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Ruby on Rails

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Evildeathmath (talk | contribs) at 16:20, 1 September 2010 (→Inspiration for other frameworks: Entire section was unsourced puffery, and inaccurately asserted that ASP.NET was a clone of RoR, despite being released 2 years earlier). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Ruby on Rails
Developer(s)Rails Core Team
Initial releaseJuly 2004 (2004-07)
Stable release
3.0[1] / August 29, 2010 (2010-08-29)
Repository
Written inRuby
Operating systemCross-platform
TypeWeb application framework
LicenseMIT License
Websitehttp://rubyonrails.org/

Ruby on Rails, often shortened to Rails or RoR, is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language. It is intended to be used with an Agile development methodology that is used by web developers for rapid development.[2]

History

Version history
Version Date
1.0[3] December 13, 2005
1.2[4] January 19, 2007
2.0[5] December 7, 2007
2.1[6] June 1, 2008
2.2[7] November 21, 2008
2.3[8] March 16, 2009
3.0[9] August 29, 2010

Ruby on Rails was extracted by David Heinemeier Hansson from his work on Basecamp, a project management tool by 37signals (now a web application company).[10] David Hansson first released Rails as open source in July 2004, but did not share commit rights to the project until February 2005.[11] In August 2006 the framework reached a milestone when Apple announced that it would ship Ruby on Rails with Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard",[12] which was released in October 2007.

Rails version 2.3 was released on March 15, 2009. Major new developments in Rails includes templates, engines, Rack and nested model forms.

  • Templates enable the developer to generate a skeleton application with custom gems and configurations.
  • Engines let one reuse application pieces complete with routes, view paths and models.
  • The Rack web server interface and Metal allow one to write optimized pieces of code that route around ActionController.[13]

On December 23, 2008, Merb, another web application framework was launched, and Rails announced a commitment to work together. The Rails team announced they would work with the Merb project to bring "the best ideas of Merb" into Rails 3, ending the "unnecessary duplication" across both communities.[14]

Technical overview

Like many web frameworks, Rails uses the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture pattern to organize application programming.

Ruby on Rails includes tools that make common development tasks easier "out of the box", such as scaffolding that can automatically construct some of the models and views needed for a basic website.[15] Also included are WEBrick, a simple ruby web server that is distributed with Ruby, and Rake, a build system, distributed as a gem. Together with Rails these tools provide a basic development environment.

Ruby on Rails relies on a web server to run it. Mongrel was generally preferred over WEBrick at the time of writing[citation needed] but it can also be run by Lighttpd, Abyss, Apache, nginx (either as a module - Passenger for example - or via CGI, FastCGI or mod_ruby), and many others. From 2008 onwards, the Passenger web server replaced Mongrel as the most used web server.[citation needed]

Rails is also noteworthy for its extensive use of the JavaScript libraries Prototype and Script.aculo.us for Ajax.[16] Rails initially utilized lightweight SOAP for web services; this was later replaced by RESTful web services. Rails 3.0 uses a technique called Unobtrusive Javascript to separate the functionality (or logic) from the structure of the web page.

Since version 2.0, Ruby on Rails by default offers both HTML and XML as output formats. The latter is the facility for RESTful web services.

Ruby on Rails 2.3 relies on Ruby 1.8.6. Rails 3.0 has been designed to work with Ruby 1.8.7, Ruby 1.9.2, and JRuby 1.5.2+, earlier versions are not supported[17].

Framework structure

Ruby on Rails is separated into various packages, namely ActiveRecord (an object-relational mapping system for database access), ActiveResource (provides web services), ActionPack, ActiveSupport and ActionMailer. Prior to version 2.0, Rails also included the Action Web Service package that is now replaced by Active Resource. Apart from standard packages, developers can make plugins to extend existing packages.

Deployment

Ruby on Rails is often installed using RubyGems, a package manager[18] which is included with Ruby. Many Linux distributions also support installation of Rails and its dependencies through their native package management system.

Ruby on Rails is typically integrated with a database server such as MySQL and a web server such as Apache.

Philosophy and design

Ruby on Rails is intended to emphasize Convention over Configuration (CoC), and the rapid development principle of Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY).

"Convention over Configuration" means a developer only needs to specify unconventional aspects of the application. For example, if there is a class Sale in the model, the corresponding table in the database is called sales by default. It is only if one deviates from this convention, such as calling the table "products sold", that the developer needs to write code regarding these names. Generally, this leads to less code and less repetition.

"Don't repeat yourself" means that information is located in a single, unambiguous place. For example, using the ActiveRecord module of Rails, the developer does not need to specify database column names in class definitions. Instead, Ruby on Rails can retrieve this information from the database based on the class name.

Trademarks

In March 2007 David Heinemeier Hansson filed three Rails related trademark applications to the USPTO. These applications regard the phrase "RUBY ON RAILS",[19] the word "RAILS"[20] and the official Rails logo.[21] As a consequence, in the summer of 2007 Hansson denied to Apress the permission to use the Rails logo on the cover of a new Rails book written by some authoritative community members. The episode gave rise to a polite protest in the Rails community.[22][23] In response to this criticism, Hansson made the following claims:[22] I only grant promotional use [of the Rails logo] for products I'm directly involved with. Such as books that I've been part of the development process for or conferences where I have a say in the execution. I would most definitely seek to enforce all the trademarks of Rails.

