Changes in Rails 4 and what impacts will it have

The release of Rails 4 has been much anticipated with nearly 1 year spent on the development. Architecturally, there are no major changes; nevertheless there are quite a number of changes in the overall system. There is a modular format in the evolving of the framework with the main focus being keeping the main codebase lean as well as effective. In fact, many features have been pushed into separate gems and for deprecated features all official support has been removed. However, if a developer really needs to use them then they can do that without too much trouble.

Minimum Ruby 1.9.3- This is considered as the biggest change that has been brought in this framework. With minimum ruby 1.9.3 needed, 1.8.7 has become completely obsolete. Previously there was no issue as such about the versions but with this renewed requirement it has become necessary to upgrade everything. This might seem to be challenging but nothing can be far from the truth. RVM makes the upgrading process really simple. So there is nothing but benefits to reap- a smooth transformation with the features of the improved as well as upgraded version.

Turbolink- The turbolink concept is often marked as controversial since due to it, normal HTTP links are not generated by Rails and everything is done with JavaScript. The serving of the original page will be done normally; however, other links clicked afterwards will result in all markup being deleted, replaced with HTTP reply’s markup and then the displayed URL will be updated. It might seem complicated, but since browsers do not have to go through requests for checking the changes of Javascript and CSS files, the method is really fast. Just a single request has to be focused on, without any attention needed to be given to additional requests.

ActiveRecord::SessionStore- When we use cookies to store sensitive information it might lead to problems and breach of security later on. Thus, to eliminate that problem ActiveRecord::SessionStore feature has been abolished. But if you do want to store sessions in database all you have to do is take help of activerecord-session_store gem and this functionality can be brought to use.

ActiveRecord::QueryMethods.none- This is a newly introduced function that helps implement the null object pattern. This is perfect for those conditions where there is a method that returns some relation but a condition requires the database to not being queried. This will help in smooth working of all chained conditions without much of an issue which helps eliminate the requirement of constant checking of the object for a relation.

Thread-safe- This feature has been incorporated as a default feature. This helps in good performance of threaded HTTP servers in case the same Ruby process is handling multiple requests. For the characteristic Rails application, it may not mean much but it does ensure that the used gems are thread safe; also the application code will keep the state to itself. In case the same variable is accessed by another thread, this will ensure that the normal results like crashes and other disastrous circumstances are avoided. It also helps avoid data corruption.

Streaming through ActionController::Live- Through Rails, streaming can be conducted. Through HTTP streaming the response is doled to some request over a period of time instead of everything at the same time. In case of media like video streaming, this is often used. Simply including ActionController:Live module can help use streaming. Response.steam.write can be used for writing of data or text to stream. This addition may be small but a lot of possibilities are opened by this.

There are several other additions as well as subtractions and the aim of all these is to make the framework more functional and user-friendly. In all, it is quite easy to implement the new architecture so that maximum advantages can be enjoyed but with the least problems. You can get in touch with a ruby software development company, who can help you develop web apps that are stable, scalable and secure.

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