How do you design your RoR web applications?

Rails
1

Here is my question: how do you design your RoR web application?

  • Do you use an OOAD approach? data model/ class diagram, use cases?
  • Do you desing your web pages first?
  • Do you start coding without desinging first?
  • Do you use other tools such as Dreamweaver to create your pages, and
    from there convert them in rhtml code?
  • Do you use any quality assurance and quality control process?
  • Which other practical tips would you share that facilitate working
    with RoR?

Regards

2

On 9/18/07, Jose P. [email protected] wrote:

with RoR?
Here are two articles that are very interesting:

http://wiki.pragmatus.com/index.php?title=Test_Driven_Development_with_Ruby

3

Here is my question: how do you design your RoR web application?

Someone asked: “how do you design your RoR web application?”

To be honest, there’s no right or wrong way to create a new app. Some
people starts from DB tables, some starts with html, and others starts
with user cases. Whatever works for you is the best way. Here are some
pointers.

===Coding

* keep your design modular. If things can be broken into small

pieces, do so. make them into plugin, gems. because doing so those
building blocks can be reused later. if everything is big and chunky,
less likely they’ll be reused.
* tests is the other half of the code, code without test is not
complete. you should always write code with test code side by side.
Some people even advocate write test first.

If you just keep in mind of 2 principles above, you’ll be doing very
ok.

===Development lifecycle - Iterative
Break big apps into iterations, each iteration with requirements from
most critical down to nice to have. People call this agile
development. In my example, my final goal for groups.wuyaSea.com is to
create a full featured social network site. First release only have
most essential features, user can discuss in forum, and write
articles, and make friends. that’s it. No search (outsourced to google
search), no photo sharing, no private messaging, not even tagging (now
does). With capistrano, it’s easy to keeps on pushing out releases, I
often push out new builds like 5 times a day.

Major reasons for doing iteration is to minimize risk, cuz bean
counters like that.

* each release requires shorter timeline, less coding effort, and

more predictable in time and money.
* after you give each release to user acceptance testing, you’ll
find out what features users use most of time, and what features users
rarely touch. It’s known that in any app, 20% of code does 80% of
work, so why write 80% of code nobody uses? In my case, the web is my
user acceptance test.
* so release early, release often. In venture capital world, it’s
called startup fast, fail fast. Think your startup will be the next
facebook or youtube? think again, for every successful startup,
there’re dozens failed ones you never heard of, so why waste 1 year to
learn the truth if you can do it in 3 months?
* one side effect by releasing early is you get to earn that
fabulous adsense dollars right away (although i haven’t earned a dime
yet). Cash flow is always important for anyone who bootstraps.

Maximize your effort. User requirement changes, site traffic changes,
life sucks, blah blah. there’s no one design that satisfy all the
requirements. Changes are unavoidable, eventually rewrite may be the
best solution. The best design is one that satisfy the most
requirements with least cost, don’t over engineer something.

===Failing is learning
I can tell you what i’ve done. When I was creating groups.wuyaSea.com,
i went through 2 prototypes, after a few months, each one becomes too
rigid and unmaintainable, then throw it away, and start over. Current
site is my 3rd implementation. Making webapp is like doing everything
else in life, you learn by just doing it. keep cranking, if it fails,
keep trying again.

hope that helps.

copy of this is also available at
http://groups.wuyasea.com/b1ogs/8/articles/9/how-do-you-design-your-ror-web-application

Person who asked this question may also like
http://groups.wuyasea.com/group/ruby-on-rails

Dorren
Dorren_was_here_cuz_goog_keeps_losing_my_favorites

4

Hi ALL, thanks for posting the tips and I’m sure that others will be
able to
benefit from the information.

-Conrad

5

Excellent comments Dorren, you are applying the agile life cycle based
on iteractions.

6

Jose P. wrote:

Here is my question: how do you design your RoR web application?

The best way to design is concurrent with delivering features. We
start by asking our customers (in our specific case the marketing
department) what the most important features are. We implement these
quickly, using unit tests to avoid debugging.

That’s a big step towards a good design, because making code testable
invariably decouples it and improves its design.

  • Do you use an OOAD approach? data model/ class diagram, use cases?

No, because we can go from simple to complex incrementally, in between
delivering features.

  • Do you desing your web pages first?

No, because if we start with business user stories, we must implement
a little of a web page, implement a little code, and deploy, in small
cycles. So the web pages grow features incrementally.

  • Do you start coding without desinging first?

Abso-freakin-lutely.

  • Do you use other tools such as Dreamweaver to create your pages, and
    from there convert them in rhtml code?

Our graphics department does that. The important part, for
programmers, is the interactive features, and there are only so many
of those.

  • Do you use any quality assurance and quality control process?

We use the unit tests to gate every commit, and we commit every 10 or
15 minutes or so to Subversion. If the tests don’t pass, we don’t
commit.

  • Which other practical tips would you share that facilitate working
    with RoR?

We also use pair programming, including dual keyboards and such. We
are “allowed” to solo, but the more important the feature, the more
likely we are to pair.

The less important the feature, the less likely we are to do it!

–
Phlip

7

Phlip,

I do not understand how do you manage unit tests to avoid debugging
when you say “We implement these quickly, using unit tests
to avoid debugging”.

could you please explain how do you write code testable? do you first
create the tests and then code?

thanks

wrote:

Jose P. wrote:

Here is my question: how do you design your RoR web application?

The best way to design is concurrent with delivering features. We
start by asking our customers (in our specific case the marketing
department) what the most important features are. We implement these
quickly, using unit tests to avoid debugging.

That’s a big step towards a good design, because making code testable
invariably decouples it and improves its design.

  • Do you use an OOAD approach? data model/ class diagram, use cases?

No, because we can go from simple to complex incrementally, in between
delivering features.

  • Do you desing your web pages first?

No, because if we start with business user stories, we must implement
a little of a web page, implement a little code, and deploy, in small
cycles. So the web pages grow features incrementally.

  • Do you start coding without desinging first?

Abso-freakin-lutely.

  • Do you use other tools such as Dreamweaver to create your pages, and
    from there convert them in rhtml code?

Our graphics department does that. The important part, for
programmers, is the interactive features, and there are only so many
of those.

  • Do you use any quality assurance and quality control process?

We use the unit tests to gate every commit, and we commit every 10 or
15 minutes or so to Subversion. If the tests don’t pass, we don’t
commit.

  • Which other practical tips would you share that facilitate working
    with RoR?

We also use pair programming, including dual keyboards and such. We
are “allowed” to solo, but the more important the feature, the more
likely we are to pair.

The less important the feature, the less likely we are to do it!

–
Phlip