Ruby on Rails was one of the first frameworks to gain popularity when it launched in the mid-2000s, and it’s still one of the best today, with over two million downloads per month. In this post, we’re going to show you how to use five of the most popular gems that are included in Rails and can make your life easier.
1) ActionCable
ActionCable is a framework that lets you use WebSockets to create real-time features. ActionCable is built into Rails and makes it easy for developers to add WebSocket features, such as chat rooms and real-time analytics, to their apps. ActionCable can also be used independently of Rails so you can integrate it into your existing app.
2) Devise, CanCan, Pundit
Devise provides authentication services for web applications. It’s an alternative to the default Rails authentication, which is called Warden. CanCan allows you to grant or revoke access to specific areas of your application based on sets of rules defined in a configuration file. Pundit lets you create authorization checks without having to write any code by leveraging Ruby’s built-in ACL module.
3) Paperclip
Paperclip is a Ruby gem that makes it easy to attach images (or any other file) to your models. It also integrates with Cloudinary for uploading files in a cloud-based storage system. This gem can be use as a drop-in replacement for Active Record’s attachment methods or combine with other methods for more specific needs.
4) Ransack
Using Ruby on Rails, there are many gems that can help you out with your project. Some of the more popular gems are Ransack, Devise, ActiveRecord and Paperclip. These five gems are great for a variety of different purposes and can help you save time and energy in the long run.
5) RSVP
The following is a list of the five most useful Ruby gems for Ruby on Rails developers.
Devise – Devise provides easy-to-use, flexible authentication to web applications. It protects against many threats and requires no database tables or configuration files.
RSpec – RSpec is a BDD framework that defines clear and concise expectations for your code so that you can be sure it’s working as you intend.
6) Security
Rails is already a very secure framework, but there are some gems that can add even more security. Check out these five gems that will help you keep your application safe from outside attacks.
7) Payments
Payments provide an API and Ruby gem for communicating with several different payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal, WePay, etc.). Payments can be use as a drop-in replacement for the default credit card swipers that come with most e-commerce platforms. It integrates seamlessly with ActiveMerchant so you can accept payments without writing any additional code.
8) Uploading Files
Quite often we build web applications that allow users to upload files of various kinds: documents, images, audio, and video. shrinerb/shrine: is a useful toolkit for handling file uploads in Ruby. It’s memory friendly, has a modular design and has flexible processing.
When it comes to images, one of the most effective solutions available is image_processing. It provides higher-level helpers that are commonly neede when handling image uploads.
9) Search
Most web applications require a built-in search functionality. To power your application with a search, you might want to take a look at a few helpful gems.
Elasticsearch is a popular search engine for enterprises. By leveraging Elasticsearch, you’re able to implement search on a website, index catalogues of goods (if you’re running an eCommerce store), enable automatic insertion of data, develop a solution for price notifications by indexing prices, implement reverse search, store transactions and actions, and analyze and retrieve data to get comprehensive statistics. We use the Elasticsearch gem for Ruby integrations in Rails applications.