Ruby on Rails, or RoR, is an open-source platform. The framework, built on Ruby, works as an intuitive environment for the rapid development of reliable and high-performance web pages. RoR was released by David Heinemeier Hansson in July 2004.

Rails was not just an improved version of Ruby. Its appearance was called a revolution in the world of programming. Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media said, “Ruby on Rails is a breakthrough in lowering the barriers to entry into programming. Powerful web applications that used to take weeks or months to develop can now be created in a matter of days.”

In 2007, Mac OS X v.10.5 (also known as Leopard) was released with built-in support for RoR. This led to a surge in popularity among developer communities around the world and the emergence of a multitude of applications running on Rails.

Goals and principles of Ruby on Rails

The main principles of RoR:

• Conventions Over Configurations — a principle of web application development that aims to reduce the time and effort required by programmers.
• Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) — a principle that reduces the repetition of information in the system. Each component must have a clear and relevant connection to the rest of the system. DRY aims to reduce code repetition. This makes it easy to make changes to it at each development cycle.
• Keep it simple, stupid (KISS) — projects and systems should be as simple as possible.
• You aren’t gonna need it (YAGNI) — programmers should only implement necessary functions.
• The single-responsibility principle — a class should serve a single purpose. The phrase “every class should have a single reason to change” is often heard in the community.
• The dependency inversion principle — high-level modules should not depend on low-level modules. High-level and low-level modules depend on abstractions.

Ruby is one of the best options if:

• you need to develop a web application in a short time frame;
• you have a limited budget (RoR is open source and can be used for free);
• you need to process complex logic.

Main components

The framework follows basic design principles, making it one of the best options for clients and web application developers.

Model-View-Controller (MVC). The model contains code that works with application data. Every command must pass through this level. This is where modification definitions are recorded — data retrieval, creation, updating, and deletion. The view acts as a visual level. It determines how the user interacts with the application and how the data is displayed. The controller manages models and views. It receives user commands, works with models to process them, and instructs the view to display them correctly.

The Active Record Pattern is an important component of the Ruby on Rails environment. It is needed for data that requires permanent storage in the database. ARP represents models and their data, inter-model associations, validates models, and performs operations.