I am trying to help some people getting started programming on rails identify which version that advice found on web pages corresponds to, and am seeking advice and/or guides on how to do it so they don't have to rely on me and/or waste time trying outdated advice.
Narrative: I am helping some people get up to speed on rails development, and their stock response to running into problems is searching google for advice. They're using 2.3.5 and thinking of moving to 3. The problem they're running into is that there's a lot of advice out there specific to older rails versions (2.2 for example being popular) that isn't identified.
I can usually figure out when the pages are old pretty easily, but they can't (yet.) It seems like random web page authors don't identify which version they're using when they're using the current version, and not all pages are dated.
This seems to be a general problem that will get worse -- current unadorned advice is usually 2.3.5 and older unadorned advice is 2.2.x at this point, but people are moving / will be moving to version 3 over the next while and newbies will be stuck looking at a bunch of deprecated/incompatible 2.3.x advice without realizing which version it is.
Any advice / pointers / telltales?
Check out API Dock. It has an excellent, annotated, and more importantly, versioned documentation of the rails API.
When I started with Rails 2.x last year, I got some books that were talking on Rails 1.x
There were things that changed from 1.x to 2.x, such as the way scaffolding works or that a framework like streamlined stopped from existence. On the other hand, there were some concepts and points that stayed valid from Rails 1.x to 2.x For example, most tutorials and documents start on talking about the model layer, how easy it is to use ActiveRecord and how you have REST for dealing with basic CRUD operations.
In general, I think with such an active community, it's actually one of the strong point of rails that you get so many shifts in innovation so fast. Actually, it is one of the strong points of the open-source community.
Related
thanks for opening my question :)
I am a university student in Computer Engineering, and I've always done class projects in Java (apart from C, and Assembly, but for very specific things). Apart from that, I have worked for quite a lot of time on a web app done in ActionScript 3, contained in .jsp files and deployed onto a Google App Engine site.
Having that said, I now pretend to do a prototype of another web app, which will have registered users with blogs and a messaging system between them.
My question is, having time as a restraint (I have month and a half), and needing just to build a working prototype, could anyone tell me, in his/her opinion, what would be the best framework for me to start learning and use? (Take into account my Java & ActionScript background) I believe RoR is the most common in these cases, as its easy and quick, but I have no Ruby knowledge at all, and maybe it would be quicker for me to learn Scala (which coming fromJava shouldn't be that different) and Lift, and do it with them instead.
Many thanks in advance!
Pepillo
Last year I found myself in a very similar situation for creating a web based relationship browser for a computing science class. I would highly recommend RoR. Granted you will need to spend some time getting up to speed with Ruby, but it is well worth the small amount of time to learn. There is excellent documentation available and a ton of good tutorials.
Rails can generate much of the core code and database schema with the generator functions in seconds (see scaffolding generators). Considering your time constraint, I think this alone makes rails a good choice.
In terms of learning Ruby, you should not have much trouble with this if you are comfortable with any dynamically typed scripting languages.
Anyway, that has been my experience with rails. Good luck on your project!
I think I'm going with Play! Not only is the easiest for me, as I am a Java guy, but it's also the quickest when in conjuntion with Japid, according to a benchmark I saw.
I used Java for about 7 years now, mostly for web applications, and recently started using RoR. I must say it was really easy to pick up and get started. After only 2 months of working on my own project I started using it for a customer projects and it was far more easier to deliver production code then I had anticipated. So yes I can recommend Ruby and it was not hard at all to pick up.
However, RoR does require a nix platform like apple os or linux. I stated out with windows but there are simply too many drawbacks and bugs.
If you decide to go with ruby I can higly recommend Agile Web Development with Rails (Pragmatic Programmers) to get you started.
Basically, I would like to write a rails 3 app that
is embeddable in other rails 3 apps (basically some routes, a controller, and some views, no persisting models)
works standalone
can be bundled up into a gem and be launched from a command (this one is more a nice to have)
From what I have read, rails engines would totally solve my problem. The vast majority of what you get when you google it is either people complaining about a lack of documentation, or someone building a plugin, not really a pluggable app. Could anyone point me to better documentation/screencasts (even books if nessicary)
Thanks a bunch
Matt, I'm working on a rails forum engine and I had to figure a lot of this out so I extracted the foundation into a detailed example that covers a lot of common needs. It's generalized so you can easily adapt it. I don't have detailed documentation yet but I link to the sources that I used to figure this out, and I'm happy to answer questions about my source. Check it out:
http://keithschacht.com/creating-a-rails-3-engine-plugin-gem/
An Engine is really what you need and totally designed to meet your reuirements.
