Concept to Code: Picking the Perfect Gems for your Rails Project

ROR Development is the most promising yet dynamic technology that businesses prefer for their projects, whether a humble startup or a multinational company.

Many leading companies leverage ROR for its rich gem ecosystem, open-source nature, and cost-effectiveness. Ever since ROR was initially released, it has instantly become the favorite framework for web application development. Due to its immense popularity, Ruby on Rails Development Companies have flourished significantly.

However, it’s understandable if you are still wondering what gems are in Ruby on Rails.

In this blog, we are going to dive into the understanding of the ROR gems ecosystem and how it powers your projects.

Let’s Understand What ROR Gems Are

Within the last decade, ROR development practices have significantly reduced maintenance efforts in faster development cycles. In simple words, gems are the core reason behind the easy and rapid development of ROR.

ROR gems are dynamic and support the development of the distinct nature of web applications. A development environment is full of challenges and can never be a linear path. However, Ruby on Rails Development Services is the ideal choice for businesses worldwide to ensure the optimum development code quality in projects.

Besides, even developers love these gems because of their pre-written and reusable code libraries. They streamline development, enhance productivity, and foster collaboration within the Ruby ecosystem. Moreover, gems act as modules or libraries that can be easily installed and used in any project, saving developers time and effort.

Common Development Problem ROR Gems Solve

ROR Gems rectify common challenges in development. The reusable code in gems is used by developers to improve code quality and efficiency. Moreover, developers can streamline multiple functionalities – database integration, handling web requests, all at once. Undoubtedly, these ROR gems are making the application-building process a lot of fun.

1. Code duplication –

   if the developer is writing code from scratch, it will just confuse the developer. They may put a lot of effort into the code, and the possibilities are that these will not contribute any practical value to the project. As the development process is not about writing code, it is about seeing visible results.

   To address this issue, ROR gems come up with pre-packaged solutions for the basic tasks. This way, developers can save a lot of time and effort, and allow them to focus on complex aspects of the application.

2. Code reusability –

   This process involves designing modules, libraries, or components in a way that can be used in various contexts without modifications. The major benefits of code reusability in the development process are: it reduces development time, lowers maintenance costs, and enhances scalability.

   ROR gems’ code reusability allows developers an ease to include the pre-written code module into their projects. Fortunately, reusable or pre-written codes are well tested to maintain code quality that leads to improved consistency.

3. Simplified database integration –

   ROR gems tools are known for handling and simplifying tasks- seamless integration of different databases, quick execution of queries, structured data management, and more. These gem libraries are especially designed to seamlessly interact with various databases such as SQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite.

   One of the popular ROR gems- Active Records is known for ORMs to map database tables and records to Ruby objects. Consequently, developers find ease in working with data, and eventually, this process leads to enhanced data quality and security.

4. Web Request Handling –

   In programming, the most common and primary protocols for web communication are POST, GET, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE. The collection of these elements represents the fundamental action you need to take on resources every time you interact with the server. Generally, ROR gems simplify the process of building web applications because they seamlessly interact with users and external services.

5. Security and Authentication –

   Popular gem ecosystems provide comprehensive application security and user authentication solutions. This can typically offer features like password hashing, session management, and more.

   Breakdown of these features:-

   1. Password Hashing – Particularly in ROR context, gems can competitively provide robust password hashing algorithms for securely storing user passwords. The popular gems, such as bcrypt, argon2, are recommended gems for password hashing. They enable a built-in function that requires a salted key derivation function to encrypt passwords to ensure security.

   2. Session Management – This process maintains a user’s information and interaction across multiple requests to a web application or services. Gems allows applications to remember, keep track of logged-in users, and track user interactions even though HTTP is stateless. It follows the feature cycle: creating, updating, and destroying sessions.

   3. Authentication – Gems are packages full of authentication solutions and features. It allows users to access any specific functionality within the application. This process can include handling username or password validation, multi-factor authentication, and more.

   4. Authorization – some gems such as Pundit, CanCanCan, and Rolify provide frameworks for managing permissions and access control within ROR applications. These popular gems simplify the process of implementing robust authorization logic. These gems can even determine and remember user roles or permissions to specific functionalities or resources.

