Ruby/Ruby on Rails

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Ruby/Ruby on Rails 
Type - Programming Language
Description - An open source web application framework for Ruby, an object-oriented programming language.ROR is used to develop database backed web applications.

Ruby on Rails, often shortened to Rails or RoR, is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language. It is intended to be used with an Agile development methodology which is used by web developers for rapid development.

Ruby on Rails was extracted by David Heinemeier Hansson from his work on Basecamp, a project management tool by 37signals (now a web application company). Heinemeier Hansson first released Rails as open source in July 2004, but did not share commit rights to the project until February 2005. In August 2006 the framework reached a milestone when Apple announced that it would ship Ruby on Rails with Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard",which was released in October 2007.

Ruby On Rails Technical Details

Like many contemporary web frameworks, Rails uses the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture pattern to organize application programming.

Ruby on Rails features several tools intended to make commonplace development tasks easier "out of the box". Rails provides scaffolding which can automatically construct some of the models and views needed for a basic website. A simple ruby web server (WEBrick) and Rake build system are also included. By including these common tools with the Rails framework, a basic development environment is in effect provided with all versions of the software.

Ruby-on-Rails relies on a web server to run it. Mongrel is generally preferred over WEBrick at the time of writing but it can also be run by Lighttpd, Abyss, Apache (either as a module - Passenger for example - or via CGI, FastCGI or mod_ruby), and many others. From 2008 onwards, Thin replaced Mongrel as preferred web server. It is built over Rack and Event Machine, and runs faster than Mongrel.

Rails is also noteworthy for its extensive use of JavaScript libraries Prototype and Script.aculo.us for Ajax. Rails initially utilized lightweight SOAP for web services; this was later replaced by RESTful web services.

Since version 2.0, Ruby on Rails by default offers both HTML and XML as output formats. The latter is the facility for RESTful web services.