Engines actually work a lot better in Rails3.
A lot of the complaints from previous versions of Rails have been resolved in the latest version. I have used engines quite extensively in Rails 2.x and not found them to be all that bad to be honest.
So Rails and Merb are sort of merging in Rails 3.0? Thats how its been described to me anyway. This means that a lot of what made Rails, Rails will now be moved to plug-ins so that it can be more lightweight. HOwever, what are those plug-ins going to be and as a new Rails developer, what are THE must have - and also more mature - plug-ins that a Rails developer should install? Some good examples I can think of might be will_paginate, ruby_prof or sqlite3-ruby.
My understanding is that Rails (3) will still essentially be composed of the framework components that make it up now i.e. ActiveRecord, ActiveSupport, ActionPack, even prototype.js etc. It's just that the internals have been significantly refactored and cleaned up and it will be much easier to swap out components for alternatives. For example, perhaps replacing ActiveRecord with Data Mapper.
The tag line for Rails 3 is the same as Burger King i.e. Have It Your Way (I'm not joking!)
Many releases have taken out significant components and put them in plugins, you probably haven't even noticed most of the time. The best thing to do would be to just stay upgraded and pay attention to deprecation messages in your logs and you'll be fine.
This is all thanks to posts like this which highlighted the problems to the community earlier on. Now it should be much, much smoother.
Background
I am interested in getting to grips with some Ruby On Rails. I've got 4 years experience programming in C#, ASP.Net, ASP.Net MVC, SQL Server and more recently Silverlight etc. Obviously I've got a pretty good understanding about the various implementation routes that you can go down when writing web applications using C#, the issue is that I have literally no clue about Ruby On Rails, other than that Ruby is an awesome pure object oriented language and that Rails is a very quick way in which to build web applications using Ruby.
What I'm After
So essentially I'm after a session that fills in the blanks, and helps me to understand the various ways of building web applications using ROR. On top of this, i've found a few tutorials but they seem to be quite vague, so any documentation/samples would be very handy to help get me started.
More Detail
Popular IDE'S to use for development (I've heard RubyMine is good from JetBrains).
Possible database implementations to use (I know MySQL is an option but which version?)
Is HTML/CSS used to style the web apps?!
Interface plugins if used?
General route to producing a highly Web 2.0 site that encompasses a fantastic user experience and a beautiful interactive interface.
...You get the idea, I just need a bit of guidance getting clued up.
Help greatly appreciated :-D
I'd highly recommend starting by reading:
Programming Ruby (also available online)
Agile Web Development with Rails
You should start with the first one, but don't read it all the way through. Once you get the basics of Ruby down, you can switch to the Rails book, but feel free to switch back and forth as you get more familiar with both Ruby and Rails.
The books are both very well written, and they're actually fun to read as far as technical books go. They do a great job of explaining the basics to a total newbie and also really digging in deep. You'll have all of your initial questions answered within a few hours.
When I tried to get into Rails, I bought this Rails for .NET Developers. It was quite useful to get going. After that, the most value I found was watching railscast videos.
For an IDE, I use Netbeans.
Different people learn different ways, but one thing I find to be very helpful for getting a real "feel" for Ruby on Rails is screencasts. The Rails site has a whole section devoted to screencasts. For example, with the 15-minute-blog video, you can actually watch someone work on the blog app and see all the steps along the way. It's not necessarily more informative than, say, a book, but it can be easier to grasp when you're actually seeing it.
The official Rails Guides are kept well up to date -- begin with the Getting Started guide, Railscasts provide quick how-tos on lots of common tasks, and the Agile Web Development with Rails (3rd Edition) book is excellent if you want to sit down and read how it all works.
There's also tons of sample code on GitHub, where you'll find just about all the plugins available as well as lots of well-designed Rails apps that will show you all the best practices.
Regarding specifics you asked about:
Many Rails developers don't bother with an IDE (they just use text editors such as TextMate on the Mac). MySQL is popular for production but for local development, Rails is set up to use SQLite, which is quick and easy. Many developers are moving to a NoSQL datastore such as MongoDb because development is quicker without schemas and migrations. You'll use HTML and CSS but you may use Haml to abstract your HTML templating. For an interactive "Web 2.0" site (as you ask) you'll want to be become familiar with jQuery and CoffeeScript.
