Transcript Agile Web Development with Rails

Fun with Ruby and Rails
Chris Jeris 18 October 2011
I am ...
• formerly a software engineer at HCL
• also formerly co-chair of abcd-library
• now working for Brightcove, a software company in Kendall
Square that uses Ruby on Rails (not solely)
Ruby is...
• a modern programming language
• available for Windows, Mac OS, Unix/Linux, Java (JRuby),
.NET (IronRuby), and Android (Ruboto)
• flexible and easy to read and write:
def is_lower_48?(address)
address.country == "United States" and
not ["AK", "HI"].include?(address.state)
end
• designed to maximize programmer happiness
Rails is...
• a framework for building web applications in Ruby
• a set of strong ideological opinions about how web
applications should be structured
• a particularly good tool for building prototypes rapidly
(which doesn't mean it's only good for that)
• a thriving, productive, fractious community of free software
developers
• a constantly growing and changing software ecosystem
with libraries to do almost anything
Who uses Ruby on Rails?
• Lots of web applications you've heard of:
Basecamp, Twitter, Hulu, Groupon, ...
• Blacklight (projectblacklight.org),
a Solr-based discovery interface
• Umlaut (wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Umlaut),
a link resolver enhancer
• Library Lab projects developed at the Berkman Center
(like the Widener carrel reservation app)
• The HCL annotated bibliography application I wrote
The page-centric paradigm
• Web pages, with instructions in them to do things
<cfset today = Now() />
<div id="the_date">
<cfoutput>Today's date is
#DateFormat(today, "yyyy-mm-dd")#
</cfoutput>
</div>
• It's a lot like writing a regular website, only every so often
you tell the server to do something
• Usually you eventually reach an unmaintainable mess
Model-View-Controller paradigm
• Partition your program into three basic responsibilities:
o The model is your representation of data (bibliographic
records, search queries, shopping carts, ...)
o The view is the web pages that you show to the user, and
all the behavior they contain
o The controller directs traffic, receiving requests from the
user, deciding what actions to take, and mediating
between model and view
• Every major web programming platform provides a way for
you to follow this paradigm
• Rails forces you to from the very beginning
Demo
Other neat things to use with Rails
• RSpec for test-driven development
• Cucumber for behavior-driven development
Scenario: Request to create a new collection
Given I open the topic at the home page
When I follow "create a new collection"
Then I should be on the collection creation form
• jQuery is now built in (as of Rails 3.1)
Learning Ruby and Rails
• Read these
Agile Web Development with Rails and
Programming Ruby 1.9 from Pragmatic Programmers
• Join boston.rb (bostonrb.org)
• irc.freenode.org: #ruby-lang, #rubyonrails
• railscasts.com
Things to watch out for
• You can use Windows ... but don't.
(If you absolutely have to, use JRuby.)
• Rails on iSites is a clash of two opinionated frameworks.
You can make it work, but it takes some hacking.
• The Rails world changes very fast.
You don't need to keep up with the latest hip fashions.
... Until you do, because something you use changed.
Evaluation
• Ruby, in and of itself, is a friendly programming language
and a good one for people who are new to programming
• Rails is a wonderful system for building web applications,
if you can program or want to learn programming
• Ruby on Rails has a steeper learning curve than pagecentered systems like PHP or ColdFusion
• If you need to build an interactive web thing and don't really
like the idea of programming, try Drupal instead
Thank you!
Questions?