I'm working on a application that requires a feature-rich media view, including images, videos, and smooth sequencing based on capture time. The backend is currently written in Rails.
What's currently the best, most mature option for implementing RIAs with Rails on the backend? I've looked at Flex, Laszlo, and ExtJS. ExtJS is interesting to me because I'm really not a fan of pure Flash UIs, but it seems highly targeted towards business apps, not entertainment applications like this.
Any suggestions or insights from others doing similar efforts will be very much appreciated.
Thanks!
I second zdmytriv for that book Flexible Rails, it's awesome. It's fairly outdated now though but lays out how simple it is to create a solid Project Management application with Flex and Rails. Everything in there has now become "RestfulX".
Check out RestfulX, it's a must. The RestfulX Google Group is very active too and they've made a lot easy.
We built this website in Flex with RestfulX and it was very easy. That application uses the Rails Paperclip gem to do image processing in a Flex admin panel like ScrapBlog (Scrapblog was built in Flex), and we could use some cool layout effects built into Flex 4. RestfulX made that pretty easy, and the gems made it even easier :p. They have generators too like Rails so it's real easy to get up and running with a DataGrid/CMS-like interface in 5 minutes.
I don't know anything about the other things you've mentioned, but I do know that it's pretty fun and easy to integrate Flex with Rails now-a-days.
As a side note, you can do hardcore SEO with Flex and Rails too, thanks to SWFAddress. We're doing that with that site above.
Cheers
I can recommend Flex and also this book Flexible Rails, whole book dedicated Flex with Rail cooperation. List of sample applications from the book here
Flexible Rails http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51QysfVDlVL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
If you're serious about considering Ext as an option, you should really search and maybe post in their forums about others using Rails, I know there are quite a few doing so successfully. I just ran across this example that seems like a pretty fully-baked app doing just that, so it's definitely possible.
Without knowing exactly what you're trying to do, I think that saying Ext is "targeted towards business apps" is a fair general statement, in terms of the widgets that come with it out of the box. It's highly geared toward window/form-based Ajax apps. That said, Ext Core is very similar to jQuery and other core frameworks, and everything in Ext is built to be highly extensible (hence, "ext"). In terms of being able to build what you need off of it, it is very powerful and flexible. You can certainly implement a flash viewer easily, and there are existing plugins that will do exactly that.
Sounds like Toby had a bad experience with Ext, but many other people enjoy it and find it very natural to code in. The syntax definitely has a Java/C# flavor to it in some ways (although it's really hard to directly compare any JS framework to a static language), and it has roots in YUI (which is even more verbose). For someone coming from C-ish backgrounds, it will likely feel very comfortable. If you're more used to Python or Ruby or something else, then it might not be as enjoyable, I don't know. Something you'd have to try for yourself.
Take a look at WebOrb from themidnightcoders.com. Among many features, it allows for AMF protocol for serialization of data. It is smoking fast.
IMO, if you want a true RIA experience, you'll need to focus on either Flex or Silverlight. There are pros and cons to each.
I did a GWT project a while back and am working with Ext right now. I have some C# / Swing GUI experience, none in Flash.
I like Ext a lot. It looks great, and I found the programming model close enough to the C#'s and Swings of the world as to be familiar and fairly pleasant. The documentation is not excellent, but definitely good enough. For Java at least, there is a solid remoting mechanism (third party, called DJN... most likely there are others, too). A couple of minor bugs here and there.
The major negative is support. They have a forum but there are a distressingly large number of questions and problems that go unresolved. They have paid support in theory, but were sufficiently unresponsive to basic 'how does your paid support work' type questions that I was not encouraged to buy any. There is only one book that I know of, it looks promising but it is not out yet.
I found GWT impressive and had no real problems, but at the end of of the day I am much happier with Ext.
Have you taken a look at Google Web Toolkit yet? In my opinion it's a great way to build rich and performant web applications. The toolkit is quite mature (Google Wave is build with it) and has a lot of good tools to make development easy.
Here's a previous Stakoverflow post.
I don't know about best, but I did a project using ExtJS and hated every minute of it. Frustratingly verbose code, overly complicated programming model, confusing documentation, and difficult to make it do anything it didn't want to.
That said, it looks very awesome, has incredibly powerful widgets and the client and users loved it.
I haven't helped at all, have I?
I think if you requirements include doing anything with video and audio, you are going to need a Flash solution.
Take a look at netzke -- client-server components with Sencha Ext JS and Ruby on Rails.
