Are there some tools like CMS or UI-level frameworks that help in the maintenance and development of the UI layer within Ruby architectures?
I am still learning Ruby but as I understand it, it is very coupled with the front-end, correct?
Thanks,
Alex
You can use active_scaffold to get ajaxified crud interface and it can get integrated inside your existing rails app easily.
github.com/activescaffold/active_scaffold/wiki/Getting-Started
You can also use hobo but from I have gathered you need to use it right from the beginning as its generator creates the app.
hobocentral.net/
You can use comatose cms for integrating a basic content management functionality in your existing ror app.
comatose.rubyforge.org/getting-started-01.html
Also if you are looking for something pre-packed with rails then you can use command:
$ rails generate scaffold Post name:string title:string content:text
Command above is specific for rails 3 (in previous version scaffolding was available via ruby script/generate scaffold).
guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html#getting-up-and-running-quickly-with-scaffolding
Hope this helps.
Are there some tools like CMS or UI-level frameworks that help in the maintenance and development of the UI layer within Ruby architectures?
CMS and UI level frameworks are very broad categories that you are talking about. Just to get you started, I will list down some I started with
Nifty-generators
blueprint-css
jquery-rails
I am still learning Ruby but as I understand it, it is very coupled with the front-end, correct?
No, its not very coupled with the front end as you think it is. You can assume Rails(Ruby) as just the back-end that will just send back data and when data has arrived at front-end, its your wish how to present it, format it or whatever you want to do with it.
Related
I have developed few apps in Rails, and I needed to develop an API. I received the advise to build it in Sinatra, so I started looking into it.
It seemed quite nice, but it seems that a lot of things you get automated in Rails does not seem to exist in Sinatra. Specifically, I seem to have to write my resources from scratch. eg. The model itself, the migrations, and the REST routes.
I was wondering if there are any generators for Sinatra like the ones provided by Rails? Or should I simply use Rails if I want these kind of things automated?
Check out the sinatra-rest gem that can be used to handle RESTful routes. Quoted below for convenience:
[sinatra-rest is] a set of templates to introduce RESTful routes into Sinatra. The only thing for you to do is to provide the views. Automatically works nicely for models based on ActiveRecord, DataMapper, or Stone.
For example, if your model’s class is called Person you only need to add this line:
rest Person
Which will add the following RESTful routes to your application. (Note the pluralization of Person to the /people/* routes.)
Verb Route Controller View
GET /people index /people/index.haml
GET /people/new new /people/new.haml
POST /people create → redirect to show
GET /people/1 show /people/show.haml
GET /people/1/edit edit /people/edit.haml
PUT /people/1 update → redirect to show
DELETE /people/1 destroy → redirect to index
I don't personally use Sinatra but a lot of feedback I've gotten from other Rails developers is that they eventually end up switching back to Rails. I'm sure there are good arguments for using Sinatra over Rails, but if you already know Rails, and you don't have speed or application size constraints, I would just stick with that.
Another alternative to Sinatra is the Rails API project which doesn't include any of the view-related part of the Rails framework. I have used that in the past and liked it, but was it better than just using Rails? It's hard to say.
You should check out Padrino if you must have Sinatra.
Padrino is a ruby framework built upon the Sinatra web library.
Sinatra is a DSL for creating simple web applications in Ruby. Padrino
was created to make it fun and easy to code more advanced web
applications while still adhering to the spirit that makes Sinatra
great!
Or as Beerlington mentioned, you could use Rails API if you feel more at home with Rails. We've been using it recently with good success. We created a Simple API, with a mongo backend. Starts up very quickly :)
Or should I simply use Rails if I want these kind of things automated?
If you're that used to Rails that using Ruby is a problem, then maybe. Alternatively, you could try this API generator that uses Sinatra:
https://github.com/mattetti/Weasel-Diesel
Backbone.js website has some examples. But barring the first one others are not open source. I am looking for a fully functional (meaning it just works) Rails application to study. The app does not need to have too many functionalities. I looked at github and all the apps are broken in some ways.
Recently i found https://github.com/malclocke/fulcrum and it seems to be the best Rails/Backbone example but its not mentioned on the backbone website. Its also a very functional pivotal tracker clone.
I have been working on some non open source projects that use a Rails and Backbone.js stack. Both frameworks can be integrated fairly easily. Of course, it depends on how the application is setup and how you configure each framework to control more or less business logic.
To get both frameworks to play with each other:
Make Backbone collections and models for each Rails model
Route resources for each Rails model
Setup the URL property for the Backbone collections and models to work with your rails routes
Use fetch() and save() in Backbone to get and post data with Rails
I wrote a german language noun trainer using RAILS and backbone.js. It was done a long while ago while I was still learning but you can peek at it if you want.
https://github.com/bradphelan/ohmyderdiedas
I've been actively working on Myelin: http://sourceforge.net/projects/myelin/ (funded from a corporate source)
There are some caveats:
This is essentially a first for me with every technology in there... from rails, to backbone / jquery / rspec... you name it... it's new, so take the code with some grains of salt ;)
I didn't use the Backbone routing, and built a very simple 'router' of my own.
You'll need ganglia and rrdtool installed (macports if you're on a mac should work)
You'll need to alter the development config for sure.
The models, are (mostly) straight up backbone, and I use sync often in the controllers so those should be pretty good examples.
The views are a little more chaotic.
If anyone needs help with anything, just drop a line to me on sourceforge.
There's now a gem in development that provides generators, called rails-backbone. It's Open Source and getting better every day. As of today it's up to date with current Rails 3.1 (actually 3.2 now), esp. including Asset Pipeline, which is very relevant to backbone.js.
