They say a picture is worth a thousand words. While I wouldn’t necessarily classify cheat sheets as “pictures,” they are a more visual representation of the concepts and tools we get from Rails generators. When I wrote Frictionless Generators, I knew that visuals could help communicate some of the more abstract concepts better than prose alone could.
I also wanted to help people avoid having to swim back through the book to find a specific method name or other detail once they start creating generators. These cheat sheets—two free and four more that come with the book—to help folks see what’s available while also providing some context around how they all work together. And, while they’re helpful on their own, they’re even better as quick references after you’ve read the book.
The Overview Cheat Sheet
The Overview cheat sheet (PDF 1.6MB) (Figure 1) aims to provide a high-level overview of how the various elements of generators work together and where they’re connected through configurable values. The top portion provides a visual approximation of how the various elements are connected, and the bottom half groups the primary available actions based on their purpose.
The Overview cheat sheet is meant to serve as both a visual map of generator structure and a convenient list of (most of) the actions available to use in custom generators.
↩︎The Values & Inflections Cheat Sheets
In my work with generators, I regularly struggled to remember which inflections were available and how they translated to values based on the name argument. So even if nobody else ever used it, I personally wanted some examples in a quick reference format. (Figure 2)
And since the inflections behave differently based on whether that name argument includes a namespace, I made sure to include examples for both cases.
A list of both the available inflections available as well as examples of their values with a simple name and a namespaced name.
↩︎The Values & Inflections cheat sheet (PDF 1.4MB) (Figure 3) helps summarize the wide array of values and inflections available from within generators and their templates. While inflections are one of the more familiar elements, I wanted to make sure to include other useful values that are readily accessible when creating custom generators.
Generators have access to a dizzying array of values and inflections that can help create some seriously powerful generators with minimal effort.
↩︎All of the Sheets
The remaining four cheat sheets are available as part of the book. (They took almost as long to create as the book itself.) They go into more detail about the four main elements of generators: the generators themselves along with arguments and options, the generator tests, templates and ERb, and interactivity and documentation elements of the command line. Each of these strives to summarize its section of the book in a way that can help jar memories and remember a given method or variable name when you’re in the middle of knocking out a custom generator.
You can download the free cheat sheets above, and the full set is available as part of the Frictionless Generators. You can visit the site to learn more about the book and other resources, or you can join the list below to go through the free email course and get an idea of how the book could help you save time and reduce tedium by leveraging custom Rails generators in your projects.