6. Testing and debugging –

   Gems tools can significantly enhance the debugging processes. They have frameworks that focus on testing components or functions. These tools can be smoothly used in the various types of testing – unit tests, integration tests, and other types of tests, or debugging. With the help of these gems can ultimately improve code quality and can also resolve bugs more efficiently.

7. File storage –

   Gems can facilitate file storage and upload to various cloud services like AWS, S3, Google Cloud Services, and Azure. Popular libraries like fog support a unified interface for interacting with different cloud storage providers. This way, developers can write code that can work with multiple providers without having to change the core logic.

8. Third-party integration –

   Gems can significantly provide third-party integration for ROR applications by including necessary gems in the application’s gemfile. The robust gem ecosystem facilitates developers to leverage functionalities from external services and APIs. These pre-built modules handle the complexities and challenges with specific APIs.

Start Smart With The Gemfile

Till here, we have understood the Gems and how they are used for their different functionalities. So the next question should comes to mind – how do we use these gems in the ROR applications? And the answer is the gemfile- a simple text file that serves as a manifest for your project’s dependencies. The gemfile ensures that everyone working on a Ruby project gets the same gems and versions installed. Besides, if someone deploys any project, they will not face version issues.

Over time, Bundler gained immense popularity in ROR web development. It is next to impossible to manage any large projects effectively without Bundler. This is why gemfile is particularly used with the Bundler package manager for listing, downloading, and installing gem libraries and packages required in the projects.

The structure Bundler includes the following things –

• A source declaration specifying where Bundler should find gems (usually https://rubygems.org).
• Gem declarations listing the gems and their required versions.
• Optional groups such as :development, :test to manage gems specific to certain environments.

This is how a simple gemfile looks like:

The source entry clarifies that the remote repository Bundler reads the Gemfile, finds the gems, and installs them along with their dependencies. Because each gem entry represents a dependency that specifies the library’s name, version to use, and its location.

Till here, it may feel tempting to quickly add these gems into your projects, but this convenience can backfire too if dependencies are not chosen wisely. So, to manage ROR projects effectively, always be cautious about adding dependencies and external libraries.

Categorization of The Gems

Ruby on Rails gems are essentially packaged libraries that work as extended ROR functionalities that you can integrate into ROR applications. There are over 185,000 gems available on RubyGems.org. However, it is not necessary to add all of your choices to your projects. You need to understand the nature and usability of a gem if it aligns with your project requirements.

Although there is no specific way to categorize ROR gems, they can be segregated by their functionality – managing ActiveRecord, handling authentication, debugging, testing, and more. Before committing to a gem, here are some points you can consider to avoid further compatibility issues.

• Always check for maintenance and community trust. If a gem is actively maintained and widely used within the community, it is more likely to be reliable and future-proof.
• Search for comprehensive documentation and evidence; this is how you can determine a high-quality library.
• Verify if the gem has any history of issues, bugs, security vulnerabilities, or any other issues reported by developers on GitHub.

Categorization of Gems

1. ActiveRecord

   Active Record is the foundation that facilitates persistent data storage in a database.

   In a Rails application, configuration is set as default if you configure your application in the same way most of the time. This means developers can define settings in config/application.rb that will be applied across all environments. Explicit configuration is needed in case environment-specific files need to be customized.

   i . ActiveRecord Import – This is the default gem and one of the most popular Object Relational Mapping (ORM) tools of Rails. ActiveRecord Import, with 56.9k stars on GitHub, is popularly leveraged by developers. It works as a bridge between the application’s object-oriented code and the database for smooth interaction. Essentially, it provides an interface for querying, inserting, updating, and deleting data from a database in an object-oriented way, making it easier to manage data persistence.

   ii. Kaminari – It is a Scope & engine-based, clean, powerful, agnostic, customizable, and sophisticated paginator for Rails. Kaminari has an 8.6k-star rating on GitHub and is known for its diverse features. It is a clean and easy-to-use gem that does not pollute Array, Hash, Object, or AR::Base. All you need to just bundle the gem, then your models are ready to be paginated. The Kaminari supports multiple ORMs, web frameworks, and template engines.