I've been learning the Ruby web framework Sinatra lately, and I'm finding it great to use. Most of the articles and blogs I have read about it seem to assume that it is good only for small websites, or 'tiny' web-apps. Is this true? Can a complete web application be built in Sinatra, or is Ruby on Rails the way to go?
You could, in theory, build an entire web application using Sinatra, and it would offer you more precision control than Ruby on Rails would.
That said, it also removes all of the nice features ruby on rails gives you, such as the Model-View-Controller architecture.
If you're looking to build a web application with database interaction, I strongly advise you use Ruby on Rails.
If you're looking to build a very simple API or something that just takes some data and throws it up onto Twitter or something, go ahead and use Sinatra.
There is no reason that it couldn't be used to build an enterprise website. It's fast and intuitive. Two key things in building a larger web application. While it does lack many of the features of Rails, I am yet to run into a road block.
I personally like the slim nature of Sinatra. It embraces routing instead of making it a headache.
I usually find myself wrestling with Rails, whereas I configure Sinatra to my liking.
As for database interaction, mongo_mapper + Sinatra works very well.
I have a Rails 2.3 application which I would like to extract into a plugin, or engine. The application has user authentication, and basic cms capabilities supported by ancestry plugin.
I want to extract the logic for the application into a plugin/engine so that I can use this code for future projects, with a different "skin" or "theme" if required.
I'm not entirely sure I actually understand the difference between plugin and engine concepts, so that would be a good first point.
What is the best approach, are there any good starting points, links, explanations, examples that I should follow. Also, with the release of R3 to consider, is there anything that I should be aware of for that, with regards to plugins etc.
I am going to start off by watching Ryan's http://railscasts.com/episodes/149-rails-engines
but obviously thats over a year old now, so one of the challenges I'm faced with is finding the most up to date and relevant information on this subject.
All tips and help gratefully received.
Actually, converting an application is pretty straigtforward. Just create a plugin-folder, put an app-folder inside containing all yor model-views-controllers folders, and that's it.
You will have to manage your migrations yourself though. Also you have to define rake-tasks to copy files to your public folder. I think the railscasts is still pretty up-to-date, if anything it is now easier in rails 2.3.
Good luck!
[EDIT: for rails3] Rails 3 engines are very clean and powerful. Check this gist by Jose Valim.
You will probably be better off focusing your engine on Rails 3, as opposed to trying to make it compatible for Rails 2 and Rails 3, due to the backwards incompatible changes. Here is a more up to date tutorial for Rails 3
also the book "Crafting Rails applications" by Rails Core member Jose Valim, has a good chapter on it. Int he shows how to use his tool EngineX which generates a Rails 3 engine structure, so you can more easily create engines for your Rails 3 projects. His gem devise is also a rails engine which is also nice, because you can easily customize it by copying the templates into the application directory, and allowing you to subclass the controllers that you want to customize more.
Writing a plugin is an entirely different process than writing an app, if you already have your app code it should be straightforward converting it into a plugin.
Consider that if you use third-party plugins in your app it could get pretty messy.
My current project is in Rails. Coming from a Symfony (PHP) and Django (Python) background, they both have excellent admin generators. Seems like this is missing in Rails.
For those who aren't familiar with Symfony or Django, they both allow you to specify some metadata around your models to automatically (dynamically) generate an admin interface to do the common CRUD operations. You can create an entire Intranet with only a few commands or lines of code. They have a good appearance and are extensible enough for 99% of your admin needs.
I've looked for something similar for Rails, but all of the projects either have no activity or they died long ago. Is there anything to generate an intranet/admin site for a rails app other than scaffolding?
Active Admin (http://activeadmin.info/) was released in May of 2011, and looks like it's going to become the best Rails 3 option.
rails_admin appears to be the latest-n-greatest free project as of January 2011.
...best of all, there has been a lot of activity in the repository.
Scaffolding is the normal way to create an admin backend BUT there is a project called ActiveScaffold which may solve your problem.
Here is a roundup of a few options, including more than just ActiveScaffold.
ActiveScaffold is available for Rails 2.3.x :)
Just for someonse's info who have found this question one year later like me :)
ActiveScaffold is a good solution, but if you want a more configurable and powerful tool, I think Typus is a great solution:
http://github.com/fesplugas/typus
You have mainly two:
ActiveScaffolding: the most popular but be careful with rails 2.1
Streamlined
ActiveScaffold is by far and away the most configurable/easiest to integrate/most automagic scaffolding around at the moment.
It has built in ajax support, near seamless db introspection and it even plays nicely with legacy Oracle databases (which can be a real pain in Rails).
Try it: http://activescaffold.com/
Have a look at Casein (http://www.caseincms.com/), might be what you're looking for.
Having also tried typus, caseincms and ActiveScaffold over the weekend, I can't rave enough about admin_data.
It is
super-quick to install (Rails 3 is the gem, Rails 2.3 is a plugin branch,
no digging through trees on github),
unintrusive (all code is in the vendor/admin_data folder or the gem where it belongs),
requires no set-up and optional configuration is one block in one file in your app,
correctly (!) gets all model information from your model definitions (primary_key, foreign_key, relationships etc.),
including multiple databases, SQL Server connections via activerecord-sqlserver-adapter, and even composite primary keys, as everything is abstracted on top of ActiveRecord, if you model works, admin_data will work,
works great with legacy data for the above reasons,
uses your existing authentication solution which is called in the most wonderful DRYness in your configuration file.
It maybe less flexible or pretty than other solutions, but this plugin does many thingks right for quick admin panel setup.
The most common way to create a CRUD interface is to use Scaffold.
./script/generate scaffold_resource MyModel property:type property2:type2
This command would generate a CRUD interface for the model named MyModel (singular) with two properties. Properties is what's called columns in DB lingo. So you could have name:string age:integer active:boolean etc.
I can suggest you active_admin that is best
Active Admin main site