Understanding Ruby On Rails (ror): What Does It Have Inside?

By Author: ror softweb
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In market since 1995, Ruby got its actual identity and boost in publicity as well as usage not well before launch of Ruby on Rails in 2005. At the time of its launch, ROR was among other frameworks which were complex in nature. Hence, ROR made its way to programmers. However, advancement in frameworks supported by PHP done over last few years has put ROR in more competitive stage.

What is ROR complicated of?
It is all about 'Actions' in Ruby on Rails. An 'Action', in ROR, is a single rule that defines how to respond to specific external web-browser request. Some classical ROR actions are: new, create, update, edit, destroy, show, index, etc. However, for any action to be accessible and execute, it must be mapped to Rails router. Main components of framework are Action Pack, Active Model, Active Record, Active Support, Active Resource and Action Mailer.

Ruby on Rails is an MVC framework (Model View Controller) focusing more upon simplicity and productivity which results in ease for programmers.

Model: It maps an action to a table in database. It is up to the developer to choose the model name ...
... and database table that maps it according to need of project.

Controller: It responds to any external request to application from web server by determining which view file to render. It may provide one or more actions together.

View: It is an ERB file which gets converted to HTML at run-time as an output to any request or action that controller receives. Theoretically, any format can be used as a View.

DRY in ROR

The core feature of ROR development is DRY - Don't Repeat Yourself fundamental which reduces any reputation of information and become extremely useful in multi-tier architecture. This prevents any change in logically unrelated parts when you modify some elements of the code. Also, the parts which are logically related, gets changed in uniform and predictable manner so that programmer can trace it easily and the whole code can still be in synch. The concept helps in including database schemas, test-plans, the component compiling system and other parts such as documentation.

Features of ROR

Ruby on Rails have about ten versions or releases since 2005. Every time an update is released, ROR has surprised the developers with some new set of features. Current version is far more advanced than the first one. Some common features inclusive in Version 3.2 in Jan 2012 are -

Active Records version the database structure. Migration helps in forward and backward going which makes the application take care of changes in database structure by itself.
Bundler handles dependencies in smarter way and maintains a consistent environment for ruby applications.
No extra configuration needed with ROR now. It is ORM embedded.
Action Controller provides smarter ways to answer requests from URL of MIME type. In this Polymorphic way, along with REST, you can generate several responses in XML, PDF, JSON and HTML using single method and render the associated view for each MIME type.
Coffee Script makes developer use the JavaScript Syntax in more Ruby ways than traditional ones without using actual JavaScript.
Provision of access to low level HTTP makes API access as well as response and request handling superbly fast. The Middleware with use of Rack interface performs tasks like receiving the request and sending the response directly to front end when rendering isn't required.
Developers can use unit test generators using Test Driven Development (TDD) and Behavior Driven Development (BDD). They can embed excellent integration test suits, too
ROR provides all types rendering engines on the View side. ERB is default template but you can use Slim, HAML or anything of your choice and creation
Rake automates most of the usual tasks like moving files and running upgrade processors.
ROR has inbuilt generators for controllers, models, tests, views, etc. which make you have whole Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD) in browser.

Conclusive Remarks

At the end, there is only one question: Should I use ROR for my web application? It depends a lot on your requirements. Well, there are a lot positive outcomes ROR has delivered to over tens of thousands applications. To have deeper review, you must visit ROR community and follow some excellent threads which help you out in deciding. Community provides exposure to events based on ROR from all over the globe.

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