Ruby Cheatsheet

This post contains many useful snippets for me when writing Ruby scripts. I will keep updating this note in the future.

🏷 About File #

Absolute Path #

__dir__ returns the current path.

File.join(__dir__, file_name_no_path )

Read / Write a file #

Read the content of file_name to buffer

buffer = File.read( file_name )

Write content to file_name. File will be created when it does not exist.

File.open( file_name , "w") { |f| f.write( content ) }

🏷 About String #

String template #

To create a multiline string template:

template = <<-EOCONTENT
Your
Multiline
Text
Content
EOCONTENT

String Interpolation #

str = "This is a string with #{variable_name}."

Trim a String #

"    Hello James ".strip  #=> "Hello James"

Null Or Empty #

str.nil? ? "null" : "not_null"
str.empty? ? "empty" : "not_empty"

Titlecase / UPPERCASE / lowercase / Capitalize #

All returns a new copy. Examples from this answer in StackOverflow.

"hello James".titleize    #=> "Hello James"
"hello James".upcase      #=> "HELLO JAMES"
"hello James".downcase    #=> "hello james"
"hello James".capitalize  #=> "Hello james"

Note: Alter the original string by adding ! right after the method.

"hello James".downcase!

🏷 About Input #

Console Input #

Ask a question and wait for user input:

print "Your question: "
user_input = gets

(you may need to strip the user_input to ger rid of a tailing newline.)

🏷 About Regex #

Test a ruby regex: https://rubular.com/

Named regex capturing group #

Steps:

1. Prepare the regex: ^(\w+)(Query|Command)$.
2. Add ?<named_group> at the beginning inside that capturing group.
3. Do the regex match()
4. Retrieve the named group: [:named_group]

## name: SomeStuffQuery ; result: SomeStuff
result = /^(?<named_group>\w+)(Query|Command)$/.match(name)[:named_group]

If your regex is valid, you should be able to see the captured group and related content:

🏷 About Bundler and Gemfile #

Bundler helps you to manage gem denendencies in your project.

Install bundler #

gem install bundler
bundler -v

Setup and restore dependencies #

Create a Gemfile:

source 'https://rubygems.org'
gem 'dotenv', '~> 2.7', '>= 2.7.5'
gem "mustache", "~> 1.0"

Globally #

bundle # may requires sudo

Locally #

To install gems at a relative path e.g. at the lib folder:

bundle install --path=./lib

a .bundle folder will be generated, together with your Gemfile.lock.

Check the info of a installed gem #

❯ bundle info ruby_http_client
  * ruby_http_client (3.5.1)
        Summary: A simple REST client
        Homepage: http://github.com/sendgrid/ruby-http-client
        Path: ~/git/my-folder/lib/ruby/2.6.0/gems/ruby_http_client-3.5.1

(cover image from this dribble)