I have a created a userdriven gallery with Ruby on Rails.The site is using a few plugins to create friendly links, permissions, pageless pagniation etc. The application controllers and views has gotton quite complex and I find it difficult and very time consuming to work with. So I thought about rebuilding the app with hobo, as it includes all the user and permission logics and another template system. However I am affraid that I will be to limited, or maybe not win anything becasue I will loss a lot of time hacking hobo. I am planning to add frinedships and personal messing to my website. Could this be to compelx for hobo? Does hobo use jquery?
Best regards.
Asbjørn Morell.
Hobo is not that complex, however you would need to study documentation which takes some time. But, in the long-run any refactoring such as Hobo could help, if the code is currently getting unmaintainable.
JQuery can be used in any sytsem as it is independent of script frameworks etc. AFAIK,
No one can tell you if Hobo will help your specific program.
That said, I have been using Hobo for a while and I have found it to be very effective. It handles a good part of the standard rails logic every site needs (such as routes). The dryml system has been useful in my work as well, reducing the size and complexity of my views.
If your code is becoming unmaintainable and you feel a refractor is necessary, you could definitely do worse than Hobo.
i have been building a few hobo apps and they work rock solid, problem is dryml is quite peculiar and you must learn and do a lot of test and try, but in the end it allways comes along quite nicely. i recommend you start quickly with hobo and you will end up faster..!!
Related
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.
For the first time I'm creating a quite complex Rails app.
I'd like to know what's the best way to organize that app by folders. Until now, I'd do everything under one app (all the models, controllers, etC) but reading some open source code I realize that they put everything under different apps.
Like for example Spree Commerce. They have a general folder and inside that they have different apps (API, core, admin, etc). How is that done and is that the best way to do it?
I'd like to get pointed to the best way to do it (a book, blog, anything) so I can understand how I can architect my app for future maintenance.
thank you
As an aside I think the title of your question is a little confusing. Rails, by using convention over configuration, defines 'how to organise a Rails app'. I think your question is rather about how to architect your application as opposed to anything Rails-specific. Maybe tweak the title?
That aside, without knowing any more detail about your project it's a tricky question to answer, but I'll give it a go.
All applications should start off simple, if you believe (like I do) that you should start by building the simplest thing that could possibly work. Given this, since you're using Rails, then in all likelihood the simplest thing would be to structure your app as a vanilla Rails 3 application. This will probably (I say 'probably' because I don't know any specifics about the app) allow you to get a beta version of your app up and running pretty quickly without worrying about complexities which at this stage in the development of your project are not a problem.
If you need to create an XML or JSON-based API then Rails makes this really easy using the standard framework, which will allow you to spend more time thinking about the API design than how to code it, and it's the API design which is the most important thing to get right in the first instance.
Similarly, your Admin site can be part of the same app just in a different namespace. If you find later down the line that you want it as a separate app, you can do this (maybe you could use the awesome API you designed to facilitate this), but why bother designing it with this added complexity (and hence extended development time) in the first place if you don't have a good reason for doing so?
Once you have your app up and running and people are starting to use it, you start to get a picture of where the bottlenecks are and where the design could be improved. At this stage, if there's a need, you can start to move parts of the app to scalable solutions, such as running your API as a standalone service, introducing caching, changing data stores and other improvements and optimisations.
Even if your app is as wildly successful (and I hope it is!) then re-architecting your application whist continuing to run the existing service is still entirely possible, as Twitter have proved. Just stick to Knuth's statement and you'll be alright.
Regarding reading material, that's a tricky one. For me a lot of the XP and agile development classics taught me a huge amount about how to approach program and app design. I'd also check this StackOverflow topic for book inspiration.
Good luck!
Spree uses Rails' Railties (Rails::Engines). Railties are introduced in Rails 3 to make it more modular and easy to extend. Rails 3 itself is a collection of Railties (ActiveSupport, ActiveModel, ActiveRecord, etc.).
If you are developing a complex app I would suggest spending some time planing its' architecture. Designing a complex app without any initial planning would definitely end with a maintenance nightmare down the road. It also introduces a huge learning curve for the new team members, slow down your new feature introduction and of course, frustration.
Anyway, don't over optimize, but don't forget to design your architecture for your needs.
IMHO, I will create very complex projects as one app. I have reason to believe that Spree and Radiant build under seperate apps so that under the pretense of their open source communities, contributors can contribute code easily without tampering with the core data, and the core workings of the application.
Otherwise, you should be alright just building it as one app. Just keep it neat.
Here is what have kept me sane for several years of RoR development:
I use Rails Engines, but keep them in same codebase as the main app. Here is good starter for modular Rails app:
https://github.com/shageman/the_next_big_thing
Wherever I can I try to reduce coupling and use composition to make things easily testable, reusable and maintainable. This helps to eventually extract module or engine as separate gem. Composition is done by routes (mounting), directory overlaying (assets), dependency injection or configuration.
If I don't need to re-use an engine I put it in the same code base as the main app which is single deployment unit. Thanks to that I don't need to switch between projects in my IDE. While in development environment any changes to the engine code are instantly picked up by Rails reload mechanism.
