Open Source

Ruby and Rails

Ruby On Rails is a full-stack open source web development framework written in Ruby. Based on the Model-View-Controller pattern, Rails includes presentation/view tools (including excellent Ajax support), object relational mapping via ActiveRecord, schema management via Migrations, robust deployment support using Capistrano, and a tightly integrated testing framework. Its unique plug-in architecture makes it easy to customize and extend.

The beauty of Rails lies in its underlying philosophies of Convention over Configuration (less configuration = more productivity), the Principle Of Least Surprise (code should be transparent), and Do Not Repeat Yourself a.k.a. DRY (if you find yourself writing similar code in more than one place, encapsulate it). The Rails core code reflects these ideas, and Rails was designed to encourage developers to keep them in mind when using the framework. Rails is often referred to as "opinionated" software because it strongly favors particular best practices and makes them very easy to follow.

Rails was created by David Heinemeier Hansson (referred to as DHH in the Rails community) in the course of writing BaseCamp, a project collaboration application. The initial release of Rails in July 2004 was accompanied by a ground-breaking demo video. With time to spare for pointing out passages in the documentation -- and without speed typing -- the video shows how to transform an empty directory into a basic blog engine in less than ten minutes. That video has since been revised.

Rails has been very influential. It has inspired a number of copycat frameworks including Java-based Trails and Sails , as well as Groovy-based Grails. The home page for the new Sun-sponsored framework Phobus , which features server-side scripting, states that it "learned from Rails".

There is an active community of Rails users groups. Chariot architects founded PhillyOnRails and have been organizing the monthly meetings.

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