You asked the question back in October 2009 but I'm sure other people will continue to want suggestions for the best way to get started with Rails. I hope you've already become a Rails ninja!
i started ruby on rails a few days ago using http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book by Michael Hartl. so far so good.
This is my experience, I'm at the stage where I can build simple apps. I am comfortable with code, at least to go to the right sources.
Hartl Tutorial ... go through this at a steady pace, just to understand the overall basics. No way you can absorb everything there.
Why's poignant guide is great to understand how to read code through a story, making things enjoyable and memorable.
Agile guide to rails. This put eveything together, I went through the exercises but stopped near the end. I read what I thought I needed to know how to build something my work would use.
Using railscasts to supplement my app building.
I would recommend as resouces to use apis, irc #rubyonrails, and stack overflow. You would be surprised how people contribute and help you through problems you encounter.
Re: IDE
Most Rails developers use VIM. Or at least the better ones use VIM.
It's more powerful than an IDE. I know and use at least 5 languages and VIM works well for all. I use YADR. If you were with a team, sometimes using VIM or Emacs or Geanie are your best options.
Re: Books
You should read a Ruby book before anything. And by read, I mean, try the examples.
The best book I've read on Ruby on Rails is probably Ryan Biggs' book.
Engineering Long-lasting software would be a good book focused on teaching you some Ruby fundamentals for practical reasons.
I'm in the preliminary stages of designing a new web application, and have yet to begin any sort of implementation. The application models a fairly complex domain, and I'd feel more comfortable using tools such as the ruby DataMapper ORM (having using NHibernate in the .net world) than Rails Active Record. I also prefer jquery over prototype. All of these considerations of course point to using Merb, yet I'm aware that Merb is being merged into Rails for version 3 and will no longer exist as a distinct framework.
Is there any sense in starting work on the implementation of the application now given the fairly profound changes coming to rails? I'd really like to know if it would be worth starting development in Merb now and then porting it to Rails, but I've yet to find anything suggesting how difficult this may be. Another approach would be to start work on the domain now in Rails, and only give consideration to the ORM and frontend once v3 is released.
In essence, I'd like to know how portable a Merb app is going to be to Rails 3, but am aware that it may be too early for anyone other than the core developers to know this.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks :)
-------------- Edit ---------------
Yehuda Katz, lead developer of the Merb project has this to say on his blog:
The plan is to start working on Rails immediately, and to continue fixing bugs and resolving other major issues in Merb in the interim. We will also release versions of Merb specifically designed to help ease the transition to Rails 3.
In particular, we will do Merb releases with deprecation notices and other transitional mechanisms to assist developers in tracking down the changes that will come between Merb 1.x and Rails 3. Expect a number of interim releases that get incrementally closer to Rails 3, and expect parts of Merb (most notably the helpers) to be ported to run on Rails 3 in order to further reduce friction.
To be perfectly clear: we are not abandoning the Merb project. There are many production applications running on Merb that are relying on both timely bug fixes and a clear path to the future. If you’re using Merb today, continue using Merb. If you’re considering using Merb for a project because it works better for your needs, use Merb. You will not be left in the cold and we’re going to do everything to make sure that your applications don’t get stuck in the past.
If you’ve already learned Merb, we will be working hard to make sure that you can parlay that knowledge into Rails 3. At Engine Yard, we fully intend to continue using Merb for our internal apps until Rails 3 is out, but we will be using those (non-trivial) applications to be sure the experience is smooth for everyone. There will be no huge jumps and you will not need to rewrite your application from scratch.
It's never a good time to start a complex application on a framework, really. It seems like there's always a major upgrade coming up or some other competing framework that may be a better bet. If you're having more success with Merb, stick with that right now and develop your project without fear! Both the Rails and Merb communities are going to have to cope with the merging of the projects with the release of Rails 3, but that's going to be awhile.
The project merge doesn't mean that Merb will be going away, however. Yehuda Katz will stop being the lead developer, but someone will take over the project. At the minimum, you can expect security patches and bug fixes for a few years, as long as you follow the official Merb developers' repository. Likely, after the Rails 3 release, you'll find great walk-throughs on upgrading your Rails 2.x/Merb 1.x application to Rails 3.