Ruby off Rails

by Stoyan Zhekov
Kyoto, 17-May-2008
 Table of content
● Coupling and Cohesion
● Common needs for various web apps
● ORM - Sequel (short overview)
● Ruby Web Evolution
● Enter Rack - The Middle Man
● Thin, Ramaze, Tamanegi
● Summary, Extras, Questions

08/05/19 2
 Coupling and Cohesion (1)
● Cohesion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohesion_(computer_science)
● Coupling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupling_(computer_science)

08/05/19 3
 Coupling and Cohesion (2)

Applications should be composed of components

that show:
● High cohesion
– doing small number of things and do them well
● Low (loosely) coupling
– easy replace any component with another one

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 Coupling and Cohesion (3)

Google vs Amazon

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 Coupling and Cohesion (4)

VS

08/05/19 6
 What about Rails?

08/05/19 7
 Ruby on Rails
● Full Stack – was good. Now?
● Convention over configuration – good?
● DRY – possible?
– Generators
– Plugins
– Libraries

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 Life without Rails

Is it possible?

08/05/19 9
 Common needs for various web apps

● Database handling: ORM

● Request processing: CGI env, uploads
● Routing/dispatching: map URLs to classes
● Rendering/views: rendering libraries
● Sessions: persist objects or data

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 Database ORM
● Active Record ?= ActiveRecord
● ActiveRecord – a lot of problems
– http://datamapper.org/why.html
● Data Mapper – fast, but not ready
– No composite keys (when I started using it)
– Have it's own database drivers
● Sequel – good, I like it

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 ORM – Sequel (Why?)
● Pure Ruby
● Thread safe
● Connection pooling
● DSL for constructing DB queries
● Lightweight ORM layer for mapping records to
Ruby objects
● Transactions with rollback

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 ORM – Sequel (Core)
● Database Connect
require 'sequel'
DB = Sequel.open 'sqlite:///blog.db'

DB = Sequel.open 'postgres://cico:12345@localhost:5432/mydb'

DB = Sequel.open("postgres://postgres:postgres@localhost/my_db",
:max_connections => 10, :logger => Logger.new('log/db.log'))

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 ORM – Sequel (Core, 2)
DB << "CREATE TABLE users (name VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL)"

DB.fetch("SELECT name FROM users") do |row|

p r[:name]
end

dataset = DB[:managers].where(:salary => 50..100).order(:name, :department)

paginated = dataset.paginate(1, 10) # first page, 10 rows per page

paginated.page_count #=> number of pages in dataset
paginated.current_page #=> 1

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 ORM – Sequel (Model)

class Post < Sequel::Model(:my_posts)

set_primary_key [:category, :title]

belongs_to :author
has_many :comments
has_and_belongs_to_many :tags

after_create do
set(:created_at => Time.now)
end

end

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 ORM – Sequel (Model, 2)

class Person < Sequel::Model

one_to_many :posts, :eager=>[:tags]

set_schema do
primary_key :id
text :name
text :email
foreign_key :team_id, :table => :teams
end
end

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 Evolution

08/05/19 17
 Ruby Web Evolution

Webrick Mongrel Event Thin Ebb

Machine

05/19/08 18
 Thin web server
● Fast – Ragel and Event Machine
● Clustering
● Unix sockets (the only one I found) - nginx
● Rack-based – Rails, Ramaze etc.
● Rackup files support (follows)

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 Thin + Nginx
thin start --servers 3 --socket /tmp/thin
thin start --servers 3 –post 3000
# nginx.conf
upstream backend {
fair;
server unix:/tmp/thin.0.sock;
server unix:/tmp/thin.1.sock;
server unix:/tmp/thin.2.sock;
}

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 The problem

Merb Ramaze Sinatra ...

How to connect them?

CGI Webrick Mongrel Thin

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 The solution - Rack

Merb Ramaze Sinatra ...

Rack – The Middle Man

CGI Webrick Mongrel Thin

05/19/08 22
 What is Rack?

05/19/08 23
 What IS Rack?

http://rack.rubyforge.org/

By Christian Neukirchen
05/19/08 24
 WHAT is Rack?
● Specification (and implementation) of a minimal
abstract Ruby API that models HTTP
– Request -> Response
● An object that responds to call and accepts one
argument: env, and returns:
– a status, i.e. 200
– the headers, i.e. {‘Content-Type’ => ‘text/html’}
– an object that responds to each: ‘some string’

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 This is Rack!
class RackApp
def call(env)
[ 200, {"Content-Type" => "text/plain"}, "Hi!"]
end
end

app = RackApp.new

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 Free Hugs

http://www.freehugscampaign.org/
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 Hugs Application

p 'Hug!'

