From: Taku Nakajima <tnakajima@...>
Date: 2003-01-03T16:21:11+09:00
Subject: Re: State of Ruby Web Application Frameworks


> One of the reasons that I wasn't able to use Ruby on the previous project
> is that I could not find a Web application framework that provided nearly
> as much as the JSP/Servlets/Struts combination that we used for the Java
> project.  I'm wondering if this state of affairs has improved at all.  I
> searched on the RubyGarden wiki for some information, and although I found
> some good discussions for improvement of the CGI library as well as some
> talk of frameworks built on top of it, I didn't see anything that led me
> to believe that any action has been taken towards these things.

I'm a developer of a WEB-related library, named 'amrita' and always
investigate many libraries of this domain. I agree with you that there
are no mature framework for WEB application in Ruby at now.

But there are many seeds of it. I'm running a mailing list that
targets to some of them and very near domain you are concerned
with. For detail see

  http://www.walrus-ruby.org/amrita/cgi-bin/aswiki/aswiki.cgi?c=v;p=AmritaUsers

> Specifically, what I'm looking for is a Ruby Webapp framework that:
> 
>     * Provides separation of content and presentation, preferrably
> following the MVC model
> 
>     * Works on all or most popular Web servers
> 
>     * Allows request URLs to be mapped to arbitrary Ruby code via some
> configuration file or naming convention
> 
>     * Has good support for sessions
> 
>     * Supports a template-based approach, through which I could combine
> several files together to render a view
> 
> Other features that would be nice to have are good error handling support,
> support for unit testing, and some equivalent of JSP custom tags.
> 
> In short, I'm looking for the Ruby equivalent of JSP/Servlet/Struts.

amrita, misen, XTemplate are template libraries for separating content
from presentation or Model from View.

CGIKit is a unique framework for CGI applications which has a very
similar model to WebObject.

They all are subjects of amrita-users mailing list. And this list is
growing.

> I understand that there may not be a single package that provides all of
> these features, but I'm hoping someone here can recommend a combination of
> solutions that works well for the type of Web development implied by the
> above.

I think no single framework wins especially in Ruby because the
language is such flexible that you can make your own framework easily
if enough parts are provided.

I hope amrita-users mailing list helps you for searching for parts and
developing your framework from them.

--
Taku Nakajima
http://www.walrus-ruby.org/amrita/