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

Deciding on a web framework

Once you've decided on whether to build a client-side or server-side application, the next most important decision is which web framework you should use. There are four Ruby web frameworks with significant popularity (that is, over one million downloads) – Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, Grape, and Roda. All web frameworks ship with basic support for handling requests and returning responses. Each has advantages and disadvantages, all of which you'll learn about in the following sections.

Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails, or Rails for short, is the most popular Ruby web framework. It is a full-stack framework, which means it comes with many features in addition to being able to handle requests. In Chapter 15, The Database Is Key, you learned about Active Record, the model layer that comes with Rails.

Rails come with many additional features, including the following:

  • Action Cable: A framework for real-time communication between the server...