A common query:
I have cPanel and have tried to get into Ruby. I have been developing PHP applications for about three years now and have become ready to try my hands at another language for application design.
Can someone explain how to start making very simple Ruby web applications from a PHP designer perspective (raw coding and running .php files from the browser)?
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Hi, you’ll want to work in a framework. The most popular is Ruby on Rails, but Merb is also known to be a very good framework. In fact, Rails 3 is going to be the conjunction of Rails and Merb, and is currently being developed by both teams.
A great place to get started with Rails would be the book Agile Web Development With Rails, which is aimed specifically at people with web dev experience, basically showing them how to do the things they know with Rails. It starts out for the first 200 pages or so with a walkthrough for a shopping cart application, then breaks down into a fairly thorough explanation of topics.
http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Web-Development-Rails-Third/dp/1934356166/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255755103&sr=8-1
Once you get the basics down (mostly understanding of the conventions), then you will probably like http://guides.rubyonrails.org/ which I found to be an extremely good resource, and learned a lot from. Also, there is a series of screencasts called Railscasts which are very helpful in learning Rails, they tend to be 5-15 minutes long, a new one comes out every week, and usually tackle some common issue that Rails devs will encounter. Definately worth checking out http://railscasts.com/
If you’d like to touch on Merb instead of Rails, I don’t know a whole lot about it, except that it is supposed to be faster, more light weight, and more modular, and has influenced Rails developers quite a bit. I think the markup language HAML was initially created by Merb devs (you should take the time to learn it, after you get a little Ruby experience under your belt, you’ll pick it up in about 20 minutes, and probably find it to be an elegant and delightful replacement for html based files) http://merbivore.com/
Rails and Merb aren’t the only Ruby web frameworks, though. Another framework that I have been hearing a lot about (and am planning to play with soon) is called Sinatra. My understanding is that it is a very simple very straightforward super light framework. We might end up using it to host the API for a project we are working on at my work. http://www.sinatrarb.com/
In fact, looking at the Sinatra page there, you can see they create a 1 page "hello world" web app in 5 lines. Just to see if it is really that simple (Rails generates something like 30 files, a whole directory structure, before you even begin your project — that is not a criticism, just an observation of the difference) I sat down just now and tried it out, and it worked. Granted that setup might have been simpler for me, already having Rails up and running and working correctly. But I uploaded a screenshot, anyway, it shows me installing Sinatra, creating the file, displaying contents of the file, serving it, then in Firefox going to the served page. http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/6096/sinatra.png
There is also a peepcode on Sinatra https://peepcode.com/products/sinatra I haven’t watched it yet, though (it’s on my todo list).
And lastly, ruby-toolbox.com is a nice place to look and see what other developers are doing in approaching different situations. It has 7 frameworks listed, some stats on their popularity, and links for documentation, homepages, how to install, and news articles about them.
http://ruby-toolbox.com/categories/web_app_frameworks.html