Learning Ruby/Rails
What is Rails?
- It is a framework for building web applications
- Rails is installed as a Ruby gem
- The framework is composed of other gems
- It uses the MVC pattern*
- Built around 'convention over configuration' and DRY concepts
* for some value of...
Important Concepts
- REST
- Routing
- Asset pipeline
- The ecosystem
- Don't fight the defaults
Routing explained: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html
Project Structure
- app: controllers, models and views (this is where you spend a lot of your time)
- config: configuration for your routes and app
- db: database schema and migrations
- Gemfile & Gemfile.lock: your dependencies. See http://bundler.io
- lib: a place to store your custom modules specific to your app
- log: logfiles! named for each environment
- test: the home of your minitests
- features: if your app uses cucumber your tests are in here
Some important folders
Rails @ Sky
- Example project: https://github.com/sky-uk/sky_stack
- Rails is used in Sky Service for some larger applications, usually with a customer interface. Rarely used for API's.
- Heroku: to deploy and host
- New Relic: to monitor and alert
Taking over a Rails project
- config/routes.rb - Rails is all about the URL's - see what your application actually does
- db/schema.rb - what does the DB look like?
- test strategy - are there any tests? do they work?
- initializers - check the config/intializers folder to see what code your app runs at startup
- deployment - how does it get deployed?
Look at these files and folders first
Ecosystem
- 'Classic' Rails vs. Actual Rails: what you see in production Rails apps often differs greatly from tutorials
- Lots of pre-existing gems: rarely need to build something new: devise, sidekiq etc.
- Contribute!
https://rubygems.org/
https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/
https://github.com/rails
http://twitter.com/dhh
http://tenderlovemaking.com/
Testing Rails
- Don't care what you use: just write tests!
- Test strategy is up to squad
- gems: minitest, rspec, cucumber
- helper gems: webmock, ffaker, factory girl
- tests need to run without external dependencies
- No fake API servers on the web!
When to use Rails...
- Not new and shiny anymore - this is a good thing
- Mature software - solves problems you may not be considering
- Mature ecosystem
- Deployment is a solved problem
- Great for traditional web applications
- Rails 5 promises better API support
Further info...
- Book: Agile Web Development with Rails
- Book: https://www.railstutorial.org/book
- https://github.com/thoughtbot/guides/tree/master/best-practices#rails
- https://robots.thoughtbot.com
- https://www.ruby-toolbox.com
- http://guides.rubyonrails.org
Learning Rails
By David Thompson
