Ruby On Rails

MySpace, Twitter allows you to import address book from all the providers. With the help of that functionality user can invite their friends to join their network easily. (there is no need to type each and every email address manually).
In One of my web application I have to implement the same functionality that give users access to their up-to-date address book from my website.

I found three options for the same functionality.

1. Plaxo
Its is a third party integration. It is free and easy to implement. The Address Book Access Widget is a simple-to-implement snippet of JavaScript that you can embed on any web page. The Widget allows visitors to a particular site to (1) seamlessly import contacts from multiple address books, (2) select entries, and (3) enter selected data into web page forms.

2. Octazen’s Contacts Importer (Address Book Grabber)
They also have a ruby version and that will cost you around $300
Visit the following url to order that package http://www.octazen.com/store.php

3. Contacts a ruby gem or plugin
It will allow you to grab contact list from Hotmail, Gmail, Plaxo and Yahoo.

How to get?

      gem install contacts

	AND/OR

     ruby script/plugin install http://github.com/cardmagic/contacts/tree/master
  

How to use?

	 		Contacts::Hotmail.new(login, password).contacts # => [["name", "foo@bar.com"], ["another name", "bow@wow.com"]]
		  Contacts::Yahoo.new(login, password).contacts
		  Contacts::Gmail.new(login, password).contacts

		  Contacts.new(:gmail, login, password).contacts
		  Contacts.new(:hotmail, login, password).contacts
		  Contacts.new(:yahoo, login, password).contacts

		  Contacts.guess(login, password).contacts

If you

Liquid is a template engine extracted from the e-commerce system Shopify. Now t is a stand alone ruby library. Liquid can be used either in a Ruby application or in a Ruby On Rails application

Why Should We Use liquid ?

1. Allow users to edit the appearance of your application.
2. Easy and secure.
3. Render templates directly from the database.
4. Style HTML as well as emails.
5. Extending Liquid is very easy
6. Simple markups.
7. If you like Smarty-style template engines

How to get it?

Liquid can be installed either as liquid gem or plugin.

Plugin can be installed simply with by script/install:
ruby script/plugin install git://github.com/tobi/liquid.git

RubyGems
gem install liquid

Liquid Basics
Liquid have two type of markups

• Output markup (which may resolve to text)

             {{ matched pairs of curly brackets (ie, braces) }}
example
Hello {{ ‘Satish Chuahan’ }}<br /> #=> Hello Satish Chuahan<br /> #user = User.new(:name => ‘Satish Chuahan’)<br /> Hello {{ user.name }}<br /> #=> Satish Chuahan<br /> {{ ’satish chauhan’ | upcase }}<br /> #=> SATISH CHAUHAN<br /> {{ ’satish chauhan’ | truncate:6 }}<br /> #=> sat…<br /> {{ ‘ruby on rails ‘ | upcase | truncate:10 }}<br /> #=> RUBY ON

• Tag markup (which cannot resolve to text and are used for logic)

             {% matched pairs of curly brackets and percent signs %}
example
{% if user %}<br /> Hello {{ user.name }}<br /> {% endif %}<br /> {% if user.age > 18 %}<br /> Login here<br /> {% else %}<br /> Sorry, you are too young<br /> {% endif %}