Ruby On Rails
CSCI 5449 Submitted by: Bhaskar Vaish
What is Ruby on Rails ?
Ruby on Rails is a web application framework written in Ruby, a dynamic programming language. Ruby on Rails uses the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture pattern to organize application programming.
What is Ruby on Rails ?(Continued)
A model in a Ruby on Rails framework maps to a table in a database A controller is the component of Rails that responds to external requests from the web server to the application, and responds to the external request by determining which view file to render A view in the default configuration of Rails is an erb file. It is typically converted to output html at runtime
Ruby
It is a dynamic, general-purpose object-oriented programming language Combines syntax inspired by Perl, also influenced by Eiffel and Lisp Supports multiple programming paradigms, including functional, object oriented, imperative and reflective
Ruby(Contd.)
Has a dynamic type system and automatic memory management
Ruby is a metaprogramming language.
Sample Ruby Code
# Output Bhaskar puts Bhaskar
# Output Bhaskar in upprecase puts Bhaskar .upcase # Output Bhaskar 10 times 10.times do puts Bhaskar .upcase end
Sample Ruby Code: Class
Class Employee: defining three attributes for a Employee; name, age, position
class Employee # must be capitalized attr_accessor :name, :age, :position # The initialize method is the constructor def initialize(name, age, position) @name = name @age = type @position = color end
New Employee
Creating an instance of the Employee class: a = Employee.new(JAY", 23", Test Engineer") b = Employee.new(SAM", 24", Test Engineer")
Method
To be able to describe employees, we add a method to the employee class: def describe @name + " is of " + @age + " years" +" working as " + @position+ ".\n" end
Calling Method
To get the description of Employee, we can call Employee with the describe method attached : emp= a.describe puts emp or: puts a.describe
Rails
Rails is an open source Ruby framework for developing database-backed web applications The Rails framework was extracted from real-world web applications. Thus it is an easy to use and cohesive framework that's rich in functionality
Rails(Contd.)
All layers in Rails are built to work together and uses a single language from top to bottom
Everything in Rails (templates to control flow to business logic) is written in Ruby, except for configuration files - YAML
What is so special about Rails
Other frameworks use extensive code generation, which gives users a one-time productivity boost but little else, and customization scripts let the user add customization code in only a small number of carefully selected points
Metaprogramming replaces these two primitive techniques and eliminates their disadvantages. Ruby is one of the best languages for metaprogramming, and Rails uses this capability well.
What is so special about Rails
Scaffolding You often create temporary code in the early stages of development to help get an application up quickly and see how major components work together. Rails automatically creates much of the scaffolding you'll need.
What is so special about Rails
Convention over configuration
Most Web development frameworks for .NET or Java forces to write pages of configuration code, instead Rails doesn't need much configuration. The total configuration code can be reduced by a factor of five or more over similar Java frameworks just by following common conventions. Naming your data model class with the same name as the corresponding database table id as the primary key name
What is so special about Rails Active Record framework
Saves objects to the database. Discovers the columns in a database schema and automatically attaches them to domain objects using metaprogramming.
What is so special about Rails
Action Pack
Views and controllers have a tight interaction, in rails they are combined in Action Pack Action pack breaks a web request into view components and controller compoents So an action usually involves a controller request to create, read, update, or delete (CRUD) some part of the model, followed by a view request to render a page
Rails implements the model-viewcontroller (MVC) architecture.
Model View Contoller (MVC)
The MVC design pattern separates the component parts of an application
MVC pattern allows rapid change and evolution of the user interface and controller separate from the data model
Model
Contains the data of the application Transient Stored (eg Database)
Enforces "business" rules of the application Attributes Work flow
View
Provides the user interface
Dynamic content rendered through templates Three major types Ruby code in erb (embedded ruby) templates xml.builder templates rjs templates (for javascript, and thus ajax)
Controller
Perform the bulk of the heavy lifting
Handles web requests Maintains session state Performs caching Manages helper modules
Creating a Simple Application
Requirements Ruby RubyGems Rails SQlite, PostGres or MySQL
I will be developing on Windows 7
I have created an application which can be accessed at http://ancient-ridge-9795.herokuapp.com/ It consists of a Home page which displays text And has two right and left buttons, which can be used for displaying and adding messages.
Steps Involved
Creating application on the local host
Step 1: On the Terminal type:
rails new yourapp_name #webpage in my case
hit enter, we see the scripts flow in the terminal creating a bunch of files
Step 2: Change the directory to the application
cd webpage
These are the files which rails automatically generates to create the framework for our application.
Step 3:
Create the needed controller, model and views for our application I will keep simple functionality in which a user can post message
$rails generate scaffold post name:string address:text
Scaffold command creates a CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) interface for app ( a quick way of creating the MVC automatically). Alternatively, we can also create our controller, model and view manually using the command
// for creating controller rails generate controller <controller name> // for creating model rails generate model <model name>
Step 4:
Create Database rake db:create
The figure shows the database.yml file created
Step 5:
Since we have recently created a new model for Post, a table must be created in our database and requires that we upgrade the database using this command: rake db:migrate
Step 5:
Creating a home page $rails generate controller home index
This creates a controller home along with views in the app/view/home directory. Rails will create several files for you, including app/views/home/index.html.erb file. This is the template that we will use to display the results of the index action (method) in the home controller. Open this file in your text editor and edit it to contain the code that you want to display in your index page
Editing homepage
Open file app/views/home/index.html.erb and edit it to contain the code that you want to display in your index page
Step 6: Rails Routing
Edit config/routes.rb
The See Messages and Write Messages will appear on the main page
Step 7: Text on the page
Edit the index.html file, enter text which will appear on the screen
The See Messages and Write Messages will appear on the main page
Step 8: Set Background images and color
Edit the home.css file, to set background image and text color
The See Messages and Write Messages will appear on the main page
Step 8: Testing the application
On the command line enter rails server The application will be uploaded to http://localhot:3000/
References:
ppt, Ruby on Rails, A new gem in web development ppt, Ruby Intro Ruby on Rails tutorial book
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_on_Rails http://fuelyourcoding.com/creating-your-firstruby-on-rails-application-from-scratch/
