Ruby on Rails is a popular backend framework, and undoubtedly, the Ruby on Rails architecture is one of the core reasons to make ROR as developers’ first choice.
Ruby on Rails web development framework is meant for database back-ended applications.
This framework has numerous built-in solutions for common troubles faced by developers during web development.
Through this blog, You will get a complete understanding of Ruby on Rails architecture. And also everything about functionality of ruby on rails framework.
So, Let’s Know It!!
What Is Ruby on Rails?
Meaning, Structure, and History
Ruby on Rails is a server-side web app framework. This framework is popular among developers for backend development and it is written in Ruby programming language.
ROR is an open-source web framework developed under the MIT license.
In July 2004, Ruby on Rails was invented by David Heinemeier Hansson while working on the Basecamp project at web app company 37signals.
Ruby on Rails is based on Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture. And we will learn everything regarding MVC architecture in this blog.
Among several reasons, the one reason for loving ruby on rails framework by developers is because it provides metaprogramming features in coding.
To facilitate data exchange in support of Ruby on Rails, developers use XML and JSON.
Ruby on Rails speeds up development, allowing programmers to concentrate more on the most recent developments for the online application.
ROR has a built-in static compilation tool that improves performance for the creation of web applications.
Another reason for ruby on rails to work out best is due to its principles.
Ruby on Rails Principles
Yes, ROR works on two major principles:
1. Convention Over Configuration (COC):
Convention Over Configuration aims to overcome the efforts and time invested by developers. It doesn’t necessarily lessen development’s flexibility.
In the case of the class “User” in the model, the appropriate database table will be named “Users” by default unless the developer chooses to specify the name differently.
These conventions maintain the application’s clean code and make it simple to move around it.
2. Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY):
DRY principles are meant not repeating information and data within a complex system.
Every piece of information must be connected to the rest of the system in a clear and meaningful way.
The goal of the idea is to minimize code repetition as much as possible to make it simple to implement any change during the development cycle. Ruby on Rails helpers and libraries aid in maintaining “DRY” code.
We think Ruby on Rails is a pretty good and affordable choice for web app development.
For the Ruby on Rails web development project to be completed successfully, you must work with a ruby on rails development firm.
To get a better idea of choosing ruby on rails, we have mentioned the top advantages offered by ruby on rails framework. Let’s see:
Top Benefits Of Ruby on Rails Framework
The below-listed benefits of ruby on rails make it the best choice of framework for startups. Have a look:
1. Safe & Secure Framework
Ruby on Rails comes with multiple built-in measures regarding safety and security. Not only this but behaviour-driven development and test-driven development are also supported by the Ruby on Rails framework.
2. Cost-effective Framework
Budget is a crucial part of making any decision in business. And here, ROR always helps because it is an open-source framework that easily works on Linux. Additionally, it is an entirely free open-source operating system.
3. Simplified and Fast
Ruby on Rails is a very simple framework and is always known for its fast-running performance. ROR helps developers accomplish their objectives by providing an organized database and a wide range of tools for all kinds of features and functionalities.
4. Highly Productive
Ruby on Rails integrates with several third-party libraries to quickly develop new features required. It is also a short and expressive framework and all this makes ROR a highly productive web development option.
5. Automated Tested
Ruby on Rails has an automated testing process, so that’s easy for you to not be worried about testing terms. You can always test the whole code before implementing it and for this, you don’t even require any third-party tool.
6. Full-Stack Framework
It doesn’t matter that you are working in which industry, Ruby on Rails is a full-stack framework easily suitable for all types of industry web app development.
7. Scalable
By offering a scalable web solution, Ruby on Rails is a great foundation for helping organizations fulfill growth demands. It offers several features and traits that make it effective in delivering a highly scalable web platform.
8. Community Support
Ruby on Rails has great and vibrant developer community support which contributes to the code base and framework with consistent value additions. This framework is frequently updated and is always utilized for the websites of various businesses due to this strong community support.
9. Easy to Manage
Effective coding and reliability are offered by Ruby on Rails. The overall test codes, coding style, and debugging are easily managed by built-in components of the ruby on rails framework.
10. High Quality
Ruby on Rails comes with developer-friendly principles such as DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself), KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), and COC (Convention Over Configuration) that never compromise quality. There are several top ruby on rails developers waiting in the market if you’re wondering where to look.
Now, it’s a turn to understand ROR architecture;
Ruby on Rails Architecture: Overview
Agile web development is emphasized and enforced by Ruby on Rails. The Ruby language’s features are leveraged by the Rails framework.
