Ask HN Rubyists: What's one gem that you wish existed, but doesn't?
I posted this in another thread - it is nothing groundbreaking but would be a good small project for someone to tackle:
Simple Ruby gem I was surprised didn't exist (that I could find): `validates_twitter_username`
Given user input for username, ensure it is valid. Two levels of verification - one would be probably regex based that the username matches twitter restrictions (valid characters, length less than 15), one that pings twitter to confirm the account is registered. Appropriate ActiveRecord errors etc
I'm actually doing something similar for a project I'm working on, I might bundle it and release it as a gem then.
Some kind of admin/logging console for cron jobs (specifically integration with the `whenever` gem). I have a few jobs that run daily/nightly/weekly and I would love to be able to get simple information like: when was the last time this ran, when is the next scheduled time, were there any errors, what was the output.
Cronjob logging and monitoring seems to be pretty tricky and involves a lot of finicky Unix magic, so a nice wrapper would be appreciated.
I have some ideas. Contact me in my profile if you want.