Rails 1.1 and RJS Templates for Easily Ajaxifying your Webapp

Well, as you probably know, Ruby on Rails 1.1 has been released.

One of the major new features of 1.1 is the RJS templating language. (hint: it’s really just Ruby!)

RJS is a templating language that allows you to write JavaScript in a native Ruby style.

Some Good RJS Links

Cody Fauser’s Intro to Rails’ RJS
More on RJS and some of its advanced features
Rails JavaScript Generator Methods

Now, here’s an absolute Must-Have RJS Debugging Snippet to drop into your rhtml page when you’re playing around with this stuff:
[ruby]

[/ruby]

(via techno-weenie)

Cross-blogged at sablog.com.

Rail Adds Ajax

Version 1.1 of application development framework Rails went live earlier this week, with more than 500 fixes and additions, including simplified Ajax programming. (See Information Week for more.)

“It makes Web application programming a lot more like desktop GUI [graphical user interface] programming,” said Jeremy Voorhis, lead architect at Planet Argon, a Portland, Ore., services firm that specializes in Ruby on Rails development. Planet Argon has already used RJS on several client projects. Because Rails is an open source project, developers can start working with new features before they make their way into a formal release.

Rails is a two-year-old open source development application used by sites such as Calendar Hub. For more information, visit the Rails Website.

RSS updates via your instant messenger

I thought this new web application immedi.at might be of interest to AJAX Blog readers. It only uses AJAX sparingly but it is written using Rails and offers a unique capability that may be useful to some: the ability to recieve update notices in any instant messaging client when an RSS feed of interest changes.

This is kind of cool for certain things because you don’t have to actively check to see if stuff has been added to certain feeds, they come to you. Like, I use it to monitor comment threads on some blogs as they develop and to get updates when I have new gmail messages.

Holy Grail of PHP?

It was nice to see a very basic overview (with code examples) finally of how you actually implement Ajax in PHP in an end-to-end system.

PEAR’s DB_DataObject is a bit like Ruby on Rails’ ActiveRecord, though DB_DataObject has more of a code generation flavor than Object-Relational Mapping.

InfoWorld Review of Backbase Ajax Framework

Jouk Pleiter points me to the InfoWorld Review of the Backbase Rich Internet App framework.

From the InfoWorld reivew:

This impressive toolkit provides a mature, sophisticated collection of widgets for adding features normally expected in native applications to Web pages. The system uses its own extension of HTML and XML known as BXML, sure to please methodical coders looking for a clear replacement to the cross-browser complexity of modern JavaScript.

Still haven’t played around with their framework yet, but this caught my eye:

Backbase rich clients can be easily combined with Java & J2EE, .NET & ASP.NET, XML, XSLT and XPath. The .NET Server Edition offers drag-and-drop RIA development with Visual Studio.NET. Plug-ins for Eclipse and DreamWeaver are also available. The XML Server Edition can be installed on both Java platforms and on Microsoft Windows (Native .NET Application).

I’ve been playing around with Ajax support in Ruby on Rails. Even though things are drastically simplified, you still have to be somewhat of a JavaScript / app framework maven to really nail an Ajax app like Backpack has done, not to mention Gmail.

So … like, don’t expect to make GMail in a long weekend in your dorm room.

Unless you’re Paul Graham … or write your app in Lisp. In that case, it’ll take a few hours. Just use a few lexical closures and a macro. (* I kid because I love!)

More Links:
ZapNote: Ajax-based rich internet app

A Simpler Ajax Path?

Matthew Eernisse has posted a tutorial titled A Simpler Ajax Path over at OnLamp.com.

While the article is a great resource for people brand new to “Ajax” or the XmlHttpRequest object + server-side magic, I don’t think it’ll be especially useful for building large-scale Ajax applications with tight server-side integration.

I honestly haven’t played too much with Ruby on Rails + Ajax, but from everything I hear, the integration is mindblowing.

David HH on Ajaxing the Rails:

It’s basically no harder to make something Ajaxed than it is not to, which means that the decision is based on whether its a good fit for the user interface — not on whether we have time to another Ajax project.

PHP has some good Ajax frameworks as well, though nothing as earthshatteringly simple as Rails + Ajax … at least for the time being.