Web Applications in Ruby Language

Ruby has established itself as a versatile and dynamic programming language, and its applications extend far be

yond just scripting and automation. One of its most prominent use cases is in web development. In this post, we’ll delve into the realm of web applications in the Ruby language, and we’ll provide examples of how Ruby can be used to create powerful and elegant web solutions.

Ruby on Rails: The Powerhouse of Ruby Web Development

When we talk about web development in Ruby, we can’t skip over Ruby on Rails, commonly known as Rails. Rails is a robust and highly popular web application framework that simplifies the process of building web applications. It follows the principle of convention over configuration, making it easy for developers to create web apps with minimal effort.

Example: Here’s a simple Ruby on Rails code snippet for creating a basic “To-Do List” web application:

# app/controllers/tasks_controller.rb
class TasksController < ApplicationController
  def index
    @tasks = Task.all
  end

  def create
    @task = Task.new(task_params)
    if @task.save
      redirect_to tasks_path
    else
      render 'new'
    end
  end

  private
  def task_params
    params.require(:task).permit(:title, :description)
  end
end

Sinatra: A Lightweight Alternative

While Ruby on Rails is a robust framework for building complex web applications, Sinatra is a lightweight alternative that’s perfect for smaller projects and microservices. It provides a minimalistic structure that lets you create web applications quickly and easily.

Example: A simple Sinatra application for displaying a “Hello, World!” message:

require 'sinatra'

get '/' do
  'Hello, World!'
end

Building APIs with Grape

If you’re more interested in creating APIs, Ruby offers the Grape gem. Grape is a REST-like API micro-framework for Ruby. It makes building APIs a breeze and is well-suited for serving data to mobile apps, web applications, and more.

Example: Creating a basic API endpoint for fetching a list of products using Grape:

require 'grape'

class ProductAPI < Grape::API
  version 'v1', using: :path
  format :json

  resource :products do
    get do
      Product.all
    end
  end
end

Web Scraping with Nokogiri

Ruby is not only about building web applications but also about interacting with and extracting data from the web. The Nokogiri gem is a popular choice for web scraping in Ruby. It allows you to parse and manipulate HTML and XML documents with ease.

Example: A simple Ruby script to scrape and extract data from a web page using Nokogiri:

require 'nokogiri'
require 'open-uri'

url = 'https://example.com'
doc = Nokogiri::HTML(open(url))

# Extract data
title = doc.at_css('title').text
puts "Title: #{title}"