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 ruby hugs.rb

%w(rubygems rack).each { |dep| require dep }

class HugsApp
def call(env)
[ 200, {"Content-Type" => "text/plain"}, "Hug!"]
end
end

Rack::Handler::Mongrel.run(HugsApp.new, :Port => 3000)

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 Rack::Builder
require 'hugs'
app = Rack::Builder.new {
use Rack::Static, :urls => ["/css", "/images"], :root => "public"
use Rack::CommonLogger
use Rack::ShowExceptions

map "/" do
run lambda { [200, {"Content-Type" => "text/plain"}, ["Hi!"]] }
end

map "/hug" do
run HugsApp.new
end
}

Rack::Handler::Thin.run app, :Port => 3000

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 Rack Building Blocks
● request = Rack::Request.new(env)
– request.get?
● response = Rack::Response.new('Hi!')
– response.set_cookie('sess-id', 'abcde')
● Rack::URLMap
● Rack::Session
● Rack::Auth::Basic
● Rack::File
05/19/08 31
 Rack Middleware

Can I create my own use Rack::... blocks?

class RackMiddlewareExample
def initialize app
@app = app
end

def call env

@app.call(env)
end
end

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 Common needs for various web apps

● Database handling: ORM Sequel

● Request processing: Rack::Request(env)
● Routing/dispatching: Rack 'map' and 'run'
● Rendering/views: Tenjin, Amrita2
● Sessions: Rack::Session

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 Does it scale?

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 rackup hugs.ru

require 'hugs'
app = Rack::Builder.new {
use Rack::Static, :urls => ["/css", "/images"], :root => "public"

map "/" do
run lambda { [200, {"Content-Type" => "text/plain"}, ["Hi!"]] }
end

map "/hug" do
run HugsApp.new
end
}
Rack::Handler::Thin.run app, :Port => 3000

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 Hugs Service
● rackup -s webrick -p 3000 hugs.ru
● thin start --servers 3 -p 3000 -R hugs.ru
● SCGI
● FastCGI
● Litespeed
● ....

05/19/08 36
 Rack-based frameworks
● Invisible – thin-based framework in 35 LOC
– http://github.com/macournoyer/invisible/
● Coset – REST on Rack
● Halcyon – JSON Server Framework
● Merb
● Sinatra
● Ramaze
● Rails !?
05/19/08 37
 Rack coming to Rails
● Rails already have Rack, but:
– raw req -> rack env -> Rack::Request ->CGIWrapper ->
CgiRequest
● Ezra Zygmuntowicz (merb)'s repo on github
– http://github.com/ezmobius/rails
– raw req -> rack env -> ActionController::RackRequest
– ./script/rackup -s thin -c 5 -e production

05/19/08 38
 Ramaze
● What: A modular web application framework
● Where: http://ramaze.net/
● How: gem install ramaze
● git clone http://github.com/manveru/ramaze.git
● Who: Michael Fellinger and Co.

05/19/08 39
 Why Ramaze?
● Modular (low [loosely] coupling)
● Rack-based
● Easy to use
● A lot of examples (~25) – facebook, rapaste
● Free style of development
● Friendly community - #ramaze
● “All bugs are fixed within 48 hours of reporting.”

05/19/08 40
 Deployment options
● CGI ● Ebb
● FastCGI ● Evented Mongrel
● LiteSpeed ● Swiftiplied Mongrel
● Mongrel ● Thin
● SCGI ● Whatever comes along
● Webrick and fits into the Rack

05/19/08 41
 Templating engines
● Amrita2 ● RedCloth
● Builder ● Remarkably
● Erubis ● Sass
● Ezmar ● Tagz
● Haml ● Tenjin
● Liquid ● XSLT
● Markaby

05/19/08 42
 Ezamar

05/19/08 43
 Easy to use?
%w(rubygems ramaze).each {|dep| require dep}

class MainController < Ramaze::Controller

def index; "Hi" end
end

class HugsController < Ramaze::Controller

map '/hug'
def index; "Hug!" end
end

Ramaze.start :adapter => :thin, :port => 3000

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 Ramaze Usage
class SmileyController <
Ramaze::Controller
map '/smile'

helper :smiley

def index
smiley(':)')
end
end

05/19/08 45
 Ramaze Usage (2)
module Ramaze
module Helper
module SmileyHelper
FACES = {
':)' => '/images/smile.png',
';)' => '/images/twink.png'}
REGEXP = Regexp.union(*FACES.keys)

def smiley(string)
string.gsub(REGEXP) { FACES[$1] }
end
end
end
end

05/19/08 46
 Alternative Stack
● ORM – Sequel
● Web server – Thin + NginX
● Rack Middleware
● Ramaze framework
● Templates – HAML, Tenjin, Amrita2

05/19/08 47
 Summary
● Not trying to tell you to not use Rails
● Just keep your mind open
● Sequel is good ORM
● Use Rack – DIY framework, DIY server
● Ramaze is cool and easy to use

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