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Last updated 28 February 2013
This is a website and GitHub repository for open source Ruby on Rails example applications.
The example applications span the gap between Ruby on Rails introductions for beginners and the piecemeal advice found on experts’ blogs. Each application is accompanied by a detailed tutorial. Maintenance and development of the applications is supported by subscriptions to the tutorials. Purchase a subscription if you’d like to support the project.
New to Rails? See What is Ruby? And Rails?, recommendations for a Rails tutorial, and top resources for Ruby and Rails.
Follow the project on Twitter: rails_apps. Tweet some praise if you like what you’ve found.
“Thanks so much for this. There are so many Rails tutorials for absolute beginners, and lots of stuff that assumes expert knowledge, but not much, besides practice, to span the gap.” — Rick Quantz, HackerNews, 13 May 2011
“I would like to say thank you for such a precise guide. It helped me understand how things work a great deal quicker than all of the bits and pieces I was reading around the web.” — Justin Booth
“@danielkehoe is somewhat of a hero with the stuff he puts on @github” — Warwick Poole, Twitter, 2 July 2011
“Crazy Deep” — Peter Cooper, Ruby Weekly, 19 May 2011
Each example is an open source project. Dozens of developers use the apps, report problems as they arise, and propose solutions as GitHub issues. Rails changes frequently; each application is known to work and serves as your personal “reference implementation” so you can stay up to date. Each is accompanied by a tutorial so there is no mystery code.
Use the Rails Composer tool to generate any of the examples as a starter app. Then customize the code for a complete working Rails 3.2 web application.
| Example App | Tutorial | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Twitter Bootstrap, Devise, CanCan | Tutorial | Devise for authentication, CanCan for authorization, Twitter Bootstrap for CSS |
| Rails Membership Site with Stripe | Tutorial | Site with subscription billing using Stripe |
| Rails Membership Site with Recurly | Tutorial | Site with subscription billing using Recurly |
| Startup Prelaunch Signup App | Tutorial | For a startup prelaunch signup site |
| Devise, RSpec, Cucumber | Tutorial | Devise for authentication with ActiveRecord and SQLite for a database |
| Devise, Mongoid | Tutorial | Devise for authentication with a MongoDB datastore |
| OmniAuth, Mongoid | Tutorial | OmniAuth for authentication with a MongoDB datastore |
| Subdomains, Devise, Mongoid | Tutorial | Basecamp-style subdomains with Devise and MongoDB |
Our in-depth articles provide additional background and detail.