Book Image

Polished Ruby Programming

By : Jeremy Evans
Book Image

Polished Ruby Programming

By: Jeremy Evans

Overview of this book

Anyone striving to become an expert Ruby programmer needs to be able to write maintainable applications. Polished Ruby Programming will help you get better at designing scalable and robust Ruby programs, so that no matter how big the codebase grows, maintaining it will be a breeze. This book takes you on a journey through implementation approaches for many common programming situations, the trade-offs inherent in each approach, and why you may choose to use different approaches in different situations. You'll start by refreshing Ruby fundamentals, such as correctly using core classes, class and method design, variable usage, error handling, and code formatting. Then you'll move on to higher-level programming principles, such as library design, use of metaprogramming and domain-specific languages, and refactoring. Finally, you'll learn principles specific to web application development, such as how to choose a database and web framework, and how to use advanced security features. By the end of this Ruby programming book, you’ll be a well rounded web developer with a deep understanding of Ruby. While most code examples and principles discussed in the book apply to all Ruby versions, some examples and principles are specific to Ruby 3.0, the latest release at the time of publication.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
1
Section 1: Fundamental Ruby Programming Principles
8
Section 2: Ruby Library Programming Principles
17
Section 3: Ruby Web Programming Principles

Choosing between client-side and server-side design

Probably the most critical decision when designing a web application, after choosing a database, is determining whether you'll be building a mostly client-side application or a mostly server-side application. With a mostly client-side application, most of the application logic runs in the user's browser, and the backend that runs on the server tends to be fairly minimal and focused on data storage and retrieval. With a mostly server-side application, most of the application logic runs on the server, and the logic that runs on the client is minimal and potentially non-existent if you can design your application to avoid the use of JavaScript.

With a mostly client-side web application, the data that's transmitted between the backend server to the client tends to be in JSON format. The client code takes the JSON data and uses it to update various parts of the page that's displayed to the user. When the user makes...