Developers are always on the lookout for the best cutting-edge technologies and tools to implement on their web development projects. Although there are many amazing IDEs that are taking the web development world by storm, Ruby on Rails has always been one of the most popular solutions. Building web applications through a fast and cost-effective development process, Ruby on Rails is a dynamic and open source programming language that comes with an elegant syntax that provides ease in reading and writing. The main focus is on simplicity and productivity.
However, keeping your code clean and organized while developing a large Rails application can be a grueling task for even the most experienced developers. There is a myriad of tools and resources available that make the job easier for developers. Not only do these tools help keep their code clean and well organized, it also simplifies the entire process by making it less time consuming and tedious.
If you have struggled to keep your code maintainable, secure and optimized, check out this list of integrated development tools that are currently available in the market. They are both easy to use and enables optimization of your work effortlessly while helping you create fantastic applications.
Sinatra
Sinatra is a tremendously simple, free and open-source software web application library. It is perfect for writing domain-specific web applications with incredible ease. Well documented and easy to get started, Sinatra is great especially for developing smaller applications that need to run fast.
Rubocop
Rubocop is a Ruby static code analyzer that inspects your code and tells you what’s wrong with its style and sometimes helps catch bugs even before they occur. An inspection module called Cop analyses your code’s notation variation, grammar and method complexity while making sure that your code compiles with the Ruby community code guidelines. Being highly configurable, Rubocops provides you with an option to set it on or off with a threshold value from a file called rubocop.yml.
Guard
A tool that is frequented by large numbers of web designers, software developers and others working in similar fields, Guard is a great means to avoid mundane, repetitive actions and commands. It automates different tasks which are based on custom rules every time files or directories are modified. It helps do away with mundane actions and comments such as “relaunching” after changing configurations or source files.
Brakeman
Designed specifically for Ruby on Rails applications, Brakeman is an open-source security and vulnerability scanner that scans through your application and provides a neatly formatted table of possible issues. Since it focuses only on the source code, you are not required to set up your whole application stack in order to use it. This handy tool can be used at different stages of Rails application development to thoroughly analyze the code and spot potential security vulnerabilities.
Pry
A fairly flexible yet powerful IRB alternative and runtime developer console, Pry is touted to be one of the most useful Ruby gems. It includes features such as syntax highlighting, a flexible plugin architecture, runtime invocation and source, and documentation browsing. Having a certain level of flexibility makes Pry a great tool for user customization when it comes to applying custom shells. Basically Pry is a type of REPL, an interactive programming environment that receives a user’s input, analyses it and returns the result to the user.
Bullet
The Bullet gem is a great tool to track and report inefficiencies. A great means to eliminate all N+1 queries and other eager loaded relations during the development mode by displaying alert boxes that pop up in the browser. It watches you queries and informs you when you are required to use the counter cache, or when you should and should not be using the eager loading. It is quite a valuable tool while optimizing your application.
Opal
Opal lets you run Ruby on a browser. It is a Ruby to Javascript compiler that runs on any browser. In other words, it translates the Ruby that you write into Javascript. Additionally, it is also a runtime implantation and a corelib. Opal paired with the Guard gem makes the development process a lot easier.
There is no doubt that even though Ruby is not the latest new language in the market anymore, it is one of the most popular and widely used programming languages in the world. By incorporating these tools, developers can create efficient web applications by incorporating various tools from the rapidly growing Ruby development community.
RailsCarma has been actively contributing to the changing face of the software industry for a long while. Having worked with Ruby on Rails in over 250+ projects, RailCarma is well versed to meet all your RoR application development requirements. Contact us today!
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