Ruby on Rails Introduction
Ruby on Rails is a server-side web application development framework written in Ruby language by David Heinemeier Hansson. It allows you to write less code than other languages and frameworks. It includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to MVC pattern.
It is opinionated software. There are two major guiding principles:
- Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY): DRY is a principle of software development which states that “Every piece of knowledge must have an authoritative, unambiguous, single representation within a system. If same piece of code will not repeat again and again, code will be more maintainable, extensible and less buggy.
- Convention Over Configuration (CoC): It provides different opinions for the best way to do many things in a web application.
Ruby on Rails History
Ruby on Rails creation
Ruby on Rails was created by David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH). He was working at 37signals (now Basecamp) company to create a project management application in Ruby. To help speed along the process, he created a custom web framework Ruby on Rails. It is also called Rails.
Ruby on Rails release
He first released it as open source in July 2004 but did not share the commit rights until February 2005. In August 2006, the Apple company announced that it would ship Ruby on Rails with Mac OS X v10.5 “Leopard”.
In March 15, 2009, Rails version 2.3 was released. It included major new developments in templates, engines, Rack and nested model forms.
In December 23, 2008, Merb, another web application framework was launched. Rails announced that it would work with the Merb project to the best ideas of Merb into Rails 3. It ended the unnecessary duplication of codes in both the frameworks.
Ruby on Rails in present
Rails 5.0.1 was released on December 21, 2016. It introduced Action cable, Turbolinks 5 and API mode.
Ruby on Rails Versions
| Version | Release Date | Description |
| 1.0 | December 13, 2005 | It has spit and more polished than its earlier release. |
| 1.2 | January 19, 2007 | |
| 2.0 | December 7, 2007 | Semicolon methods were dropped instead of regular slash, namespace feature was added. |
| 2.1 | June 1, 2008 | |
| 2.2 | November 21, 2008 | Includes internationalization framework, better API documents. |
| 2.3 | March 16, 2008 | Developments in Templates, Racks, Engines and Nested Model forms. |
| 3.0 | August 29, 2010 | Everything was made better, cleaner and faster. |
| 3.1 | August 31, 2011 | Features reversible Database migrations, Streaming, Asset Pipeline, JQuery, CoffeeScript and Sass into the satck. |
| 3.2 | January 20, 2012 | Released with a faster development mode and Routing engine, Automatic query explain and Tagged logging. |
| 4.0 | June 25, 2013 | Introduces Russian Doll Caching, LiveStreaming, Turbo links as well as making active resource. |
| 4.1 | April 8, 2014 | Introduces Spring, Variants, Enums, Mailer previews and secrets.yml. |
| 4.2 | August 20, 2014 | Introduces active job, adequate record, web console and foreign keys. |
| 5.0 | December 18, 2015 | Introduces API mode, turbolinks 5 and action cable. |