fun with ruby and rails

Fun with Ruby and RailsChris Jeris 18 October 2011... I am ...• formerly a software engineer at HCL • also formerly co-chair of abcd-library • now working for Brightcove, a software comp

Fun with Ruby and Rails

Chris Jeris 18 October 2011

I am

• formerly a software engineer at HCL

• also formerly co-chair of abcd-library

• now working for Brightcove, a software company in Kendall Square that uses Ruby on Rails (not solely)

Ruby is

• a modern programming language

• available for Windows, Mac OS, Unix/Linux, Java

(JRuby), NET (IronRuby), and Android (Ruboto)

• flexible and easy to read and write:

def is_lower_48?(address)

address.country == "United States" and

not ["AK", "HI"].include?(address.state) end

• designed to maximize programmer happiness

Rails is

• a framework for building web applications in Ruby

• a set of strong ideological opinions about how web

applications should be structured

• a particularly good tool for building prototypes rapidly

(which doesn't mean it's only good for that)

• a thriving, productive, fractious community of free software developers

• a constantly growing and changing software ecosystem

with libraries to do almost anything

Who uses Ruby on Rails?

• Lots of web applications you've heard of:

Basecamp, Twitter, Hulu, Groupon,

• Blacklight (projectblacklight.org),

a Solr-based discovery interface

• Umlaut (wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Umlaut),

a link resolver enhancer

• Library Lab projects developed at the Berkman Center (like the Widener carrel reservation app)

• The HCL annotated bibliography application I wrote

The page-centric paradigm

• Web pages, with instructions in them to do things

<cfset today = Now() />

<div id="the_date">

<cfoutput>Today's date is

#DateFormat(today, "yyyy-mm-dd")#

</cfoutput>

</div>

• It's a lot like writing a regular website, only every so often you tell the server to do something

• Usually you eventually reach an unmaintainable mess

Model-View-Controller paradigm

• Partition your program into three basic responsibilities:

o The model is your representation of data (bibliographic

records, search queries, shopping carts, )

o The view is the web pages that you show to the user, and

all the behavior they contain

o The controller directs traffic, receiving requests from the

user, deciding what actions to take, and mediating between model and view

• Every major web programming platform provides a way for you to follow this paradigm

• Rails forces you to from the very beginning

Demo

Other neat things to use with Rails

• RSpec for test-driven development

• Cucumber for behavior-driven development

Scenario: Request to create a new collection

Given I open the topic at the home page

When I follow "create a new collection"

Then I should be on the collection creation form

• jQuery is now built in (as of Rails 3.1)

Learning Ruby and Rails

• Read these

Agile Web Development with Rails and

Programming Ruby 1.9 from Pragmatic Programmers

• Join boston.rb (bostonrb.org)

• irc.freenode.org: #ruby-lang, #rubyonrails

• railscasts.com

Things to watch out for

• You can use Windows but don't

(If you absolutely have to, use JRuby.)

• Rails on iSites is a clash of two opinionated frameworks You can make it work, but it takes some hacking

• The Rails world changes very fast.

You don't need to keep up with the latest hip fashions Until you do, because something you use changed

• Ruby, in and of itself, is a friendly programming language and a good one for people who are new to programming

• Rails is a wonderful system for building web applications,

if you can program or want to learn programming

• Ruby on Rails has a steeper learning curve than

page-centered systems like PHP or ColdFusion

• If you need to build an interactive web thing and don't really like the idea of programming, try Drupal instead

Thank you!

Questions?