Ajax On Rails 235
mu-sly writes "Ajax and Rails - probably two of the biggest buzzwords in web development at the moment. In this article over at ONLamp, Curt Hibbs introduces the incredibly powerful Ajax support that is part of the Ruby on Rails web application framework. It's a great read, and serves as a gentle introduction to the cool stuff you can accomplish with ease using the Ajax features of Rails."
Rails book from the Pragmatic Bookshelf (Score:4, Informative)
AJAX meme (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.realmeme.com/miner/technology/ajaxDeja
However, Ruby on Rails is clearly rising,
moving steadily upward for over a year. Thanks to a reader for bringing this to my attention.
http://www.realmeme.com/miner/technology/hibernat
Re:Which is the bigger irony: (Score:3, Informative)
Google Suggest uses XMLHttpRequest, while Google Maps uses a iframe
Re:Dont Forget Zope (Score:1, Informative)
I'm not saying it's bad, but Rails and Zope are two completely different things. Comparing CGI to something that has its own built-in relational database, FTP server, et. al. doesn't make much sense.
Re:AJAX meme (Score:4, Informative)
There have been some critics of the term AJAX, claiming that the Adaptive Path [wikipedia.org] consultancy who created it [com.com] are using it as a marketing vehicle (and as a meme [wikipedia.org]) for previously used techniques [25hoursaday.com]
It has been pointed out that the AJAX technologies did not have a common name before, and that some welcome a unifying term for the process. However it is also reported that the Google engineers who have created the most prominent applications using this technique consider their technologies as 'Javascript'
AJAX is not a new approach of building software. From a higher perspective the presentation layer is like a form and a programming layer behind handling the events, commonly known in programming terms as MVC [wikipedia.org]. This kind of programming is very well known in older programming environments like Delphi, MFC, Visual Basic, Oracle ADF, and Windows Forms, just to name a few. Applications using this model of programming have been around for years: Microsoft Outlook Web Access using WebDAV and the Web based ERP system P2plus using web services directly from the browser. However, because there are no standards available for the communication model behind previous implementations, all use proprietary extensions.
A new aspect to AJAX is that there are now multiple browsers that can be used to realize this type of application, as opposed to earlier technologies which were frequently limited only to Microsoft's [wikipedia.org] Internet Explorer [wikipedia.org].
Re:Which is the bigger irony: (Score:1, Informative)
Well, you don't know very much, do you?
http://maps.google.com/mapfiles/maps.keyhole.6.saRe:Rails book from the Pragmatic Bookshelf (Score:5, Informative)
I also bought Programming Ruby by the same author because I want to do more with Ruby than just Rails, but this isn't necessary for those who just need Rails - all Ruby constructs and idioms are cross-referenced with an included introduction to the language.
Re:Rails, great for those fed up with J2EE. (Score:5, Informative)
Get the book (Score:4, Informative)
If you want to learn Ajax in Rails, the best thing I've read has been Dave Thomas' new book "Agile Web Development with Ruby on Rails" [pragmaticprogrammer.com]. The author of Ruby on Rails itself, David Heinemeier Hansson, is also a co-author. Great book, absolutely fantastic web development framework.
Re:Rails, great for those fed up with J2EE. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm going to overlook the fact that a flexible caching mechanism has been in place since pre-snowdevil (maybe february) and transaction support was added at some point before the last time I worked with rails (late april). Keep in mind that it's still pre-1.0 and beta and not yet feature-complete. Criticizing it for a lack of features it supports, though, is in poor taste.
Furthermore, almost all rails development at this point has been executed using very small (5 people) core teams. J2EE supports large scale development because it was designed for it. Rails was designed to let a relatively small number of people write an agile application using the set of paradigms which rails was built on. Coming at it from an "I use java in the enterprise and couldn't plug rails in its place tomorrow" is a little bit unfair, because in the same sense, I couldn't just drop J2EE onto my own desktop and start developing with it tomorrow. (Not to mention that my boss would not even begin to authorize such an expenditure for one developer on one product).
I see rails more as a contender to PHP than to J2EE. J2EE and rails are not really comparable in the same market. Sure, rails beats the crap out of J2EE when you've got 1-3 developers on the project, and inversely, when there's more than 10, J2EE has a clear advantage. Coming from java, you're likely to miss many of the benefits of metaprogramming in rails. Even coming from python (a somewhat similar language to ruby), I was a bit startled at some of the techniques being used.
Your project might have failed, but I'm not sure it was completely rails that caused it. AR is very easily extensible (in a matter of hours, usually) to do all sorts of more enterprise-java-like things. Ruby's dynamic messaging and open classes makes that a much simpler affair than it would be in java. Why didn't you extend it to meet your needs? Also, how did you miss the fact that caching and transactions have been there for a while? Were you trying to shoehorn rails onto an old schema? Did you have prior ruby programming experience or were you learning as you went? Did you have prior experience in a dynamically typed language writing an app of similar complexity? Nothing is going to make the solution of a hard problem easy. Some things can make it more pleasant, if used correctly.
Re:Rails, great for those fed up with J2EE. (Score:2, Informative)
yes
> Until you try to do something even moderately complex.
nothing is easy when it's complex
> caching
nope, its there
> transaction support
yep it's weak.
> object-relational mapping is inferior
Isn't any OR mapper slow/bloated and really just a starting point?
> RoR is nice
yes
> but it needs lots of polishing and some redesign.
it's not 1.0 yet
> In its present state RoR can't be compared with J2EE solutions, they are far more powerfull and _flexible_.
I don't code Java professionally, so I don't know. But Rails ain't 1.0 yet. Check back in 3 months
Re:Rails, great for those fed up with J2EE. (Score:4, Informative)
ASP.Net 2.0 (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.developer.com/net/asp/article.php/3506
Re:Article's examples dont work (Score:2, Informative)
What are you talking about? (Score:3, Informative)