Some time ago I wrote two short stories (1, 2) about my journey with migrating legacy php application to rails. And yes - that’s topic is till on my plate :P. I didn’t had much time to push it till the finish (not mention posting on my blog), but I’m getting there.
Since I’ve started my small after-hours project quite a few things have changed, for example I:
started using capybara-webkit instead of slow Selenium for integration tests with javascript enabled
cleaned up my helpers and moved some logic to decorators (I recommend checking out active_decorator)
hooked up thinking-sphinx for creating global (site-wide) search engine (works amazing and I truly recommend it for everyone)
created a devise&omniauth combo and allowed users to sign-in via google/facebook account
build simple xmmp (jabber) bot as a way of informing users about new replies/posts in observed topics on forum (using quite outdated xmpp4r library - I will came back to the topic after official release for sure, for now I’ll have to be be enough)
after a discussion with the editors of current site we have decided it’s time to evolve and choose markdown instead of bbcode after all. I’ve chosen redcarpet - with if bloody fast and really flexible - I’ve added some custom tags and support for emoji, created a neat editor based on markItUp, spiced it a little with some github like preview style and some at.js goodness
So yeah - quite a few things changed indeed and there is more to come. I hope when I will finish this project (and I mean here official release) I will find some time to write about gotchas I’ve encountered and some general tips when dealing with legacy application complete upgrade from my points of view :).