4 ms·

Do you have a specific example of something you feel Rails doesn't do? Maybe that way somebody can tell you where in the rails ecosystem that falls.

by collint 16y ago

ashleyreddy 16y ago
Here is an example: User uploads and image to be OCR'ed and the resulting text is to be displayed (in process). Say I have the OCR algorithim (the business) in a c library. In the .Net world I would create a dll from the library, reference it and call the ocr function and display the results. Does RoR have the ability to include external late binding libraries where the "business" can be implemented?
- jdminhbg 16y ago
  Ruby certainly has that ability, and there's nothing particular to Rails that prevents you from doing any Ruby things like that. In the Rails world, actually, you'll find lots of solutions (e.g. delayed_job) for offloading work like that from the web server process on to a dedicated worker queue. But there's no reason you can't just handle it synchronously either.
- xentronium 16y ago
  dll -- RubyMono / RubyCLR -- not very ruby way to do it. A better one is to build a gem with c bindings (RMagick has bindings for all the ImageMagick functions right away).
- chris_vannoy 16y ago
  With Ruby, anything you can call from the command line can work via system() (http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Kernel.html#M005971 http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Kernel.html#M005971). Alternatively, you can wrap into a gem with a C extension and call it with all the Ruby goodness you should expect (recommended route). Pseudo-code (wordier than it need be): class MyModel def self.ocr(file) result = system("my_ocr_prog", file.path) return result end end A good example of a gem with a C extension might be RMagick (http://github.com/rmagick/rmagick/tree/master/ext/RMagick/ http://github.com/rmagick/rmagick/tree/master/ext/RMagick/)
- texel 16y ago
  You could certainly do this in-process, either shelling out or by creating a gem that calls your C library. Additionally, if you're fronting your app with a server like nginx, you could use something akin to http://www.grid.net.ru/nginx/upload.en.html http://www.grid.net.ru/nginx/upload.en.html, so you wouldn't have to buffer the entire image into your Rails process.
- bradleyland 16y ago
  You've got two options for integrating C code in any Ruby application: RubyInline and Ruby C extensions. RubyInline is incredibly powerful. You can drop C straight in to your Ruby scripts for operations that would be too computationally intensive for Ruby. Ruby C extensions are more powerful, as they allow you to call C code from within Ruby. However, it does require some alteration to the C code, so this won't do if you have a closed source C library. As others have suggested, there are ways to make system calls from within Ruby, and with the way things work on Unix systems, that's a perfectly acceptable alternative. Also, to address your question more generally, there's nothing that says you must constrain all your code to the confines of MVC logic. Gems are packages of Ruby code. If you find that you need a set of objects to handle complex business requirements, you could always package up that code as a Gem for use and distribution within your company. Gems are very easy to build and include in your projects, so the barrier of entry is very low. I've been working with Rails since version 0.7. I've seen a lot of developers convince themselves that their problem doesn't fit in to the Rails box. While I always advocate using the right tool for the job, most people are wrong when they reach the belief that what they're doing isn't a good fit for Rails. It's usually an inability to understand where their ideas fit in to the broad scope of the MVC design pattern. Having said that, there are plenty of ideas that don't fit Ruby on Rails, or MVC for that matter. Twitter was a great example. You don't implement a ultra-high-volume, low-package-size messaging system using an off-the-shelf MVC framework. Very few problems are Twitter, however. Most business problems are 90% CRUD with a sprinkles of interesting work in between. Rails is a great fit for these types of projects because the "magic" peels away gracefully when you need it to. There is another aspect of Rails that doesn't get much lip service. Rails is great because it makes a lot of decisions for you. The developers call this being "opinionated software". Maybe I'm just a little too humble, but a lot of the guys that work on Rails are bigger thinkers than I am when it comes to software frameworks. A lot of people won't admit it, but there is plenty of software that tries to copy the Rails way of doing things. That's at least some level of acknowledgement that they're things right. What I'm getting at is that there is a lot to learn from digging in to Rails on a deeper level. The "Rails way" also extends beyond actual development and in to deployment strategies. Before we moved to Rails, we didn't have a sound deployment strategy. Rails developers just assume that you're going to use some type of SCM and deployment strategy. The most common being Rails/Git/Capistrano. If you say on the beaten path, there is a tremendous wealth of information available for all manner of deployment strategies. Again, these solutions fork for 99% of use cases. If you're a one-percenter, you're not going to benefit much from Rails, but make sure you've qualified your case and not just suffering from a case of "I'm smarter than the world." That wraps up my thoughts on the matter. I'm sure there are other perspectives out there.
mistermann 16y ago
How about some "complex" validation....lets say (just for example) you try to change the STATUS of an employee....if there are all sorts of business rules that have to be run through to validate whether it is valid to set the status to this new value....how & where in the rails framework would one write this code?

