From: Alex Chaffee <alex@...>
Date: 2012-01-25T05:13:58+09:00
Subject: Re: Web Application from Scratch - like PHP

> I intend to learn Ruby thoroughly before jumping to any Ruby web
> framework. How do I create simple web applications using plain Ruby (and
> a server like WEBrick of course)?

If Rack is too hardcore for you, try Sinatra. Here's the code for
Sinatra's Hello World app:

  require "sinatra"

  get "/hello" do
    "<h1>Hello!</h1>"
  end

Stick that in "hello.rb" and run "ruby hello.rb" and visit
http://localhost:4567/hello to see it in action. And it's easy to
deploy a Sinatra app to Heroku too.

It has support for a fair number of web features like HTML templates
and status codes and such and plenty of docs at
http://www.sinatrarb.com/

Sinatra doesn't do databases on its own, but there's nothing stopping
you from using ActiveRecord or DataMapper or Sequel or even DBI [1] to
access a relational DB inside your requests.

[1] http://ruby-dbi.rubyforge.org/

> I intend to learn Ruby thoroughly before jumping to any Ruby web
> framework.

I applaud your decision! Too many people learn Ruby as an afterthought
to Rails, and pick up lots of misconceptions and bad habits as a
result.

If you need some pointers to online Ruby tutorials, let me recommend:

  http://testfirst.org/ and http://testfirst.org/learn_ruby
  http://rubykoans.com/
  http://rubymonk.com/
  http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/

 - A

-- 
Alex Chaffee - alex@stinky.com
http://alexchaffee.com
http://twitter.com/alexch