Netzke is a framework that allows for a beautiful blend of client- and
server-side code (JavaScript and Ruby, respectively) into ready-to-use
GUI components. It's most useful for creating complex data-rich
backend applications with Ruby on Rails on the back end, and Sencha
Ext JS in the browser.
Related
I am about to start a new project and I am hung up on which language/framework to use. I've been a PHP programmer professionally, but it wasn't on the scale of this project. I've played around with RoR and i've been very impressed so far. Right now, the two leading candidtates are RoR and Symfony2.
My major hang ups with RoR:
- i don't know ruby, or i hardly do. i can read it ok, but get stuck writing the code.
- i've read complaints about it being slow, and it seems to be slow just at the CLI.
My major hang ups with Symfony2:
- there's practically no documentation for it. Symfony1.x? sure..but not symfony2
- there's also little support. the BB on their site is like 80% spam.
- went to install it on a local dev enviroment haven't been able to even get that running (see my first hang up)
this project will be fairly complex and go beyond the basic CRUD operations. it isn't under a super-tight timeline, but there is one. ~3 months for milestone1 which is basically a calendar, some financial organization stuff (not transactions with financial institutions, just personal finance organization type stuff), and a project manager/cms.
also, i'm open to using other frameworks, but symfony2 seems to be the best right now. if symfony2 had RoR's support/documentation/tutorials/etc it would be a no brainer.
i'm really interested in hearing what the stackoverflowverse has to say on the matter. im constantly impressed with the quality of the answers/replies on this site.
some other sub-questions (that are in my head right now):
- if you recommend a different php framework, why?
- what are you biggest gripes with any of the options mentioned?
i know CakePHP is the closest to RoR, but i've been reading that the models are a bit wonky (Many to many relationships and such).
right now, i'm leaning towards RoR. Simply put, i really want to learn it and it could do the job. i just don't know ruby and i've ready a lot of good about symfony2.
any advice you could offer will be greatly appreciated. thanks!
Personally, I'd recommend that if you're starting a new project which happens to be the largest project you've ever had to do then you should stick with what you know best. This happens to be PHP.
I've used Ruby or Rails. In fact, we have some production apps at our company that use RoR. The best way I learnt RoR was to work on small projects. I would never have considered to choose a programming language which I'm not familiar with and then on top of that learn a new framework to start coding a big project.
As for Symfony2, we started using it a couple of weeks ago. Symfony2 is an excellent framework and looks very promising. It's clean, nicely decoupled and fast. However, we ran into too many bugs/headaches/inconsistencies in Symfony2 to continue using it. We will start working on it again once it has matured and the documentation grows (lots of the docs are now out of date). Hopefully, they'll release some sort of Jobeet tutorial but for Symfony2.
Moving on to CakePHP. CakePHPs code base is old. In fact, it works fine on PHP 4.3.2. It doesn't take advantage of all the goodness that PHP5 has to offer (absract classes, interfaces, private & protected properties, exceptions, magic methods, annotations, pass objects by reference etc.) CakePHPs database abstraction layer, whilst it has had improvements, is not incredibly efficient once your database structures becomes too complex (many joins for example) it crumbles quite badly.
Moving on to Symfony 1.4 which I've used for many large projects
I enjoy using because:
PHP5
Event system
Dependency Injection
Caching system
Forms (nice integration into Doctrine 2) In fact, this is my favourite feature.
Many plugins (sfGuard for user management, for example)
Twig (nice templating language)
Highly configurable
Scalable (although not as fast as Symfony2)
A lot of documentation (Jobeet tutorial is great)
If PHP is for the moment your forte and you need to start working on a large project then start using a PHP based framework as you know the language syntax and functions the best.
Move onto RoR when you have a small project to do.
Just my 2 cents.
Best of luck.
To me Symfony2 has been great so far. Documentation is scarce compared to Symfony1.x but it's much easier to get started in Sf2 and, with things being very explicit, requires less knowledge of how the framework works internally.
There's an app/check.php script that will warn you of any dependency needed to run it, and support mostly happens in their mailing list which is very active (didn't even know there was a BB). Some components, like Twig, also have their own lists.
This is an old topic but things have changed a bit and I would recommend Symfony2. Their current documentation is great (symfony.com) and its much easier to learn for newbies. I did try RoR but with symfony I just got into it much quicker.
