MiniRails - Ruby on MiniRails.

About

It's my sabbatical project. After catching burnout I chose to take long vacation. Once I watched Maple Ong's talk Building a Ruby web app using the Ruby Standard Library on Euruko 2021. The talk inspired me.

Firstly I wrote the script, the code is here. Then I started to improve it and decided to write an MVC-framework like RubyOnRails on plain Ruby. Such a good challenge. There is an article on dev.to in which I've described the process how I wrote the library and some features.

Structure

Current repo is a mono repository with source code. Folder mini_rails contains MVC-framework source code. Code in todo_list and secret_app folders are examples of application using the MiniRails library.

Dependencies

The project isn't written on plain Ruby. It uses rack because rack is a standard web server interface for Ruby. Also it has dependency on puma, and rack-test for testing.

Features

Features of MiniRails

• Rack-server to handle requests.
• MiniActionController - the module for controller layer in MVC pattern. It supports: before_action callback, params-object, setting layout for views, rescue_from rescue handle and redirect_to.
• MiniActionDispatch - namespace for rack middlewares. Middlewares are:
  • AssetHandler - middleware to distribute stylesheets and javascript files from the assets folder.
  • StaticHandler - middleware to distribute any files from public folder.
  • RequestHandler - main middleware to receive rack-request and build response. It supports get/post/delete/put/patch requests.
• MiniActionParams - A class to parse http-headers and store params. Similar to ActionController::Parameters
• MiniActionView - the module for view layer in MVC pattern. The layer is separated from MiniActionController module. Features:
  • HTML and JSON responses.
  • HTML.ERB views rendering.
  • Partial views and layout rendering.
  • CSS and JS assets rendering.
  • View caching.
• MiniActiveRecord - the module for model layer in MVC pattern. List of features:
  • Attribute definition in a model
  • has_many and belongs_to associations
  • Base abstract driver class for implemening data manipulation for different DBs.
  • Single file storage - yaml_driver
  • CRUD operations for data manipulation
  • Proxy object for quering with chain methods.
  • Scope definition on a model class
  • Data serialisation to JSON
  • Validations validates_presence_of and validates_length_of
• MiniActiveRouter - the module to draw routes map and match route. Features: placeholders for params, not found route for 404 page.
• MiniActiveSupport - a bunch of extensions for different classes. It's similar to ActiveSupport
• MiniCodeLoader - class for code-reloading. It helps when you are working with CLI console.
• CLI - with CLI you can run web-server, console, tests, runner and create a new application.
• MiniRspec - it's RSpec from scratch. It supports RSpec's basic structure: describe, context, it. Also has callback before_each and function let! to define a helper methods. You can write unit and request tests.
• MiniFactory - it's a little copy of FactoryBot. Features: factory definition, sequence and trait.
• Yard documentation

Applications

There are two applications to present how the framework works: TODO list and Secret app.

TODO list

You can see the application in todo_list folder

Secret app

You can see the application in secret_app folder

How to start

# Clone the project
git clone [email protected]:kopylovvlad/mini_rails.git
# Install dependencies
cd mini_rails
bundle install
# Return back
cd ../

How to run first app

# Switch to application folder
cd todo_list
# Install dependencies
bundle install

# Run the server
./bin/mini_rails server
# Open http://0.0.0.0:9292 in a browser

# Run the console
./bin/mini_rails console

# Run the tests
./bin/mini_rails test

How to create new application

# Create new app
./mini_rails/bin/mini_rails new <NEW_APP_NAME>
# Done! Your application in <NEW_APP_NAME> folder

# Switch to folder
cd <NEW_APP_NAME>
bundle install

# Run the server
./bin/mini_rails server
# Open http://0.0.0.0:9292 in a browser
# You can write your own application