Do you have a specific example of something you feel Rails doesn't do? Maybe that way somebody can tell you where in the rails ecosystem that falls.

by collint 16y ago

Do you have a specific example of something you feel Rails doesn't do? Maybe that way somebody can tell you where in the rails ecosystem that falls.

ashleyreddy 16y ago

Here is an example: User uploads and image to be OCR'ed and the resulting text is to be displayed (in process). Say I have the OCR algorithim (the business) in a c library. In the .Net world I would create a dll from the library, reference it and call the ocr function and display the results. Does RoR have the ability to include external late binding libraries where the "business" can be implemented?

jdminhbg 16y ago
Ruby certainly has that ability, and there's nothing particular to Rails that prevents you from doing any Ruby things like that. In the Rails world, actually, you'll find lots of solutions (e.g. delayed_job) for offloading work like that from the web server process on to a dedicated worker queue. But there's no reason you can't just handle it synchronously either.
xentronium 16y ago
dll -- RubyMono / RubyCLR -- not very ruby way to do it. A better one is to build a gem with c bindings (RMagick has bindings for all the ImageMagick functions right away).
chris_vannoy 16y ago
With Ruby, anything you can call from the command line can work via system() (http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Kernel.html#M005971 http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Kernel.html#M005971). Alternatively, you can wrap into a gem with a C extension and call it with all the Ruby goodness you should expect (recommended route). Pseudo-code (wordier than it need be): class MyModel def self.ocr(file) result = system("my_ocr_prog", file.path) return result end end A good example of a gem with a C extension might be RMagick (http://github.com/rmagick/rmagick/tree/master/ext/RMagick/ http://github.com/rmagick/rmagick/tree/master/ext/RMagick/)
texel 16y ago
You could certainly do this in-process, either shelling out or by creating a gem that calls your C library. Additionally, if you're fronting your app with a server like nginx, you could use something akin to http://www.grid.net.ru/nginx/upload.en.html http://www.grid.net.ru/nginx/upload.en.html, so you wouldn't have to buffer the entire image into your Rails process.
bradleyland 16y ago
You've got two options for integrating C code in any Ruby application: RubyInline and Ruby C extensions. RubyInline is incredibly powerful. You can drop C straight in to your Ruby scripts for operations that would be too computationally intensive for Ruby. Ruby C extensions are more powerful, as they allow you to call C code from within Ruby. However, it does require some alteration to the C code, so this won't do if you have a closed source C library. As others have suggested, there are ways to make system calls from within Ruby, and with the way things work on Unix systems, that's a perfectly acceptable alternative. Also, to address your question more generally, there's nothing that says you must constrain all your code to the confines of MVC logic. Gems are packages of Ruby code. If you find that you need a set of objects to handle complex business requirements, you could always package up that code as a Gem for use and distribution within your company. Gems are very easy to build and include in your projects, so the barrier of entry is very low. I've been working with Rails since version 0.7. I've seen a lot of developers convince themselves that their problem doesn't fit in to the Rails box. While I always advocate using the right tool for the job, most people are wrong when they reach the belief that what they're doing isn't a good fit for Rails. It's usually an inability to understand where their ideas fit in to the broad scope of the MVC design pattern. Having said that, there are plenty of ideas that don't fit Ruby on Rails, or MVC for that matter. Twitter was a great example. You don't implement a ultra-high-volume, low-package-size messaging system using an off-the-shelf MVC framework. Very few problems are Twitter, however. Most business problems are 90% CRUD with a sprinkles of interesting work in between. Rails is a great fit for these types of projects because the "magic" peels away gracefully when you need it to. There is another aspect of Rails that doesn't get much lip service. Rails is great because it makes a lot of decisions for you. The developers call this being "opinionated software". Maybe I'm just a little too humble, but a lot of the guys that work on Rails are bigger thinkers than I am when it comes to software frameworks. A lot of people won't admit it, but there is plenty of software that tries to copy the Rails way of doing things. That's at least some level of acknowledgement that they're things right. What I'm getting at is that there is a lot to learn from digging in to Rails on a deeper level. The "Rails way" also extends beyond actual development and in to deployment strategies. Before we moved to Rails, we didn't have a sound deployment strategy. Rails developers just assume that you're going to use some type of SCM and deployment strategy. The most common being Rails/Git/Capistrano. If you say on the beaten path, there is a tremendous wealth of information available for all manner of deployment strategies. Again, these solutions fork for 99% of use cases. If you're a one-percenter, you're not going to benefit much from Rails, but make sure you've qualified your case and not just suffering from a case of "I'm smarter than the world." That wraps up my thoughts on the matter. I'm sure there are other perspectives out there.

mistermann 16y ago

How about some "complex" validation....lets say (just for example) you try to change the STATUS of an employee....if there are all sorts of business rules that have to be run through to validate whether it is valid to set the status to this new value....how & where in the rails framework would one write this code?