I'm amazed of how no one has mentioned the super rich GEM community for Ruby and therefore for Ruby on Rails, there is simply just so much functionality out there, so many people working on some many MIT/open source projects. To me, community is what drives me to go choose one framework over another. The amount of configurations and different template engines, there is just so much out there for ruby on rails.
For a comparison chart check this out:
http://vschart.com/compare/doctrine-php/vs/ruby-on-rails
At the end of the day it all boils down to whatever you know, but do not overlook the community and the functionality that has been written for you already, free of charge...
I'll echo solarc's comments about Symfony 2. I used it for a couple small projects, and am starting something more ambitious with it this week. I would like to see a complete Jobeet-style tutorial, but the main documentation is good enough to get started with IMHO. I'm giving that a thorough read, and have learned a few things that I missed using the documentation as a simple reference.
Finding bundles was my biggest frustration, but the documentation mentions knpbundles.com, and that seems like an excellent resource.
Just got a new website project for my company internal use. The whole website isn't that complicating but requires quite a lot of real time interaction. Basically, it's an interactive time line table where we can freely drag and drop each elements to move and resize them.
At first I wanted to use this opportunity to learn Python+Django (I'm given a huge amount of time) but then I read around and a lot of people mentioned Rails is better for creating rich interactive website.
So, for a website with a lot of drag & drop interaction like this, is Rails really the better choice? Is Rails built-in ajax that much easier to work with compare to Django+jQuery? How flexible and customizable is Rails' built-in ajax? I want to learn RoR just as much as Python by thee way.
I don't think AJAX functionality will define which framework you find yourself preferring.
I can't answer most of your question relating to ajax, but still think this post could be useful for you: it's highlighting a huge difference between ROR and django -- mainly RoR uses magic, django doesn't.
I prefer django for exactly that. Others may prefer RoR for the same reason I don't.
What's wrong with "magic"?
Rails' developers are of the opinion
that this sort of "magic" is a good
thing because it makes it easier to
quickly get something working, and
doesn't bore you with lots of details
unless you want to reach in and start
overriding things.
Django's developers are of the opinion
that this sort of "magic" is a bad
thing because doesn't really save all
that much time (a few import
statements isn't a big deal in the
grand scheme of things), and has the
effect of hiding what's really going
on, making it harder to work out how
to override stuff, or harder to debug
if something goes wrong.
Both of these are, of course, valid
stances to take, and generally it
seems that people just naturally
gravitate to one or the other; those
who like the "magic" congregate around
Rails or frameworks which try to
emulate it, those who don't congregate
around Django or frameworks which try
to emulate it (and, in a broader
sense, these stances are somewhat
stereotypical of Ruby and Python
developers; Ruby developers tend to
like doing things one way, Python
developers tend to like doing things
another way).
So I think one will click for you regardless of out of the box ajax support.
Speaking as someone who mostly works on Rails, I would say take a day with each framework, follow a "getting started" screencast or tutorial, or pick up a book. ( For rails, I recommend Beginning Rails 3 ). Then, keep going with whichever one you feel more comfortable with.
One amazing resource rails has is Railscasts. Railscasts almost single-handedly converted me from PHP to ROR. I don't know if Django has a similar volume of quality screencasts available or not.
All frameworks are pretty heavily focused on the server-side of the equation. Now, Rails has a lot of things that help make writing views (your drag and drop stuff) nice, such as HAML (a fantastic template language)... and while I don't know enough to post links I'm sure Django has similar helpers. It's worth noting that both Django and Rails can use jQuery or any other javascript framework.
But, in the end, just by the nature of the web as stateless, there's going to be a degree of independence between your client-side templates and javascript, and what's serving that from the server side.
The real question you should probably be focused on is: Do you want to become a jQuery ninja, or do you want to scale up a notch and focus on Javascript itself, perhaps using tool suites like MooTools or Prototype. Your drag and drop stuff is client-side, so that's where your toughest decisions will have to be made.
Good luck!
I used to worry about things like this and would try new frameworks all the time because people would say it was a big improvement over the last one I was using until I realised I wasn't doing anything. Now I just pick one and stick with it. The fact that I know it much better than any others means I am more productive, even though the other frameworks probably include nice little tricks and shortcuts, and because I know it better I can debug problems faster.
Basically what I am trying to say is that just about every popular web framework can do everything that you want it to. Some are better than others but what really matters is that you become an expert in at least one of them. Being able to dabble in lots is not helpful, you really need to know one inside and out. Committing some code to the project helps this process.
