There are many Rails plugins out there these days. Yay. Since plugins tend to target a specific audience, fulfilling a small, well-defined purpose, it’s easy to miss the one you’re needing. So, hey, I thought I’d share a few of my most-often-used / favorites for anyone who wanders along.

1. auto_complete: This plugin is a good one for Rails 2.0 apps. The auto_complete (and other AJAX) functionality was moved out of the Rails core and into plugins, part of a larger effort to move non-core features into plugins. This plugin is where the auto_complete_for goodness now resides.
2. paginating_find: Ah, pagination. Good fun is Rails’ land. Sometimes you need custom pagination. And sometimes you just want pagination that works well. There’s several plugins out there, this one is my preference. The igvita.com blog has an entry on how to use this plugin to make very nice page links.
3. ruby-whois: Ha ha. Actually, this one is mine, and incomplete. But it works for my needs, and can be used as a “normal” library. Anyway, it helps with accessing whois information for domains.
4. exception_notification: Cheap and easy email notifications when something goes wrong on a production site.
5. userstamp: Like timestamps, but with user ids. I tried to implement this functionality on my own before finding this plugin. Much easier with the plugin, for me.
6. engines: Engines make plugins a bit more powerful, easing the inclusion of views, migrations, etc. in plugins. It can be tempting to overuse this functionality, but it can also come in very handy in the right situations.

I just read on the ruby on rails weblog the announcement of Rails 2.0 preview release. The thing that initially struck me is that all the changes sound like good ideas to me. Yay! In particular, I’m glad to see the semicolons in resource routes disappear, just because they kept striking me as odd.

Anyway, yay for continued Rails progress. I guess I’ll pick an app in the next couple of weeks and give a shot at migrating to 2.0. The other nice thing is that I feel comfortable with leaving applications at 1.2.3 (or jumping up to 1.2.4), as I have been quite satisfied with that.

To me, the central theme of 2.0 is that of a simple system with many plugins rather than a complex stand-alone. I generally like this because, hey, I rarely use most of the features many applications/libraries offer, and I like the opportunity to control what features I use. It also makes migrations to a new version easier because I know at a glance what features I am using.

Continued good things from the Rails developers and community.