For Programmers working with Other Frameworks: Ruby on Rails ORM and REST

This meetup is specifically intended for programmers working with other frameworks and languages that are interested in learning more about Ruby and Rails. Join us for a special Ruby Meetup in San Mateo at invitation of NexTag, our host and sponsor for the evening.

We have two presentations covering aspects of Rails accessible to people who are new to it. Pizza, beer, and drinks provided.

Curtis Schofield: Rails ActiveRecord::Base - The door beyond magic.

Rails' ORM layer, ActiveRecord, is an elegant solution for keeping model code simple and modular (aka DRY). Demystifying the way Ruby-on-Rails uses runtime method generation opens a doorway for understanding and provides a foundation for the other ways Rails uses simple conventions to allow sophisticated, concise functionality in a declarative style.

Curtis Schofield is a internet and architecture hacker at Blazing Cloud. He's been coding ruby since 2004 and Rails since 2005. He can make excellent ginger cookies.

Wolfram Arnold: Consuming REST services with ActiveResource

In this talk and demo we'll take a look at the way Rails consumes REST services. Rails comes with ActiveResource, which abstracts REST API's into an object interface. While not as full-featured as ActiveRecord (the ORM adapter), it provides a host of useful tools that take a lot of plumbing work off the hands of the coder, including simple CRUD interface, error handling and validations, ease of testing. We'll also discuss the limitations and tradeoffs of ActiveResource.

Wolfram Arnold, Ph.D. started working with Rails in 2006 and has been pursuing Rails-based projects passionately ever since as developer, startup consultant and trainer. He's spoken at numerous conferences and meetups and is currently the VP of Engineering at Papercheck, Inc.

Schedule:

6:30 - 7:00pm Networking with pizza and beer

7:00 - 7:45pm Curtis Schofield

7:45 - 7:55pm Break

7:55 - 8:40pm Wolfram Arnold

8:40 - 9:00pm Announcements, more networking

We'll have people in the lobby waiting to let attendees in. Attendees can park anywhere in the large lot in front without a permit.

Hope to see you there!