   iii. Paranoia – A better and easier, yet powerful solution for “soft deletes” in the Rails applications. Paranoia, with a 2.9k star rating on GitHub, is a popular gem for effortlessly making records invisible or hidden rather than deleting them permanently when using the destroy method. This gem has a bunch of other features as well: Soft deletion, easy data recovery, improved data auditing, easy logic handling and integration, and customization.

   iv. Pagy – Among developers, it is famous as a lightweight and fast pagination library for ROR, even better than other pagination gems. Pagy has a 4.8k-star rating on GitHub, known for its speed and performance, and it works on any environment. It is suitable with any ORM, DB, and gem and supports the most popular frameworks and APIs. Pegy makes faster client-side rendering with classic or innovative UI components and has 100% test coverage for Ruby.

   v. AASM – Over time, it has evolved into a more generic library and is useful for managing state transitions in applications like Rails. AASM(Acts As State Machine) has a 5.1k star rating on GitHub and allows users to define the possible states of an object, which ultimately makes it easy to visualize and manage the different stages of a process. AASM is compatible with most of the ORMs and can be used for Ruby classes without the concern about the parent class it has (if any).

2. View Helper

   View helper simplifies the development code for maximum readability and maintainability. Developers use View Helper to encapsulate the common logic; formatting dates, generating links, or rendering HTML elements, to reduce redundancy in the views.

   i. Draper – It keeps your Ruby code maintainable and simplifies logic in ROR. By introducing a decorator pattern, it helps in improving code maintainability and readability for cleaner and more readable views. Draper has 5.2k stars on GitHub and is popular for its design pattern that allows users to add new behaviors to objects without altering their structure.

   ii. Simple Form – It simplifies the form creation process by providing declarative syntax for generating forms with labels, inputs, and error messages that require minimal coding. Simple Form has an 8.2k-star rating on GitHub. It is flexible and versatile in nature; automatically detects field types, offers various customization options, and handles validations for a seamless experience.

   iii. Slim – It is a template language that aims to provide more concise, cleaner, and maintainable syntax. With Slim, developers can write more compact and readable HTML templates. This gem has a 5.3-star rating on GitHub. Besides, it also supports syntax extensions and plugins, offering flexibility for customization.

3. Debugging

   i. Pry – It is a runtime developer console that makes debugging, exploration, and development easy. This gem offers features like syntax highlighting, code introspection, debugging aids, and more.

   Pry has a 6.8k-star rating on GitHub. It extends its features with runtime invocation, syntax highlighting, code inspection, variable inspection, robust plugin architecture, source code documentation, history management, and more.

   ii. better_errors – It offers a more user-friendly and informative error page for Ruby web applications. The features of the better_errors gem extend with source code inspection, full stack trace of the error, local or variable inspection, REPL, providing links to a source line, and non-HTML requests support. On GitHub, it has a rating of 6.9k.

   iii. letter_opener – It is an email preview for your browser that leads to a quick identification and rectification of the issue in an email. The Letter_opener gem significantly eliminates the need for an SMTP server and has an easy configuration process for speedy development. On GitHub, it has a 3.8k star rating. Developers can test various email functionalities, rendering, layouts, and content, without sending emails to real users.

4. Testing

   i. Capybara – It helps in testing web applications by simulating user interaction and real-world challenges. This gem uses a language that mimics how a user would interact with an app, which makes tests easy to read and write. Additionally, it has BDD (behavior-driven development) framework functionality such as Cucumber. A developer can alternatively switch between different testing backends without altering the tests. On GitHub, it has a 10.1k-star rating.

   ii. Factory bot – It is a Ruby library for creating simplified test fixtures, enhanced automated testing after testing different scenarios. Factory bot supports multiple build strategies and offers the flexibility of creating objects during testing. Usually, these strategies include: build, create, attributes_for, and build_stubbed, each with a different approach to object persistence. On GitHub, Factory bot has an 8k-star rating.

   iii. Faker – It is widely used to generate versatile fake data – names, addresses, phone numbers for making this data useful for tasks, database seeding, testing, and creating demos. Other than generating the fake data, it provides a simple API and offers a variety of options for customising the generated data into projects. On GitHub, it has an 11.4k star rating.

