Introducing Rails Routes TextMate bundle

I always have a problem parsing Rails‘ named routes in my head. It usually takes me a lot of time and effort to decide which controller action or view file is responsible for given path. Of course, it’s easy to tell when you look at:

edit_user_path(@user)

that you probably should go to users_controller.rb and find edit action and views/users/edit.html.haml is the right view file. But when nested routes, prefixes and non-RESTful actions all come to play, you might end up with a monster like:

precreate_new_employer_employer_account_path

Don’t laugh, this is real. So, what’s going on here? What is the action name? Are those “employer” things prefixes or nested routes? Where do I find the view? To answer all these questions, the Rails Routes TextMate bundle was born.

Too much intuitiveness will kill you

Recently I wanted to export some of my snippets from Textmate, so my teammates could use them too. I tried everything: right-clicking on snippets and bundles, clicking various buttons in Bundle editor, searching through menus and options, but I couldn’t any command for doing so. After several minutes of frantic clicking, I resorted to reading help file. To my surprise, exporting and importing bundle items is very simple, almost too simple.

If you want to share a bundle or particular bundle item then you can drag it directly from the bundle editor (from the list in the left side of the window) to the Finder.

This item can then be sent to other people and they will be able to double-click it to install it. Note: this also works for single items, like a snippet or a command.

TextMate manual

Moral of the story: too much intuitiveness will kill you. Or: if you make something too simple, some people may overlook it. Maybe you should add a less intuitive option for them too (like right-click menu item).