Question

I’m coming from C#, and recently I started to write some Ruby on Rails applications.

My biggest problem with it is the documentation because I find it extremly difficult to use. For example, finding out how to call generator from my controller took me about 2 hours and then 15 minutes after that I found Rails::Generators.invoke method to figure out what arguments should I pass to this function.

Maybe I use the documentation the wrong way; First I take a wild guess and search in the Netbeans code completion, which is rarely helpful, then I search in Google, then go with the API.

Can some experienced Rails programmer give me some advice?

Answer 1

I am describing my own very personal workflow with Ruby/Rails documentation:

1. You can use ri and rdoc if you are familiar with the console, but…

2. Personally, I recommend two very good Ruby/Rails documentation sites:

   • apidock.com (no good search, but sometimes fine examples)
   • railsapi.com (very good AJAX search, plus you can customize what documentation you would like to see – by versions and by Gems)