5. Authentication and Authorization

   i. DEVISE – This gem is a comprehensive solution for ROR applications. The features of DEVISE extend to managing user accounts, logins, passwords, etc. It simplifies the overall process as it seamlessly integrates with the DB for authentication and allows secure storage. It is also compatible with third-party authentication through POST requests or HTTP Basic Authentication. On GitHub, it has a 24.2k star rating.

   ii. OmniAuth – It is one of the robust authentication gems for web applications by simplifying and standardizing the authentication process. It enables the easy integration of authentication strategies without having to implement unique logic for each provider. Even though it is flexible in the authentication process, it still holds a command on secure authentication flows, such as CSRF protection for ROR applications. On GitHub, it has an 8k-star rating.

   iii. Pundit – This gem helps in building a robust authorization system by leveraging regular Ruby classes and uses policy classes to define permissions. Pundit provides a concise, testable, and clear strategy to manage authorization logic. Besides, Pundit’s key features make it easier to comprehend, maintain and test Rails controllers and views. Many developers find Pundit convenient by using the basic Ruby classes and object-oriented designs. On GitHub, it has an 8.4k star rating.

6. Admin Panel

   i. Active Admin – It is one of the most powerful ROR gems that enables developers to create robust admin panels/interfaces. It facilitates customizable CRUD interfaces like rapid prototyping, high-end DSL-domain specific language, theming options compatibility with pre-built components. On GitHub, it has a 9.6k star rating.

7. Payments

   i. Active Merchant – It is one of the most popular ROR gems for providing a consistent interface for reliable and robust payment gateways. Basically, it is an extraction from Shopify that allows developers to work with it as a standalone library. Especially for ROR applications, Active Merchants can be used as a plugin. On GitHub, it has a 4.6k rating.

8. Versioning or Auditing

   i. Paper_trail – It is popularly known for providing a detailed history of changes in your Rail models for simplified debugging. This way, you can even easily restore the lost or deleted data if needed. On GitHub, it has a 6.9k star rating.

   ii. Audited – It and ORM extension, and one of the most preferred gems for tracking detailed history and modifications of versioning, diffing, and querying. On GitHub, it has a 3.4k star rating.

9. Code Quality

   i. Robocop – It performs as a code analyzer and formatter, helps in ensuring the Ruby style guide by identifying code bugs, code style issues. Besides, it also automatically formats the code by sticking to a specified style for making code syntax consistent and easy to read. On GitHub, it has a 12.7k rating.

10. Security

    i. Brakeman – It is a static analysis tool for scanning for security and potential vulnerabilities in ROR applications. It directly analyzes the source code, which prevents the need for a full application setup from scratch. Brakeman is ideal and commonly used for identifying issues, injection, XSS, and CSRF as well. On GitHub, it has a 7.1k star rating.

11. File Upload

    i. Activestorage – It simplifies the file upload process on local and cloud storage services. Besides, it can extract metadata from videos, PDFs, and other files and supports image processing. On GitHub, it has a 732-star rating

    ii. Carrierwave – It is one of the classic and popular gems that simplifies the file upload process in ROR applications on local and cloud storage. Carrierwave seamlessly integrates with Rails models and allows users to maintain multiple versions of the same file. On GitHub, it has an 8.8k star rating.

12. Deployment

    i. Kamal – This gem is popularly known for its ability to perform deployment with zero downtime by using Kamal-Proxy to switch requests between containers. Besides, it also supports the deployment of applications on multiple platforms such as bare metal, virtual machines, and cloud environments. On GitHub, it has a 12.5k star rating.

Conclusion

Partnering with a trusted Ruby on Rails Development Company can notably help you achieve your business goals. A feature-dense, high-performing application can significantly lead to greater profitability and competitive advantage in business.

ROR development services are cost-effective, enable rapid development, and help you choose the right gems from an extensive library. Not just businesses but developers also find ROR for easy-to-write code, which contributes to faster development cycles and reduced development costs, and helps in delivering desired results.

The recent version of Rails 3.0. makes it even more compatible, competitive, convenient, faster, and feature-rich. There are countless ROR gems available on https://rubygems.org/; a suitable group of gems can only be leveraged by a good developer.

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