Ruby
Beyond
Rails
Lanka Ruby User Group
28 October 2009
Gaveen Prabhasara
http://gaveen.owain.org

Ruby beyond Rails

1993
Matz
(Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Creates Ruby
Ruby beyond Rails

Late 90s
Ruby gets
Recognition outside
Japan
Ruby beyond Rails

2004
DHH
(David Heinemeier
Hansson) Creates
Ruby on Rails
Ruby beyond Rails

Then
Ruby becomes mainstream
Ruby beyond Rails

Now
Everybody think Ruby is the shorten term
for Ruby on Rails
Ruby beyond Rails

Now
Everybody think Ruby is the shorten term
for Ruby on Rails
And Everything is Fine! :)
Ruby beyond Rails

Ruby beyond Rails

Ruby is a
Web programming language, right?
Ruby beyond Rails

No!
(And sort of Yes)
Ruby beyond Rails

What else can Ruby Do?
Ruby beyond Rails

Quite a lot actually
Ruby beyond Rails

“a dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on
simplicity and productivity. It has an elegant syntax that is natural
to read and easy to write.”
- Ruby Official Website
"a dynamic, reflective, general purpose object-oriented programming
language...
- Wikipedia
http://www.ruby-lang.org/
Ruby beyond Rails

has many implementations
MRI/YARV, JRuby, Rubinius, IronRuby,
MagLev, Blue Ruby, MacRuby, HotRuby,
tinyrb, etc.
Which means Ruby is available on many
Software platforms
Ruby beyond Rails

can run in many environments
Linux, Windows, MacOS X, SymbianOS,
Common Unix variants, etc.
Which means Ruby is available on many
Operating Systems
Ruby beyond Rails

Among other things,
Good string processing
Good RegEx engine (Oniguruma)
Easy network programming
Highly readable code
Low entry barrier
High developer happiness
Ruby beyond Rails

Let's see what else is there
Ruby beyond Rails

Before we start
http://www.slideshare.net/adamwiggins/ruby-isnt-just-about-rails-presentation
Ruby beyond Rails

Web Application Frameworks
Ruby beyond Rails

Ruby can be used to program web applications
If you like with many available options such as
http://rubyonrails.org/ http://merbivore.org/ http://www.sinatrarb.com/
Ruby beyond Rails

Lightweight Web Servers
Ruby beyond Rails

There are quite a few lightweight web servers/
Web server libraries written in Ruby
http://code.macournoyer.com/thin/ http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/
http://unicorn.bogomips.org/
Ruby beyond Rails

Web Servers Interface
Ruby beyond Rails

In the form of Rack, unifies the API for web servers,
web frameworks, and software in between
http://rack.rubyforge.org/
Ruby beyond Rails

Scripting
Ruby beyond Rails

Ruby has always been a popular choice as a
Scripting language
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Other than that there are several scripting
Tools available in the Ruby world
Rake - http://rake.rubyforge.org/
Thor - http://github.com/wycats/thor
Boson - http://github.com/cldwalker/boson
Ruby beyond Rails

There is also a Ruby Shell available for
scripting purposes
http://rush.heroku.com/
Ruby beyond Rails

Security
Ruby beyond Rails

The popular Open Source Exploitation Framework
and Security tool Metasploit is written with Ruby
From the web UI to the disassembler
http://www.metasploit.com/
Plus the Metasploit Rex library (Ruby) which is
included in the Motasploit Framework contains
a lot a goodies.
Check it out!
Ruby beyond Rails

Mobile Applications
Ruby beyond Rails

Ruby native implementation is already available
under certain versions of SymbianOS
Rhodes mobile application framework enables
the development of cross-platform mobile applications
For iPhone, Android, WinMo, Symbian, BlackBerry
using Ruby which are compiled into native code
http://rhomobile.com/
Ruby beyond Rails

VoIP
Ruby beyond Rails

Adhearsion project brings the elegance of Ruby
Into the voice application domain
http://adhearsion.com/
Ruby beyond Rails

Deployment
Ruby beyond Rails

Capistrano makes deploying Ruby web applications
(and others up to a certain mark) very easy
http://www.capify.org/
There are alternatives to Capistrano (for Rails
deployment) such as
Vlad - http://rubyhitsquad.com/Vlad_the_Deployer.html
Inploy - http://github.com/dcrec1/inploy
Ruby beyond Rails

Infrastructure Management
Ruby beyond Rails

Puppet is the current industry champion in the
Configuration Management game
http://reductivelabs.com/products/puppet/
Chef is another tool similar to Puppet
http://github.com/opscode/chef
Ruby beyond Rails

What do you think now?
Ruby beyond Rails

For further information have a look at the white paper
“The Ruby and Rails Ecosystem”
http://www.infoether.com/ruby-and-rails-whitepaper
Disclaimer: The author was completely unaware of this whitepaper when
he was preparing these slides
Ruby beyond Rails

These are just generic introductions
Had to manage within the time constraints
Hope to do some hands on sessions in future
Q&A
Ruby beyond Rails