Reception

Ruby running on Matz Interpreter (which is the default reference interpreter for Ruby) had been criticized for issues with scalability[24] These critics often mentioned various Twitter outages in 2007 and 2008, which spurred Twitter's partial transition to Scala (which runs on the Java Virtual Machine) for their queuing system and other middleware.[25][26] The user interface aspects of the site continue to run Ruby on Rails.[27]

Present state

Rails has become more modular since merging with Merb.[28] Before the merger, applications developed in Rails encouraged developers to use specific sub-frameworks. A choice can now more easily be made between different sub frameworks, such as DataMapper for the ORM or jQuery as the Javascript library.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Rails 3.0: It's ready!". Retrieved 29 August 2010.
  2. ^ Rønn Jensen, Jesper (April 12, 2006). "Ruby on Rails as rapid prototyping tool". justaddwater.dk. Denmark. Retrieved February 2, 2010.
  3. ^ "Rails 1.0: Party like it's one oh oh!". Riding Rails. Retrieved June 9, 2010.
  4. ^ "Rails 1.2: REST admiration, HTTP lovefest, and UTF-8 celebrations". Riding Rails. Retrieved June 9, 2010.
  5. ^ "Rails 2.0: It's done!". Riding Rails. Retrieved June 9, 2010.
  6. ^ Rails 2.1: Time zones, dirty, caching, gem dependencies, caching, etc. Riding Rails. Retrieved June 9, 2010.
  7. ^ "Rails 2.2: i18n, HTTP validators, thread safety, JRuby/1.9 compatibility, docs". Riding Rails. Retrieved June 9, 2010.
  8. ^ "Rails 2.3: Templates, Engines, Rack, Metal, much more!". Riding Rails. Retrieved June 9, 2010.
  9. ^ "Rails 3.0: It's ready!". Riding Rails. Retrieved August 30, 2010.
  10. ^ Grimmer, Lenz (February 2006). "Interview with David Heinemeier Hansson from Ruby on Rails". MySQL AB. Retrieved 2008-06-08.
  11. ^ "37 Signals, Rails core team profiles". Retrieved 2008-07-15.
  12. ^ Hansson, David (August 7, 2006). "Ruby on Rails will ship with OS X 10.5 (Leopard)". Retrieved 2008-06-08.
  13. ^ Hansson, David (March 16, 2009). "Rails 2.3: Templates, Engines, Rack, Metal, much more!".
  14. ^ "The day Merb joined Rails". December 27, 2008.
  15. ^ There were quite a few changes in the 2.0 release, including the way that Rails generates scaffolding code.
  16. ^ Rails includes the Prototype JavaScript framework and the Scriptaculous JavaScript controls and visual effects library.
  17. ^ "Rails 3.0: It's ready!". rubyonrails.org. Retrieved 2010-08-30. Rails 3.0 has been designed to work with Ruby 1.8.7, Ruby 1.9.2, and JRuby 1.5.2+.
  18. ^ "Ruby on Rails: Download". RubyonRails.org.
  19. ^ ""Ruby on Rails" Trademark Status". USPTO. Retrieved 2007-08-01.
  20. ^ ""Rails" Trademark Status". USPTO. Retrieved 2007-08-01.
  21. ^ "Rails Logo Trademark Status". USPTO. Retrieved 2007-08-01.
  22. ^ a b Forde, Pete (2007-07-23). "Beginning Rails: From Novice to Professional". Retrieved 2007-08-01.
  23. ^ Cooper, Peter (2007-07-24). "David Heinemeier Hansson says No to Use of Rails Logo". Retrieved 2007-08-01.
  24. ^ "5 Question Interview with Twitter Developer Alex Payne". radicalbehavior.com. 2007-03-29. Retrieved 2009-07-18. By various metrics Twitter is the biggest Rails site on the net right now. Running on Rails has forced us to deal with scaling issues - issues that any growing site eventually contends with – far sooner than I think we would on another framework.
  25. ^ Steve Jenson, Alex Payne, and Robey Pointer interview (2009-04-03). "Twitter on Scala". artima.com. Retrieved 2009-07-18. We had a Ruby-based queuing system that we used for communicating between the Rails front ends and the daemons, and we ended up replacing that with one written in Scala. The Ruby one actually worked pretty decently in a normal steady state, but the startup time and the crash behavior were undesirable.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  26. ^ "Twitter jilts Ruby for Scala". theregister.co.uk. 2009-04-01. Retrieved 2009-07-18. By the end of this year, Payne said, Twitter hopes to have its entire middleware infrastructure and its APIs ported to the new language. Ruby will remain, but only on the front end. "We're still happy with Rails for building user facing features... performance-wise, it's fine for people clicking around web pages. It's the heavy lifting, asynchronous processing type of stuff that we've moved away from."
  27. ^ ryan king (2009-09-25). "Twitter on Ruby". evan weaver. Retrieved 2009-09-29. We use Scala for a few things at Twitter, but the majority of the site is Ruby.
  28. ^ "Ruby on Rails 3.0 goes modular". sdtimes.com. 2010-02-10. Retrieved 2010-08-06.

Bibliography

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Ruby on Rails
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ruby_on_Rails&oldid=382302571"