RubyGems is a package manager for Ruby software. It allows you to create and distribute your Ruby packages or libraries. This week I’m covering one of most popular RubyGems, Rails.
To setup Rails in your project, you need to have Ruby 1.9.3+ and RubyGems installed. Once you have met those requirements, you can run the following gem command in your terminal or console windows:
$ gem install rails
To verify that your installation was successful, type “$ rails –version”. It should display the word rails along with the version number. It is that simple.
What is Rails?
Rails is an open source web framework. It was originally created by David Heinemeier Hansson. It is a model view controller framework written in the Ruby language. Some of the companies using Ruby on Rails are: NASA, Amazon, YellowPages.com, Groupon, MadeWithEnvy, Heroku, Basecamp.
So what is different about Rails in comparison to other web frameworks? In my opinion, Rails allows you to build web applications faster because there is less configuration to perform. The frameworks also provides a default project structure. I don’t have to think where to place my models, views, controllers. By default, the framework handles those details for me.
To get started with Rails, I recommend the following resources:
1. The official Rails guide – http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html
2. The Rails tutorial by Michael Hartl – https://www.railstutorial.org
3. Book – Agile Web Development with Rails 4
If you want to learn more about the latest developments with Rails, visit the github page at https://github.com/rails/rails. Rails is one of the most popular projects in github with more than 9441 forks, 24492 stars, and hundred of contributors.
I hope you find this brief introduction to Rails beneficial. See you soon.