What is a Rails App

Jallen Messersmith
Nov 5 · 2 min read
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_on_Rails

So if you are anything like me, you have just learned the basics of Ruby and are ready to take the next step. You created a CLI app, but you want to get something on the web. You hear some chanting in the distance and start to clearly hear what is being said.

“RAILS RAILS RAILS!”

What the heck is Rails?

According to Wikipedia.com, “Rails is a model–view–controller (MVC) framework, providing default structures for a database, a web service, and web pages.” You are probably thinking, “Ok cool Jallen, you can copy and paste something from the internet, but what does that actually mean?” Well, let’s break it down.

Typical MVC Route Pattern

So rails apps are built using 3 structures at its base, a model, a view, and a controller. When you start to think about your app, you need to decide what your models are going to be. A model maps to a table in a database and to a Ruby file. Next, each model requires a controller. A controller is what will respond to the route request made by the user to the correct view page, while also processing any information submitted to the application through the URL or a form. The controller may also have to query one or more models for information and pass these on to the view. The final piece of the puzzle is the view. The view page is an erb file that holds all of the HTML data that will get sent to the user and parsed by the browser.

OK, that's cool and stuff, but what can that create?

What a great question! Rails makes it very easy to create the basic framework and structure of a website. With rails, you can call the below code, and with it, have the base structure of a website built out for you.

rails new webapp

Some of the world's largest and most popular web apps were build using the Rails framework. Some of these websites include Airbnb, GitHub, Scribd, Shopify, Hulu, and Basecamp.

Now that you know about rails and what it can do, what will you create? The possibilities are endless!

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