What is a RubyGem?
(This blog post is a port over from a blog post on my now decommissioned previous website)
A Rubygem is a bit of code that a ruby developer wrote, made available in a portable format and posted to a public server, so that bit of code can be used on other machines and by other developers in different web projects. Think, Legos. Basically, I made a code lego. If you were to think of web development as building digital things with digital Legos (And you might not be too far off, frankly), you could imagine a Rubygem as being a specific Lego that performs a specific function. Some Rubygems allow you to send email, upload images, or even display a profile picture based on your email address. This Rubygem that I created displays Boston themed “Lorem Ipsum” text.
What is Lorem Ipsum?
Lorem Ipsum is “filler text” used by print and web developers to take space up on a page with text so that he or she can get an idea of what the page will look like once the marketing text gets finished by the marketing department.
I wanted to experiment with making a Ruby gem, as I had never made one before, so I created a rather simple Lorem Ipsum generator that returns Boston area themed text.
Rubygems link: https://rubygems.org/gems/boston_ipsum/versions/1.5.5
You simply install the gem, bundle, and call:
<%= BostonIpsum.speak(integer) %> in any view. The integer number allows you to return a randomized yet specific number of words. To add words, make a pull request.
For example,
<%= BostonIpsum.speak(2) %> could output “Patriots Somerville”, and
<%= BostonIpsum.speak(4) %> could output “Sox Eastie Southie MBTA”
Installation:
Add this line to your application’s Gemfile:
gem ‘boston_ipsum’
And then execute:
$ bundle
Or install it yourself as:
$ gem install boston_ipsum
Usage:
Simply add:
<%= BostonIpsum.speak(5) %>
into any view after requiring and bundling the gem into your ruby project.
To add Boston themed words to the list, simply add them and make a pull request on Github.
