Best Practices for Rails Beginners

1. Introduction

This tutorial aims to provide beginners with some best practices when starting with Rails. You will learn about coding standards, principles to follow, and tips to write efficient and maintainable Rails code.

What you will learn

• Rails coding standards
• Key principles for Rails development
• Tips for writing efficient and maintainable Rails code

Prerequisites

• Basic understanding of Ruby language
• Installed Ruby and Rails on your system
• Familiarity with MVC architecture

2. Step-by-Step Guide

Rails follows the MVC (Model, View, Controller) pattern, so understanding this pattern will help you write clean and organized code.

Naming conventions

Rails follows certain naming conventions that you should always adhere to:
- Class and module names are in CamelCase.
- Variables and method names are in snake_case.
- Files are named in snake_case.

DRY Principle

Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY) is a software development principle aimed at reducing repetition. You should always look to reuse code as much as possible.

RESTful principles

Rails is built around RESTful architecture, which emphasizes standard HTTP protocols and verbs.

Using Gems

Gems let you add features and functionality to your application. Always use well-tested and maintained gems, and avoid adding unnecessary dependencies to your project.

3. Code Examples

Naming Conventions

# Class in CamelCase
class MyFirstClass
end

# Variable in snake_case
my_first_variable = "Hello world!"

DRY Principle

# Bad practice: repeating the same code
def calculate_area
  return @width * @height
end

def calculate_perimeter
  return 2 * (@width + @height)
end

# Good practice: reusing code
def calculate_area
  return multiplication(@width, @height)
end

def calculate_perimeter
  return multiplication(2, (@width + @height))
end

def multiplication(a, b)
  return a * b
end

RESTful principles

Rails automatically creates seven routes in your application that correspond to standard RESTful actions. Here's an example:

# config/routes.rb
resources :articles

This will create seven different routes in your application, all mapping to the Articles controller.

Using Gems

To use a gem, specify it in your Gemfile:

gem 'devise'

Then run bundle install to install it.

4. Summary

In this tutorial, we have explored several best practices for Rails beginners, including Rails coding standards, key principles like DRY and RESTful architecture, and tips for using gems effectively.

Next Steps

Keep practicing these principles with more complex applications. Also, understand other concepts like testing, database migrations, and deployment.

Additional Resources

• The Ruby on Rails Guide
• Rails API documentation

5. Practice Exercises

1. Create a simple Rails application with one model, view, and controller. Follow Rails naming conventions.
2. In the same application, refactor your code to follow the DRY principle.
3. Use a gem to add some functionality to your application. For example, use devise for user authentication.

Solutions and Explanations

1. You can create a new Rails application with the command rails new myapp. The model, view, and controller can be created with the rails generate command.
2. To follow the DRY principle, look for any code that is repeated and move it into a separate method.
3. To use devise, add gem 'devise' to your Gemfile and run bundle install. Then, run rails generate devise:install to set it up.

Tips for Further Practice

• Explore other Rails conventions and principles.
• Learn about testing in Rails.
• Practice using different gems to add features to your application.