What is Ruby on Rails?

What is Ruby on Rails?

As a software development team in Perth, who focus on the best we like to help you to know more about Ruby on Rails.

Ranked as one of the best backend frameworks, Ruby on Rails, also known as Rails or RoR, it is a familiar name for developers and tech enthusiasts. If you are a business owner, you must have heard your web developers use the term as well. So, what exactly is Ruby on Rails? Why should you use it when you create your applications? As a software development team in Perth, we are here to help you learn more about Ruby on Rails.

What is Ruby on Rails?

Ruby on Rails, or Rails as it is now called, is a web application framework written in the programming language Ruby. It is a very productive framework – much faster than a typical Java framework. Rails is an open-source framework and has everything you need to build a database-driven web application.

Rails is a model-view-controller (MVC) framework and follows the concepts of convention over configuration (COC) and don’t repeat yourself (DRY).

COC – means a developer needs to configure only the unconventional aspects of the application and otherwise can use the set of default conventions.

DRY – means a developer does not need to repeat code, and is aimed at reducing repetition of patterns. A change in a single element does not necessitate the modification of other related elements.

Why Rails?

Let’s see why Rails is the platform of choice at The Computing Australia Group and for most other developers.

Convention over configuration

Most frameworks need pages of configuration code. But with rails, you need minimal configuration if you follow the default naming conventions.

Metaprogramming

Rails uses metaprogramming to write programs, unlike other frameworks that use extensive code generations. It does use code generation but relies extensively on the metaprogramming capabilities of Ruby.

Three default environments

The three environments – development, testing, and production – makes the entire development cycle easier. The testing environment has built-in testing that makes test cases easier to write and run.

Active Record

Rails uses the Active Record framework, which saves objects into the database. The database and the objects are tightly matched, so it lets you examine a project’s database schema very easily.

Scaffolding

You may need code in the early stages of a project to see how all components work together. Rails’ scaffolding automatically does much of the code generation that you need.

Ruby on Rails is not to be confused with Ruby which is a programming language. Here are some of the major differences between Rails and Ruby.

Ruby on Rails	Ruby
Is a Web development framework	Is a programming language
Written in Ruby language	Programmed in C language
HTML, CSS, JavaScript & XML used	Mainly C++, Java, Vb.net used
Based on the conventions of COC and DRY	Based on the principle of User Interface Design
Used to develop web applications	Used to build desktop applications

That is Rails in a nutshell. It is one of the best frameworks out there. At The Computing Australia Group our web development team in Perth, have developed over 400 commercial applications using Rails. Talk to our experts today to get a custom app that is just right for your business.

Jargon Buster

Web application framework – a software framework designed to support development of web applications.
Open-source – a software whose copyright holder makes it freely available and grants the right to use, modify or distribute as per the user’s requirement.
Metaprogramming – a programming technique in which a program can modify itself or write programs.