Rails 1.1: "the Biggest Upgrade in Rails History"

The New Version Features Four Major Improvements and Hundreds of Not-So-Major Ones

JavaScriptSearch
Tuesday, March 28, 2006; 01:25 AM

The trendy open source web application framework Ruby on Rails just got upgraded.  Version 1.1 boasts over 500 improvements, contributed by more than 100 developers.  According to the official release announcement, the new version is "a little smoother, a little rounder, and a little more joyful."

The most important improvements are predictably in the direction of AJAX and web services.  Four "blockbuster features" will improve on the programming experience.

The first is JavasScriptGenerator (RJS) templates.  The templates create instructions on how to modify an already rendered page.  They make it easier to modify multiple elements on a page with a single AJAX response. Actions with these templates are called in the background with AJAX and make updates to the page where the request originated from.  RJS allows for flexibility and even simpler code expessions in Rails.

Another upgrade is adding new features to Active Record - the Rails' approach to reading data from a database.  From the release: "Active Record has been blessed with bottomless eager loading, polymorphic associations, join models, to_xml, calculations, and database adapters for Sybase and OpenBase."  In short, these improvements make it easier to operate with database data, which is the backbone of every web applications these days.

The third major feature in Rails 1.1. is adding new functionality to the Action Controller, which in turn allows the programmer to create application programming interfaces with ease.

The final "blockbuster feature" is the integration of third layer of testing to Rails: Integration tests. They allow the simulation of users accessing multiple controllers and even gives the developer the power to simulate multiple concurrent users.

Ruby on Rails was first released in July 2004.  The philosophy of Rails is striving for simplicity and development of high-quality applications with fewer lines of code.  It is now a popular framework with a significant following.