I've been reading up about HAML/SASS lately and I'm not quite sure why any one would not want to use it. It seems to be very easy to switch, makes things cleaner and more efficient.
Update:
What about using one or the other? Most of the complaints (the few complaints there are) I hear seem to be about HAML, would there be any problems mixing and matching XHTML/HAML and CSS/SASS?
Update:
Sorry, one final update to the question. It seems to me that switching back from SASS to CSS is painless and simple. What about switching back from HAML to HTML?
If you're using Rails, yes. Go for it. Some issues you will hit, though, will be that any other developer brought onto the team later will have to learn it, as well. If you're already working with a big Rails crowd, that's fine, but HAML/SASS may confuse a designer who's worked with pure HTML/CSS for years.
If you're not using Rails, though, a good HAML/SASS integrated system is hard to come by. There are a few out there, but I imagine they're not as well-supported or as far along with the spec.
But, yeah. HAML/SASS is definitely worth it. The only real issue you'll hit is that it's not yet standard.
As for mix-n-match, HAML and SASS are so similar in style that I'd say go for both, but it, again, comes down to personal preference. Try using both for a day, and if you don't like one of them, switch back. There's no technological issue about it, so do what you prefer.
There are lots of tools for working with HTML and CSS. The syntax isn't pretty, but the improvements from HAML and SASS don't seem that dramatic to me, and for many they're not worth the trouble. Of course, for those developing web application with widely differing frameworks (differing from Rails that is) it's even harder to find a reason to go to the pain of integrating something so foreign. (Example: care to explain what I'd have to do to integrate SASS into my Java/Stripes/JSP environment? :-)
I've been on volunteer projects where HAML's syntax curve (syntactical whitespace, the automatic generation of tags etc) has been seen as a barrier: one more thing for a programmer new to the project to learn.
Personally, I think SASS is worth it, but I'm up in the air about HAML: having debugged HAML templates before it seems like the typing you don't have to do with HAML is overcome by the time you spend debugging why there's an error on your templates. This could be a (HAML) newbie's perspective though.
I'm inclined to agree with the question; it is easy to switch, the syntax isn't that complicated, and it does make things cleaner and more efficient. It also makes it harder to unwittingly generate invalid HTML.
I also think the learning curve is shallow enough that a programmer that can't handle it, is probably a programmer you are better off without on your team. That might sound harsh, but I believe it.
The only cons I can see would be if you are developing in ASP.NET or something where retrofitting Haml and Sass would be a pain, is way unexpected for anyone else used to the platform, and possible a chore to maintain in a production environment. On Rails though, go for it.
I don't think that using HAML ever adds much benefit to a project.
SASS, on the other hand, effectively introduces variables and computations and other really useful features that save you time and effort in the long run on larger projects.
Using SASS is incredibly smart with any project that's larger than just a simple one-page form.
I tried using SASS but found that editing CSS using MacRabitt's CSSEdit (Mac Only) was way easier and more efficient for the way I work. I'm a very visual person and like to have a live preview when making changes to style sheets and didn't feel like investing a ton of time into something I wasn't having a problem with.
One thing most people don't realize is that HAML sucks for content. It's great for structural markup, but don't try and push it too far. (You can mix & match HTML in your HAML file, too!)
Sass is absolutely indispensable, especially in the long run. It's not just about writing the stylesheets when you have it all in your head, but about maintaining them down the road. The new Sass3 takes the syntax question out of the equation: you can take your pick if you prefer the curly-bracey SCSS syntax.
HAML/SASS may indeed be awesome to use, but they do introduce dependencies both technical and knowledge-oriented. This may not be an issue if your dev and prod environments are controlled and predictable enough, with newbies receiving enough training (or being vetted for subject knowledge on the way into the organization) to hit the ground running, but all of that is overhead to be acknowledged.
why is this..
%p
hello world
better than this..?
<p>hello world</p>
clue.. If you aren't doing ruby, it isn't. Unfortunately adding closing tags and braces isn't really the most challenging aspect of making webpages, so most professionals wouldn't really care. Use whichever you prefer.
From a developer's perspective, Haml and Sass absolutely rock. However: from a designer's perspective, Haml and Sass might not be readable. It really depends on who is on your team.
If it's a bunch of developers and/or designers who aren't afraid to learn a DSL, then absolutely go for it.
If you have a mixed team where designers toss their CSS and HTML work to developers who translate that to Haml/Sass, sure.
If you have a design team that passes work to the developers AND the work flows back to the designers, you may not want to use this because the designers might not be able to use their tools to edit the files.
If you have a small team where marketing and business people need to edit the web pages and they only know HTML and a light bit of CSS, then you probably shouldn't use Haml/Sass.
However you can't really make a blanket statement here. Consider that at least with Rails you can mix the template types in your views. So, some of your templates can be plain HTML stuck in .erb files, and other pages are .haml files. You can have partials be of one type inserted into templates of another. (I think mixing types is probably a bad practice, but if you just need to "get the job done" then it's an option.)