The Ruby on Rails architecture framework was created for database-backed web apps. It was developed in reaction to complex web frameworks like the .NET and J2EE web framework.
The conventions and presumptions used by Ruby on Rails speed up the development process. Conventions are meant for removing configuration code to enhance productivity.
The framework includes many of the typical responsibilities for web development so they can operate right out of the box.
This covers email management, object-database mappers, file structures, code generation, element naming and organization, and other related topics.
All of these principles enable programmers to create more agile programs with fewer code. They also improve maintainability and comprehension within the Ruby on Rails development community.
Ruby on Rails Architecture Features
- Ruby on Rails follows Model-View-Controller architecture.
- Web services using Representational State Transfer (REST).
- ROR architecture supports all of the popular databases, including MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, IBM DB2, and others.
- Open-source server side scripting language is used by Rails architecture.
- ROR architecture follows convention over configuration principle.
- It has generators of scripts for task automation.
- Rails uses the human-readable data serialization format known as YAML machine.
Rails Components
The following Rails components are delivered with the aforementioned characteristics, and the above mentioned figure illustrates how some of these components interact with one another:
- Action Mailer
- Action Pack
- Action Controller
- Action Dispatcher
- Action View
- Active Model
- Active Record
- Active Resource
- Active Support
- Railties
Ruby on Rails Architecture: Model-View-Controller Pattern
To enhance the maintainability of the applications, Ruby on Rails uses the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern.
In which the Model is for centralizing the business logic, View is meant to manage the display logic, and the Controller is for dealing with application flow.
Because it keeps business logic and HTML views apart, the MVC enables a clear separation of concerns. It also enhances testing and decoupling.
Let’s dive into Model-View-Controller separately;
Model
The main function of the Model is to manage the business logic of the application and the rules to guide the data.
The Ruby on Rails architecture’s Modes also manages the interaction with their correlated elements in the database.
The representation of database information and necessary validations are done by Models.
View
As you can guess from the name, the view is the front-end of the application which represents the user interface.
Views are HTML files with incorporated Ruby code in Ruby on Rails. The HTML’s embedded Ruby code (loops and conditionals) is quite straightforward. It is only employed to provide data to the user as views.
Views are used to deliver the info to the web viewers who made the page request. Many other file types, including HTML, PDF, XML, RSS, and more, can be served via views.
Controller
The Controller is like a bridge between the Model and View. In simple terms, it interacts with the Model and View.
Controller processes the incoming browser requests, which are for proceeding with the data taken from the Model and passing it to the Views for presentation purposes.
Rails Modules
Let’s learn all the Rails Modules in detail.
Action Mailer
Action Mailer is responsible for offering e-mail services. It has to process incoming mail and make new ones. Also, it can manage simple text or complex rich-format emails.
The sending of forgotten passwords, greeting/welcome messages, and completing other written communication requirements are built-in tasks of Action Mailer.
The Action Controller is encircled by the Action Mailer. In the same manner that Action View makes use of it to generate web pages, it offers options to create emails using templates.
Action Pack
The Action Pack module provides the Controller and View layers of the Rails MVC architecture.
So, technically these modules accept the user requests created on browsers and direct these requests to actions. There are 3-sub modules:
Action Dispatch
Manages web browser request routing. It analyzes the online request and performs extensive HTTP processing, including dealing with cookies, sessions, request methods, and other issues.
Action Controller
When the action dispatch has completed processing the request, it routes the request to the appropriate controller.
The base controller, supplied by this module, can serve as an initial template for any forthcoming controllers.
Model and view controls are contained in the action controller. This module directs the rendering and redirection of views and makes data available as needed.
Action View
The Action Controller calls it. It provides the requested web page presentation.
To aid in the creation of HTML, feeds, and other presentation formats, Action View offers master layouts, templates lookups, and view helpers.
In Rails, there are three different template schemas: rhtml, rxml, and rjs.
Active Model
Specify how the modules for Action Pack and Active Record interact.
Furthermore, Action Record interfaces have the capability to offer Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) functions beyond the scope of the Rails framework.
Active Record
A
Developers employ an architectural design pattern known as active record to oversee objects within relational databases and handle data management.
The Active Record module in Ruby on Rails offers object-relational mapping to classes. This module constructs the Model layer, which links database tables to their representation in Ruby classes.
Rails offers utilities that require zero configuration to implement CRUD capabilities. Through Ruby objects, CRUD enables the creation, reading, updating, and deletion of database records.
In database tables, each row is represented by an object. Additionally, it offers the option to link or associate models with one another as well as advanced search features.
