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Merb – All You Need, None You Don’t

(Adapted S9 Version from Original PDF Slide Deck by Ezra Zygmuntowicz, Engine Yard @ Mountain West RubyConf 2008)

Guiding Principles of Merb Development

  • Prefer simplicity over magic as much as possible
  • This is framework code, no &:foo or returning allowed!
  • When in doubt… benchmark and profile
  • Know your runtime and how it acts

Merb’s Motto

No code is faster than no code.

Why? Why Not?

  • Developer time is expensive…
  • Servers are cheap…

Who Cares About Efficiency

Just throw more servers at the problem!

Throwing more servers at the problem only goes so far …

Of course I’m happy to sell you more servers ;)

Who Cares About Efficiency Continued

Premature Optimization is the root of blah blah blah…

Postmature Optimization is the root of all hosting bills ;)

What’s New?

  • merb-core
    • Rack Webserver Abstraction Layer
    • Powerful Router
    • Provides API
  • merb-more
  • merb-plugins

merb-core – Rack Webserver Abstraction Layer

  • Ebb
  • Evented Mongrel
  • FastCGI
  • Mongrel
  • Thin
  • Webrick

config/rack.rb:

class ApiHandler
  def initialize(app)
    @app = app
  end

  def call(env)
    request = Merb::Request.new(env)
    if request.path =~ %r{/api/(.*)}
     [200,
       {"Content-Type" => "text/json"},
       Api.get_json($1)]
    else
     @app.call(env)
    end
  end
end

use ApiHandler
run Merb::Rack::Application.new

merb-core – Powerful Router

Merb::Router.prepare do |r|
  r.resources :posts do |post|
    post.resources :comments
  end
end

Named Routes:

Name Route
delete_post_comment /posts/:post_id/comments/:id/delete
post_comments /posts/:post_id/comments
new_post /posts/new
posts /posts
post_comments /posts/:post_id/comments/:id
edit_post /posts/:id/edit
post /posts/:id
new_post_comment /posts/:post_id/comments/new
delete_post /posts/:id/delete
edit_post_comment /posts/:post_id/comments/:id/edit

merb-core – Powerful Router Continued

Merb::Router.prepare do |r|
  r.match(%r[^/foo/(.+)], :user_agent => /(MSIE|Gecko)/).
    to(:controller => 'foo', :title => '[1]',
       :action => 'show', :agent => ':user_agent[1]')

  r.match('/bar/:baz').defer_to do |request, params|
    if bar = Bar.find_by_baz params[:baz]
      {:controller => bar.controller,
       :action     => bar.action,
       :bar        => bar.to_param}
    end
  end
end

merb-core – Provides API

Merb.add_mime_type(:yaml, :to_yaml, %w[application/x-yaml text/yaml])
Merb.add_mime_type(:html, :to_html, %w[text/html application/xhtml+xml application/html])
Merb.add_mime_type(:xml,  :to_xml,  %w[application/xml text/xml application/x-xml], :Encoding => 'UTF-8')
Merb.add_mime_type(:json, :to_json, %w[application/json text/x-json])

class Posts < Application
  provides :json, :yaml, :xml

  def show(id)
    @post = Post.find id
    display @post
  end
end

merb-more – What’s New?

  • Code Generators
  • Asset Bundling
  • Mailers and Parts
  • Haml and other templating support
  • Action Args
  • Caching
  • Other essentials

merb-plugins – What’s New?

  • merb_datamapper
  • merb_activerecord
  • merb_sequel
  • merb_helpers
  • merb_param_protection
  • many more to come

Contribute!