3 ms·

Finally something that explains Rails architecture.

30 points by digamber_kamat 17y ago

delano 17y ago
The HN convention for older articles is to append the title with the year. Finally something that explains Rails architecture [2007]
mileszs 17y ago
Finally? This was posted in September of 2007. You can see the section under "The Rails Way" used in a large number of plugins and gems, as well. The pattern is no secret. That said, it is a nice article. It's just not new. There's been a fairly large refactoring/re-architecting for Rails 3, including, unless I'm mistaken, avoiding alias_method_chain. (I want to say that this whole pattern or ruby-ism is now being avoided in Rails proper, but that would only be hearsay based on something I think I read many months ago. ... Yehuda?)
- dasil003 17y ago
  There's been a fairly large refactoring/re-architecting for Rails 3, including, unless I'm mistaken, avoiding alias_method_chain. This is correct, and is a significant understatement. Rails 3 internals are on the order of a complete rewrite at the architectural level. The OA is only of interest for historical reasons at this point.
zppx 17y ago
I mastered a little about Rails internals by looking at the source code (of the framework), changing some methods (and entire classes) sometimes and by reading the development mailing list, I recommend the same way of learning for everyone working with Rails. Anyway, it would be nice to have an article describing the changes Rails 3 will bring to this architecture.
jcapote 17y ago
It's a good article, but it's pain points haven't been valid for a long time. Also I believe rails 3 relies less on alias chaining and more on rack middleware.
- epochwolf 17y ago
  I've been knee deep in the source of Rails 3 since I'm developing against it and the available document outside the source itself is ported from Rails 2 and often incorrect. The source for Rails 3 is refreshingly clean and free of alias chains. ActiveRecord is the exception, it still has quite a few of them in there.

The HN convention for older articles is to append the title with the year. Finally something that explains Rails architecture [2007]

mileszs 17y ago

Finally? This was posted in September of 2007. You can see the section under "The Rails Way" used in a large number of plugins and gems, as well. The pattern is no secret. That said, it is a nice article. It's just not new. There's been a fairly large refactoring/re-architecting for Rails 3, including, unless I'm mistaken, avoiding alias_method_chain. (I want to say that this whole pattern or ruby-ism is now being avoided in Rails proper, but that would only be hearsay based on something I think I read many months ago. ... Yehuda?)

dasil003 17y ago
There's been a fairly large refactoring/re-architecting for Rails 3, including, unless I'm mistaken, avoiding alias_method_chain. This is correct, and is a significant understatement. Rails 3 internals are on the order of a complete rewrite at the architectural level. The OA is only of interest for historical reasons at this point.

zppx 17y ago

I mastered a little about Rails internals by looking at the source code (of the framework), changing some methods (and entire classes) sometimes and by reading the development mailing list, I recommend the same way of learning for everyone working with Rails. Anyway, it would be nice to have an article describing the changes Rails 3 will bring to this architecture.

jcapote 17y ago

It's a good article, but it's pain points haven't been valid for a long time. Also I believe rails 3 relies less on alias chaining and more on rack middleware.

epochwolf 17y ago
I've been knee deep in the source of Rails 3 since I'm developing against it and the available document outside the source itself is ported from Rails 2 and often incorrect. The source for Rails 3 is refreshingly clean and free of alias chains. ActiveRecord is the exception, it still has quite a few of them in there.