I am using SASS on a Django project right now. I like it and am going to continue using it. One problem I've found however is that error messages aren't always particularly intuitive, particularly if you leave off a }.
I am (quite) an experienced programmer but totally new to Ruby and Ruby on Rails.
RoR looks great to get working quickly, specially the automatic screen generation for CRUD operations.
It really it gets you productive quickly.
The questions is with the last 20% of the work, when I must finish my application. Won't RoR conventions stand in my way? Because not every database table must be available for all users, and not all users can edit all columns and/or all rows, and the views must be adapted to my site's look and feel, etc.
I understand RoR has been used successfully in live sites, but how exactly do you gain enough speed in RoR to escape gravity after the first phase has been burned out.
I don't think scaffolding gets you 80% there. Scaffolding is nice in that it shows you how the pieces of Rails fit together, but I wouldn't build my application off of scaffolding code. Now that you've been impressed by scaffolding it's best that you forget all about it. :)
Where Rails really shines in my mind is database migrations, the awesomeness of how dynamic ActiveRecord is, and the plugin ecosystem.
There's a lot to learn when deciding to go with Rails. You have a new language, new framework, and new plugins - but if you take the time to learn those things you can be very productive with Rails.
I've been doing ruby on rails for quite sometime. The 80/20 problem is not unique for rails. It applies generally to the entire world. I'm also not aware of any framework that can just do business logic for you.
To answer your specific questions. Conventions will not stand in your way while doing the 20%. Instead, conventions will help you to get through that 20% quicker.
Personally, for user authentication, I use Authlogic. For user authorization, I use Lockdown or Authorization plugin depending on customer need.
I also use inherited_resource in most of my projects to simplify controller code. This is another power of convention.
To increase speed of development, you will not only need to know Rails, but rails gems/plugins that does the right things for you, so you don't have to reinvent the wheels again. Also, knowing Ruby language is a must for quickly develop beyond the 80%.
Ruby Toolbox provides some of the most popular gems and plugins used in typical rails projects targeted at specific domains. You can look through the relevant categories and know what most people use. (And it's probably a good idea to use popular, well maintained gems)
TDD/BDD style development will also help you to speed up in the long run.
Lastly, a warning: If you stray away from rails convention, you will have a painful time in general.
P.S. I used Merb before. My feeling is that conventions helps you in merb, but you won't get too much penalty for not following them in merb. However, my experience with Rails is that if you decide not to follow rails convention while developing rails app, it will come back to bite you in one way or another! So think twice when you really attempted to stray away from rails conventions... (This is from my own experience, and of course subjective, but you can think of it as a warning...)
Won't RoR conventions stand in my way?
Because not every database table must
be available for all users, and not
all users can edit all columns and/or
all rows, and the views must be
adapted to my site's look and feel,
etc.
This is a bit of a non-sequitur. Rails is a framework that has been lifted from real world applications. Those applications had to deal with all those issues also, as well as others you may not have thought of yet. Generally, the conventions make life easier once you learn them.
Another point is that the conventions are merely conventions. You don't have to follow them. You do not even have to use RoR for everything, though I've yet to find a case where I didn't/couldn't, I do generally try to push as much into the DB or cache layers as possible.
I don't believe that you'll ever have a serious problem with Rails conventions. Just stick with the conventions and trust the RoR system. The people behind Rails put a lot of effort into these conventions to support 99% of the common usage scenarios.
If you really need to do something outside the conventions it will eventually get complicated quite fast. However, you are not alone. There are a lots of excellent resources on the net to get help (for example the StackOverflow community).
To sum it up:
Stick with the conventions whenever possible (excellent resource to get started: Rails Guides.
Don't reinvent the wheel. Look for Rails plugins and Ruby Gems instead (don't forget GitHub).
Consult the StackOverflow community if you need something out of the ordinary.
Test all the f***ing time (just for fun).
Duplicate: Django or Ruby-On-Rails?
I have been reading on Ruby on Rails, and it seems like on some threads, some users like Django a lot too?
Can someone who have used both give some insight about using them, such as
ease of use
productivity
fun factor
deployment issues
or any other framework you'd highly recommend?
Both are excellent frameworks. Though, I've found Rails to be more suited for the agile developer. For the most part, you'll run some generators to get the files you need as placeholders for your code. Things will work right away, and you just build up from these conventions. It's really flexible and has a large community, lots of innovation and interesting practices are being put into Rails. It's development cycle seems faster paced than Django.
After only touching the surface with Django, it has some interesting differences. As far as I know, you don't get the schema migrations like Rails has out of the box. But you get an extremely simple CRUD mechanism for your models with the extensible admin interface, which is great for testing/managing content. The entire project is documented really well, from the Django Book to the vast amount of information on docs.djangoproject.com.
I personally prefer the Rails way of doing things. But honestly, you need to try them both to see what works for you, and since we're talking about two very good, yet totally different frameworks, it's a tough decision to make either way. So, if you already know Ruby or Python well enough, start with what you know and just go from there. Once you understand how one works, you'll be able to evaluate the smaller differences yourself. Hope that helps.