Mainly depends on which programming language you prefer to work and most comfortable with. Some prefer the flexible syntax of Ruby others like the cleanliness of Python. Also need to take into consideration the production environment (aka what OS is it going to be hosted on).
Django does not do interactive web applications, it is agnostic to the whole "frontend" part, this is done in Javascript with little to no support from Django (except for transferring data from AJAX calls).
So if you want to use Django for this, you will have not only to learn Python but also to learn loads of Javascript.
I like this solution as hand-written Javascript feels a lot clearer than any of these generating tools to me, plus there are plenty of libraries that make writing advanced Javascript GUIs a breeze these days, check out Jquery UI or ExtJS.
From there, the server side will only be AJAX calls that (de)serialize data in JSON, nothing else.
Both Rails and Django are good. Try them both out and see which you like better.
Django as a framework is a neat little package. There are very few files (compared to Rails) and it's got a clean structure. The fact that you can plug and unplug apps between different projects is an extremely nifty feature. At the same time, Ruby's hacking ability is unparalleled. It's complete object-orientedness makes it more expressive and fun.
To cut the story short, is there a Django-like or Django inspired framework on Ruby?
If not, would be possible for an implementation of Django on Ruby? What would be the challenges?
If one were to create a Django-inspired framework for Ruby, how would it's Domain Specific Language (DSL) nature come into play?
I've spent a good chunk of my past life using Symfony, which is a PHP framework heavily inspired from Rails. When I saw Django, it came as a bout of fresh air. I'm really curious to know what you guys think and have to say on this.
Update: I stumbled on a framework call Ramaze for Ruby. It seems to be a bare-bones MVC framework with pluggable components for the JS framework, ORM layer and the templating engine. So you could use Prototype / Sequel / Sass, or Mootools / ActiveRecord / XSLT, or any other combination of your choice! As a side-note, Merb is an interesting choice too.
Update 2: I'm sticking to PHP for big-ass commercial projects and Django for my personal projects. Reason why I decided to side with Django was the amount of flexibility it offered. That said, I realized that with greater power comes greater responsibility.
My advice to others: if you know exactly what you want - go with Django. It's probably easier to define things explicitly in it than in Rails. Merb may have been a good choice too, but I didn't have the time to explore it. Django seemed like a good fit and so I stopped being anal about the language I'm using. Thanks for all the help guys!
Try merb, merb-slices, and datamapper is probably the closest you can get in ruby.
I think you need to define a little closer what you mean by "Django-like". Depending on your exact definition, any of these might fit the bill:
Ruby on Rails
Mack
Waves
Merb
Iowa
Is having less files really a deciding factor on choosing a framework?
I agree that keeping track of a smaller number of files is easier on the brain, but I would choose a framework on:
documentation
size of community
maturity
before I woried about file count.
I am building a site that has a lot in common with a person-on-person chess site. I was thinking of using Rails for the front-end(User Registration, Navigation, etc) and something like Scala or Erlang for the engine(Game state and maybe AI). I was wondering -
Is this a good situation to use that type of design?
How exactly would be best to divide up the functionality between the components?
How would they best communicate with each other?
I'm open to any technologies or ideas.
If you're using Rails for the front-end, why not use Ruby?
If you like the idea of using Scala, why not use Lift for the front-end?
Chess is turn-based, and has a very simple board that can be handled with HTML and/or Javascript enhancements - so the basic model flows quite nicely with existing web frameworks.
With this in mind, Rails is a great choice for creating a web-based application. Rails is not just limited to crud applications, and in fact I think can write your entire app in Rails/Ruby - you don't really need to have an external engine.
Within the browser space, polling for turn updates can be done using XMLHttpRequest and a database can maintain the current game and turn state.
Looks like a simple Lift application to me. I'm not experienced with Lift, mind you, but it doesn't seem particularly more complex than the chat application that is so often demoed.
I would start by reading http://www.htdp.org/ How to Design Programs. The questions you have asked are very broad and difficult to answer without prefixing statements with "I believe that..."
I would code it in clojure (but that's just me).
I'm currently developing a suite of online games, using Scala. It's been absolutely fantastic - my game logic is much easier to get right with the static typing etc, and dealing with server/client protocol (a flash client, in this case) is made simpler via the use of Google Protocol Buffers.
If you're a huge fan of RoR, by all means use that. I think most statically typed languages are terrible to program websites in (Java, I'm looking at you here), but Scala gets rid of 90% of the pain, and gives even more safety.
