Future of Ruby on Rails as a Programming Language

A number of recent reports have highlighted how Ruby on Rails (RoR) is being adopted widely by both established companies and startups across various sectors. Many reports have even indicated that Rails will be used widely for mobile application development. The most recent information clearly indicates a steady and consistent increase in the popularity of RoR as an open source and full stack internet application development.

The framework written in Ruby also supports several widely used software development architectures and patterns including model–view–controller (MVC), active record pattern, don't repeat yourself (DRY) and convention over configuration (CoC). So Rails makes it easier for programmers to create robust internet applications that complement the most recent trends in web development.

Why the Future of Ruby on Rails is Extremely Bright?

Full Stack

Unlike other popular web technologies, RoR is a full stack web development framework. So it can be used to cover the font-end as well as the back end. A web programmer can use Rails to create an entire internet application without relying on any other developers. Any developer familiar with HTML, JavaScript and CSS can start using RoR. Thus, the enterprises can easily hire Rails developers for their project.

Usable for Creating a Wide Range of Internet Applications

At present, Ruby is used by businesses belonging to different sectors to create internet applications and online portals. Along with allowing users to tweak or change the applications in a flexible way, Ruby also enables them to test the application quickly and efficiently. Further, businesses can use the programming language to update their internet applications by adding new features. In comparison to other web technologies, Ruby can better effectuate the development, testing and deployment of applications without requiring any extra time and efforts.

Option to Customize Internet Applications

Often programmers have to customize the look and feel of an internet app according to client’s specific requirements. Unlike other technologies, RoR enables developers to easily create their own building blocks, and add plug-and-play functionality to the application. The developers also have option to reuse the elements of their current project for future projects. So they can easily extend the performance and usage of the app without developing building blocks from the scratch.

Saves Time and Money

Many enterprises, nowadays, opt for open source technologies to curtail project costs. Along with being open source, RoR also enables developers to cut significant chunks out of internet app development project. At the same time, the framework also makes it easier for programmers to complete coding within a reduced span of time. Thus, a business can rapidly move from planning stage to development stage. Many startups and emerging companies rely on Rails to save both development time and cost.

Facilitates Software Updates

As RoR supports MVC architecture, it becomes easier for programmers to keep the model separate from view and controllers. They can simply create models using a wide range of objects, and modify the models to change the web application’s look and feel. Once the modifications are done, the models can be saved in the database and reused with different server side code. Rails further make it easier for database developers to create optimized SQL queries, while preventing SQL injection and XSS attacks. Thus, RoR is popular among businesses that require the web applications and online portals to be updated at regular intervals.

Support of a Large and Active Community

Like other open source technologies, Rails is also supported by a large and active community of developers. The community further contributes hugely towards increasing the adoptability of the framework. Along with improving Rails code consistently, the developers also help other programmers in completing their projects. So the novice Ruby developers can avail the assistance of the community to get software libraries to simplify certain tasks and to fix certain issues.

The web programmers can further use the most recent version of Ruby on Rails to avail several new and enhanced features. For instance, the latest version of Rails 4.1 allows them to avail new features like variants, spring, enums, mailer previews, and secrets.yml. You can get in touch with a ruby on rails development company, who can help you develop web apps that are stable, scalable and secure.

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What Differentiates ROR 4 from ROR 3?

As an open source full-stack framework, Ruby on Rails (RoR) is widely used by developers across the worlds to rapidly develop web application. Along with featuring an independent routing system, RoR also supports popular software engineering patterns like model-view-controller (MVC), don't repeat yourself (DRY) and convention over configuration (CoC). The developers also have option to choose from different versions of the Ruby programming language based web application development platforms, including RoR 3 and RoR 4. If you are yet to migrate to the most recent version of Ruby on Rails, it is important to understand some of the features that differentia these two versions.

Some Major Features that Differentiate RoR 4 from RoR 3

Changed Mass Assignment Mechanism

The RoR 4 comes with completely revamped mass assignment mechanisms. The mechanism can still be used to feed unfiltered params to the model by putting into a gem. However, the hashes need to be generated by using the require and permit methods on the param hash. The model will also support the hashes generated in a new way. The change makes it easier for programmers to separate model from the user interface. They can simply state the attributes to be updated explicitly to eliminate mass assignment security risk.

Turbolink

The fourth release of Ruby on Rails generates normal HTTP links using JavaScript. While serving the web page initially, it generates normal links. But when a user clicks on a link, it deleted all markups and updates the URL displayed in the address bar with the markup generated from the HTTP reply. The feature makes it easier for developers to increase the speed of their web applications. As the browser is not required to check the changes in CSS and JavaScript files, no additional requests are sent to the server. A single request from the browser can generate and deliver the results more efficiently.

Default Thread Safety

By default, RoR 4 is designed as a thread-safe development framework. So the same Ruby process can now quickly process multiple requests on threaded HTTP servers. However, the feature does not make all gems used by the application thread-safe. Also, the application code cannot maintain its states automatically. So the programmers need to ensure that individual gems are thread safe to avoid problems when the application code interacts with any global variables or class variables. The feature must be used carefully to avoid data corruption and application crashes.

Live Streaming

The most recent version of Rails also supports live HTTP streaming. The HTTP streaming feature can be used by web application developers to doll out response to a user request over a time. So the user requests are not required to be responded at once. During the streaming process, RoR will simultaneously produce output, wait for new data generation, and continue streaming new output after waiting for a specific amount of time. The feature can be used by programmers to optimize the performance of RoR applications that use streaming videos and media.

Improved Cookies Serialize

RoR 4.1 also serialized cookies in a completely different way to make the web applications more secure and stable. Earlier, the objects placed inside cookies Hash were being serialized and deserialized by RoR programmers through Marshal.dump and Marshal.load. The method was prone to the risk of remote code execution by attackers. The most recent version of RoR comes with an improved JSON serializer that supports simple JSON data types like string and integer. Thus, the complex objects that can be used by attackers cannot be generated. The programmers also have option to use a hybrid serializer to smoothly convert their existing marshalled cookies into JSON cookies.

The fourth release of Ruby on Rails intends to keep the primary codebase lean by pushing several features of RoR 3 into separate gems. At the same time, RoR 4 has evolved as a more modular web application development framework with major changes in its internal architecture. You can get in touch with a ruby on rails development company who can help you develop web apps that are stable, scalable and secure.

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