A reader recently asked me why Ruby web app deploys usually have a web server (NGinX, Apache) and an application server (Unicorn, Thin, Puma, Racer, Mongrel, Passenger, Jakarta, TorqueBox or whatever I’ve forgotten this week).
Actually, he asked, “why do I need to run NGinX and Unicorn?” It’s a fair...
Ruby on Rails is divided into several separate pieces. If you know what they are and what they do, you can use them individually. You can also look up documentation more easily, and you’ll know where to look for source code to a particular method, and which of several similarly-named methods does...
A fellow asked me how he could store information per-user in Rack. This was my (brief) response:
Generally with the cookies object. Specifically, Rack has a “session”, which encodes a session identity into the cookies object, usually with some or all of your data.
You can also map from the session...
Rails is a heavyweight framework and it does a lot of awesome stuff by default that only a few other frameworks provide. But most of the benefit goes right out the window when you’re using it to write a simple REST API. Lemme ‘splain.
When I say “your REST API”, I’m specifically...
Evan Light recently used the wonderful phrase ”Use Rails Until It Hurts”. He meant that Rails has built-in mechanisms for organizing your code and objects, and they usually result in simpler, cleaner code that mixing Rails with non-Rails.
I say your startup should use Rails until it hurts. And it...
I hate all the “requires” at the front of Ruby files. I know what methods I’m using, but I have to write it in both places. Not exactly DRY. Rails skips them — you just use the classes you want. How can I automatically load my files like Rails does? Read on.
Ruby has methodmissing. When you call...
Rails is bloated and hard to learn. You’d love to use a really simple framework like Sinatra. But what if you need something from Rails that isn’t there? You can’t memorize all the hundreds of helper methods in Rails. But what are the important ones that will hurt you badly if you don’t know them...
Rack comes with a fair bit of built-in middleware that you can use to put together a simple app frame. Unfortunately, Rack authentication’s documentation is pretty bad, so let’s see some simple, self-explanatory examples, shall we?
We’ll need a config.ru file for this, and you’ll need Rack...
If you do Ruby web programming, you’ll often hear about “Rack.” You might hear about it from a Ruby dev you respect, and that you won’t get better at Ruby web stuff until you know what’s underneath.
Or you might have to write a config.ru to use Heroku and you’re thinking, “what’s config.ru?”. It...
Rails parameter parsing can be hard to understand, but it goes beyond that.
Just understanding the “params” object in your controller actions is a little tricky. Ever notice how params[:bob] and params[“bob”] both work? The magic type behind that is called HashWithIndifferentAccess. Yeah, it’s a...
