Popular gems for Ruby on Rails: speeding up development and expanding capabilities
Popular gems for Ruby on Rails: speeding up development and expanding capabilities
Ruby on Rails, as a powerful framework, provides developers with many tools to create web applications. However, the real power of Rails comes from using gems—ready-made libraries that extend functionality and speed up the development process.
In this review, we’ll look at some of the most popular and useful gems for Ruby on Rails that will help you build better, more scalable applications.
Gems for working with data
- ActiveRecord: Built into Rails, this gem makes it easy to work with databases, allowing you to create models, run queries, and manage relationships between objects.
- Kaminari: Implements pagination, making navigation through large data sets more convenient for users.
- ransack: Allows you to create powerful search forms, allowing users to filter data by various criteria.
- pg_search: Provides full-text search in PostgreSQL, allowing you to search by the contents of text fields.
Gems for authentication and authorization
- Devise: One of the most popular gems for implementing user authentication, supports various authentication strategies (for example, through social networks).
- CanCanCan: Allows you to implement flexible authorization systems by defining what actions users with different roles can perform.
Gems for working with forms
- SimpleForm: Offers a simpler and more intuitive syntax for creating forms than the standard one.
- Nested Forms: Allows you to create nested forms, which is useful when working with related data (for example, user addresses).
Gems for testing
- RSpec: A popular testing framework that provides a more readable and expressive syntax for writing tests.
- Capybara: Allows you to run integration tests by simulating user actions in the browser.
- Factory Bot: Simplifies the creation of test data.
Gems for working with email
- ActionMailer: Built into Rails, it allows you to send emails, for example to confirm registration or reset your password.
- SendGrid: A popular service for sending emails that can be integrated into a Rails application.
Gems for working with payments
- Stripe: Allows you to integrate Stripe payment systems into your application.
- PayPal: To integrate PayPal payment systems.
Gems to improve performance
- Bullet: Helps detect N+1 requests and other problems that may negatively impact application performance.
- Rack::MiniProfiler: Allows you to profile requests and find bottlenecks in the application.
Other useful gems
- Paperclip: For working with files, especially images.
- FriendlyId: To create beautiful and unique URLs.
- OmniAuth: To authenticate users through social networks.
- Sidekiq: To process background tasks.
The choice of gems depends on the specific objectives of your project. When choosing gems, you should consider the following factors:
- Community activity: The more active the community, the more likely it is that the gem will be maintained and developed.
- Documentation: Good documentation makes the gem easy to learn and use.
- Performance: Some gems can negatively impact application performance, so it is important to choose them with care.
- License: Make sure the gem license meets your requirements.
Using gems is a great way to speed up development and improve the quality of your Ruby on Rails applications. However, you should not add too many gems, so as not to complicate the project structure.