep any site copy in markdown (or textile) format.