Ruby & rails by Nicholas Belotti

What is ruby Ruby is an object orientated scripting language. In Ruby...everything is an object! Ruby was released in 1995 by Yukihiro “matz” Matsumoto Mass acceptance was gained by 2006 and it ranks #9 in use of all programming languages. (Due in large part to the gem known as rails.) It is supported by a large volunteer community Distributed under the Ruby license (a GPL extended hybrid)

What is Rails Rails is an open source framework for creating web applications. Created by David Heinemeier Hansson in 2003 When people say Ruby, many times they mean Ruby-on- Rails (RoR)

What is Rails Rails facilitates the setup of a model-view-controller (MVC) framework Uses the MIT license It is a add-on library written in Ruby for Ruby. (library is known as a gem in Ruby-speak).

Model-View-Controller RoR forces the implementation of MVC At the heart of standards-based web application development It separates the data, the presentation, and the code MVC encourages best practices

Model The model is simply the data and associated database. Rails works with almost any database with very little need of coding or SQL knowledge

View The view is the presentation or how the page/application is presented to the web client/viewer It is a concept embraced by RoR as well as other programming environments

Controller The controller is the code that interacts with the view and the model It “controls” what is done programmatically and what events occur when a user interacts with the site

The Governing Standards Body Both Ruby and Rails are a completely free, community supported effort Volunteer - anyone can contribute Ruby & Rails - Have separate but similar organization of core supporters with a large group of non-core or secondary supporters

Advantages/Disadvantages Ruby is open source and as such, comes with an open source support model If something is broken, you can request from the community or fix it yourself Ruby itself is very easy to learn RoR provides a means of rapid development of web- based applications

Robustness There is not too much you cannot accomplish with RoR as far as web design RoR is a tool You can use tools to build great things How any tool is used is paramount!

Pervasiveness Since 2006, Ruby-on-Rails has become very popular among web developers Ruby is #9 in use world wide out of all programming languages Wide acceptance among web programming teams using agile development Not as prevalent as java or php but rapidly gaining support

Interoperability RoR is highly extensible The Rails framework provides simplified interfaces with powerful javascript libraries prototype scriptaculous RoR provides easy implementation and connectivity of almost any database

Interoperability Makes proper use of many web standards CSS XML AJAX Javascript RoR provides easy implementation and connectivity of almost any database RoR is available on most platforms Can be implemented with other technologies such as Adobe’s Flex

Community Support Community support of both Ruby and Rails is amazing! It is the community support that is helping to make RoR nearly ubiquitous in web development Information and solution on how to accomplish a task are shared in numerous channels RailsCast - a weekly podcast that addresses various topics and

Support/Stability Active development is still taking place in rails as we speak Solutions are committed to the code base on a daily basis by the “core team” as well as group of over 1,400 volunteers Unlike its parent language, rails is changing and evolving rapidly as standards go Stability is is not a major concern

Maintainability Due to the structured nature of the MVC, maintainability of a site is almost trivial DRY - don’t repeat yourself is a best practice in RoR Once a site is designed, it can be frozen to a particular version of rails to avoid problems associated with updates

Ease of Use Ruby is easy to use and learn Especially true if you know other scripting languages such as perl or php Rails has a learning curve but the payoff is more than worth the effort Ease of site maintenance Forces MVC

Security As a programming language, ruby itself is secure As implemented in a website using the rails framework, it is also secure. Most security issues are implemented by the programmer due to: Poor programming Inexperience

What it is used for RoR can be used for just about any web design project to create a site. Web applications and sites that use and interact with persistent data It seamlessly pulls together other web standards such as javascript, AJAX, mySQL Seamlessly works with XML

Who is Using RoR Many well known sites are built on RoR Hulu Twitter Github

Where is it all headed? Ruby on Rails is still rapidly gaining acceptance among Web programmers and designers. The rails framework and methodology has started and encouraged other similar projects based on other programming languages cakePHP - A php-based approach at implementing MVC functionality There is room for improvement but RoR is a welcome web standard that should be here for some time

RoR in Action Example Site

Thank you Questions or Comments