Of course, it might not be your cup of tea. But I'd try just doing the entire thing in Scala, and adding another layer if that doesn't quite do it for you.
For question 1 Yes
And for 2 and 3 you need to give more information in order to get an answer that could help you.
Now I'm doing something like you but for the front end I'm going to use Grails. The reason are very simple: I like Grails, Scala and I want to mix them :)
In my next rails project I'm going to need blogging functionality. I'm wondering whether anyone has any good suggestions, or should I just roll my own? (Probably not in 15 minutes)
I think the most important feature will be to display code samples elegantly.
How's your free time?
Five years, that's how long that little idea took. Plus 2 years of adding bells and whistles. And that, folks, is why I'm giving in and using a blog host. Because I have lots of ideas, lots of things to say and to explore, but only a few dozen years left at best. I can't afford to go chasing every 5-year idea that springs to mind. After due consideration of the crap web frameworks and crap blog packages out there, I decided that I don't want to spend my next 5 years implementing my vision for a decent self-publishing system. Someone else can do it.
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/blog-or-get-off-pot.html
It's a classic build-versus-buy (or, in this case, download for free) decision isn't it?
Write up the feature set of what you are looking for.
Survey the offerings out there to see how close a fit you have.
For the one or two products that is the closest fit, evaluate whether or not it would be less effort to write your own solution or customize the offering to do what you need.
If all you need is a blog site, then this is a no-brainer. Use WordPress and that's it.
If there are other features for this app and blogging is just one of them, then consider writing an app around WordPress. It is just a PHP application using MySql after all.
If WordPress has features or does things that you don't want, then maybe you do need to roll your own.
If the most important feature for this site is that it is to be written in RoR, then roll your own or find a RoR based blogging app as WordPress is not written in RoR. I haven't really done the homework on this but I would imagine that getting PHP and RoR to share session state would be a time consuming hack.
Rolling your own blog is a great project (and quite fun too!), but for practical usage, using something pre-made is going to be more secure, have more cool features, etc. etc. Unless you're incredibly dedicated, you'll probably end up cutting corners and end up with something that isn't quite what you want.
Despite being a Rails guy myself, I'm a huge fan of Wordpress. If you're looking for Rails-based blog engines, I've had luck with Mephisto, although the documentation leaves something to be desired. Radiant CMS is another CMS/Blog system that might be worth looking at.
A lot of Ruby/Rails developers have actually gone the route of using static website/blog generators. This has a few advantages. First, the pages are static HTML with no dependency on a database. This means they can be served by your front-end Web server (Apache, Nginx, etc.) faster than if they were to go through Mongrel, Thin or Phusion Passenger. Secondly, the pages will be easier for search engines to index. Finally, and probably most importantly, you can easily version control your posts using Git (or your favorite SCM)
I switched my blog over to a static model after development on Mephisto seemed to stall. I am using Tom Preston-Werner's Jekyll and Disqus for the comments. Works great. Give it a try!
If you are just looking for a project, then building your own blog engine is a good start.
Personally, though I have been a full-time Rails developer for the past 3 years, I still use and recommend Wordpress for myself and others.
If the project is to write a blog, don't roll your own. There are plenty solutions out there that will solve this problem for you while you worry about pumping out great content.
You will end up spending to much time futzing with the little things that don't really matter.
Probably there are tons of those.
For example, Rastafari, or Enkiblog.
In my next rails project I'm going to
need blogging functionality. I'm
wondering whether anyone has any good
suggestions, or should I just role my
own? (Probably not in 15 minutes)
I wouldn't recommend rolling your own blog system. You should look into using Radiant CMS with a blog extension.
I think the most important feature will be to display code samples elegantly.
For this I can recommend looking into SyntaxHighlighter.
All depends on your goal:
If it is for learning purposes and it's for fun, code it from scratch. Also, try to add new functionality that you will not find in current blogging platforms. For example, make in a way that is easy for a developer to blog tutorials or screencasts.
If it's for a client or just to blog, use wordpress. You can have your site in ruby and then link to wordpress. Think about it, how many human hours are behind wordpress so for you to match that you will need to work full time on it for 8 years.
Wordpress will work out of the box and then periodically you can tweak it, depending on future needs.
I agree, for fun and learning, code from scratch. But consider coding something people really need and don't already have. Innovate.
There are so many excellent blog platforms out there, and some (like Wordpress) have active developer communities writing hundreds of useful and powerful plugins. And that includes some excellent support for code samples.
No need to reinvent the wheel.