Active Records significantly relies on norms for the naming of classes, database tables, foreign keys, and primary keys.
While performing database mapping through configuration is possible, we strongly recommend following Rails conventions, such as utilizing active record modules.
Developers utilize this module for constructing model classes that integrate business logic, handle validations and relationships, automatically map to tables, encapsulate data access, provide getters and setters, employ callbacks, and are compatible with multiple databases.
Active Resource
For managing the connection between RESTful web services and business objects, utilize the Active Resource module.
It adheres to the same Active Record tenet of minimizing the amount of coding required to map resources.
Similar to how Active Record maps model classes to database columns, Active services does the same for remote REST services.
To make it simple to infer complicated structures and interactions, Active Resource makes use of the HTTP protocol and adds code conventions.
RESTful Architecture
Representational State Transfer is referred to as REST. A substitute for web services like SOAP and WSDL is REST. All CRUD operations—create, read, update, and delete—rely on the HTTP protocol.
RESTful web services prove suitable when web services maintain complete statelessness, require minimal bandwidth (making them particularly well-suited for mobile devices due to the reduced overhead compared to other protocols like SOAP), include static data that can be cached to enhance performance, and when both the service producer and consumer are synchronized.
Active Support
It is a set of enhancements to the common Ruby libraries and utility classes that are helpful for Ruby on Rails development.
It has extensive support for testing, internationalization, time zones, and multi-byte strings.
Railties
The fundamental code of Rails, Railties, is used to create new apps. It holds all the modules mentioned above together by acting as “glue”.
Additionally, it offers the code generators for Rails and manages the command line interface and bootstrapping process.
One command line for carrying out database chores, deployment, documentation, testing, and cleanups is rake.
Furthermore, Rails incorporates an integrated testing framework that automatically produces test stubs while writing code. It provides unit testing, functional testing for views and controllers, test fixtures, and exposes test data through YAML.
Now let’s understand the architectural solution in simple terms.
Architectural Solution
We choose Module Views and Component & Connector (C&C) Views for analyzing the ROR architecture.
The Component & Connector View will display the UML diagram that presents a run-time view of a system’s architecture: what components exist at run-time and how these components communicate with one another.
And on the other hand, the Module View will contain UML diagrams that represent a static view of all the components.
Let’s elaborate both to understand better;
Connect and Component View
The Ruby on Rails components, interfaces, connectors, and systems are present by the Component-and-Connector View – The dynamic view of the system.
UML interfaces are over choice to represent the interfaces. Because it offers compact representation of the interfaces and avoids crowding the diagram.
To maintain consistency with the UML notation we use for interface representation, we will represent connector types as associations and connector instances as links.
Module View
The Module View displays the interfaces and their relationships to one another while presenting the code or implementation as modules.
Modules, interfaces, aggregations, generalizations, and dependencies are all included in the Module View.
Ruby on Rails Architecture Pitfalls
Because developers create Rails using the Ruby programming language, it aligns with the language’s inherent strengths and weaknesses.
Ruby is an object-oriented and dynamic scripting language having elegant syntax. It is a slower language that is compiled such as Java or C++ due to characteristics of interpreted language.
In general, speed is not the primary concern. However, when the web app needs to scale to accommodate millions of concurrent users, this level of performance becomes inadequate.
The Ruby programming language is not highly suitable for high concurrency applications, as it lacks optimization for speedy computation. Ruby is designed for elegance, simplicity, and rapid development.
Like other programming languages, Ruby has little problem dealing with long-lived processes and still, it doesn’t have great thread support.
However, languages such as Java excel in thread handling due to years of optimization.
Another flaw is that Ruby’s garbage collector is inferior to Java’s in that it uses substantially more memory for each process.
A Ruby on Rails-based online application could be more difficult to install than websites utilizing more widely used technologies, such as PHP.
This is because not all hosting companies offer Rails support, however, this is changing over time.
Summary
The open-source community and the software development industry as a whole widely endorse Ruby on Rails.
This support indicates, in part, that the framework was able to deliver an architecture that was reasonably robust and somewhat in line with the objectives that the architect had in mind.
Overall, it is safe to state that the framework architecture achieves the majority of its intended objectives, however there are certain limitations.
Although the framework’s level and rate of adoption in business and the open-source community may serve as evidence of its promise, we are also beginning to notice constraints associated with its use.
Some of these restrictions are a driving force in Ruby on Rails’ continual development.
Ruby on Rails architecture is good to go!! You can contact ruby on rails consulting to take a step for your ROR web development project.
HAPPY RUBY ON RAILS ARCHITECTURE!!!