Introduction to Ruby on Rails for URUG Rails Workshop 2009

1. Ruby on Rails
Eric Berry
cavneb@gmail.com
Twitter: @cavneb
SolidCoreSolutions.com

2. Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework that’s
optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable
productivity. It lets you write beautiful code by favoring
convention over configuration.

3. Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework that’s
optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable
productivity. It lets you write beautiful code by favoring
convention over configuration.

4. Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework that’s
optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable
productivity. It lets you write beautiful code by favoring
convention over configuration.
PHP C# Java Python
Zend ASP.net Spring web2py
CakePHP Struts Django,
CodeIgniter Stripes TurboGears
symfony Tapestry Pylons
Zoop Hivemind Zope
Akelos JBoss Quixote

5. Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework that’s
optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable
productivity. It lets you write beautiful code by favoring
convention over configuration.
Ruby PHP C# Java Python
Rails Zend ASP.net Spring web2py
Sinatra CakePHP Struts Django,
Merb* CodeIgniter Stripes TurboGears
symfony Tapestry Pylons
Zoop Hivemind Zope
Akelos JBoss Quixote

6. Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework that’s
optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable
productivity. It lets you write beautiful code by favoring
convention over configuration.

7. Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework that’s
optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable
productivity. It lets you write beautiful code by favoring
convention over configuration.
“Software design paradigm which seeks to decrease
the number of decisions that developers need to
make, gaining simplicity, but not necessarily losing
flexibility.”

8. Who uses Rails?

9. Who uses Rails?
‣ Twitter.com (35 Alexa)
‣ Scribd.com (150)
‣ Hulu.com (224)
‣ Justin.tv (231)
‣ YellowPages.com (641)
‣ CookPad.com (696)
‣ AboutUs.org (761)
‣ UrbanDictionary.com (770)
‣ Spock.com (1689)
‣ Jango.com (2088)
‣ iLike.com (2161)
‣ FunnyOrDie.com (2814)

10. Who uses Rails?
‣ Twitter.com (35 Alexa) “Ruby on Rails is known for its ability to
‣ Scribd.com (150) build Web applications quickly and with
ease. For first-time users of Java, it could
‣ Hulu.com (224) take about five to ten days to build a
‣ Justin.tv (231) moderately useful Web application that will
communicate with a database using
‣ YellowPages.com (641) accepted Java Web best-practices such as
‣ CookPad.com (696) separating business logic, from display logic
‣ AboutUs.org (761) (commonly referred to as Model-View-
Controller). With no prior training on Ruby
‣ UrbanDictionary.com (770) on Rails, it takes about one day to
‣ Spock.com (1689) accomplish the same goal using the Ruby
programming language. In several more
‣ Jango.com (2088) days, it is possible to build a relatively
‣ iLike.com (2161) complete Web application with Ruby on
Rails.”
‣ FunnyOrDie.com (2814)
http://www.developerfusion.com/column/7092/ruby-on-rails-deserves-the-hype/2/

11. Why use Rails?

12. Why use Rails?
• Productive within minutes, not weeks.

13. Why use Rails?
• Productive within minutes, not weeks.
• Convention over configuration

14. Why use Rails?
• Productive within minutes, not weeks.
• Convention over configuration
• 100% object oriented

15. Why use Rails?
• Productive within minutes, not weeks.
• Convention over configuration
• 100% object oriented
• Use templates for html, email, xml, etc.

16. Why use Rails?
• Productive within minutes, not weeks.
• Convention over configuration
• 100% object oriented
• Use templates for html, email, xml, etc.
• Database persistence with Active Record

17. Why use Rails?
• Productive within minutes, not weeks.
• Convention over configuration
• 100% object oriented
• Use templates for html, email, xml, etc.
• Database persistence with Active Record
• Simple AJAX integration

18. Why use Rails?
• Productive within minutes, not weeks.
• Convention over configuration
• 100% object oriented
• Use templates for html, email, xml, etc.
• Database persistence with Active Record
• Simple AJAX integration
• Enables Agile practices

19. Why use Rails?
• Productive within minutes, not weeks.
• Convention over configuration
• 100% object oriented
• Use templates for html, email, xml, etc.
• Database persistence with Active Record
• Simple AJAX integration
• Enables Agile practices
• Generators

20. Why use Rails?
• Productive within minutes, not weeks.
• Convention over configuration
• 100% object oriented
• Use templates for html, email, xml, etc.
• Database persistence with Active Record
• Simple AJAX integration
• Enables Agile practices
• Generators
• Community

21. Is Ruby on Rails
always the solution?

22. NO!

23. Why NOT use Rails?

24. Why NOT use Rails?
• Not as widely accepted as Tomcat or .NET

25. Why NOT use Rails?
• Not as widely accepted as Tomcat or .NET
• Not a compiled language

26. Why NOT use Rails?
• Not as widely accepted as Tomcat or .NET
• Not a compiled language
• Primarily used for web applications

27. Why NOT use Rails?
• Not as widely accepted as Tomcat or .NET
• Not a compiled language
• Primarily used for web applications
• You can get a false sense of productivity
when following the examples. Typical real-
world projects are more complex

28. And now for something
completely different...

29. See more at http://railsenvy.com/tags/Commercials

30. MVC

31. Model
View
Controller

32. Model
Object that represents a table column within a database.

33. View
HTML code that is rendered to the browser.

34. Controller
Middle man between the views and models.

35. MVC with Rails

36. MVC with Rails
a
p
a
c
h Controller
e

37. MVC with Rails
a
View
p
a
c
h Controller
e
Model

38. MVC with Rails
a
View
p
a
c
h Controller
e
Model

39. MVC with Rails
a
View
p
a
c
h Routes
e
Controller
Model

40. MVC with Rails
a
View Helpers
p
a
c
h Routes
e
Controller
Model

41. MVC with Rails
a
Rack Middleware
View Helpers
p
a
c
h Routes
e
Controller
Model

42. MVC with Rails
a
Rack Middleware
View Helpers
p
a
c
h Routes
e
Controller
Model

43. Installation
Ruby
Pre-packaged with OS X 10.5+
$ yum install ruby irb rdoc
$ apt-get install ruby irb rdoc
Download 1-Click installer from
http://www.ruby-lang.org

44. Installation
RubyGems
Download from http://rubygems.org and install
Download from http://rubygems.org and install
Download from http://rubygems.org and install
or make sure that when you install Ruby, you opt ‘Enable RubyGems’

45. Installation
Rails
$ sudo gem install rails
$ sudo gem install rails
C:> gem install rails

46. Create a Rails App
$ rails my_app

47. Create a Rails App
$ rails my_app
app - home of models, views and controllers
config - db, deployment, environment settings
db - migrations and schema
doc - rdocs and other documentation
lib - custom code and rake tasks
log - logs for all environments
public - public
script - ruby scripts (generate, plugin, etc)
test - home for all testing files (unit, functional, etc)
tmp - temp folder
vendor - home for plugins and gems

48. Let’s give away a book!