Top 06 Ruby on Rails Gems You Should (Shouldn’t) Use in Your Next Project – 2020
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Despite being the best Ruby on Rails Development Company, even we face the struggle of coping up with many long-term projects. The reason behind the lag is that during the program development and coding phase, many programmers leave and join the team. Or say, when a client includes us in their ongoing project, it is not easy. Every coder has a specific style of developing and organizing the code. Now, when a new developer joins the team, it is not easy-peasy to catch up with the existing code style. At this time, your project suffers from a delay in achieving the goals because it takes time for the new member to understand your code. However, you can solve this issue by efficiently organizing your code using the best RoR gems to use in 2020.
Best RoR Gems to consider in 2020
1. INTERACTOR If your app /project deals with some complex business logic, the Interactor gem is an excellent way to encapsulate your business logic. It is much more than the SERVICE_OBJECT we love. Here is an example of INTERACTOR gem from GitHub:
You can see in the above example, how this gem enables the simple interactions in the executable chain. Here, we use CONTEXT to share various states.
Another fantastic fact is that using this gem are the two variables ROLLBACK and CREATEORDER, just in case, the interactor fails to execute.
2. DRAPER The custom Rails-helper that we use for the fancy display of our data becomes unmanageable with time. Let’s check out an example from GitHub, depicting the draper syntax
Here, we need to display the attribute PUBLISHED_AT in a specific manner, which is achieved by using special helpers or by creating a new method. Now, within the namespace and your project lifespan, that your special helpers can survive, it becomes difficult to debug the code. Also, the second method using a method inside the model breaks the class model responsibility, so it doesn’t work. Hence, the ideal way to achieve our goal is by using Draper.
3. VIRTUS VIRTUS, a gem that is useful to save a complex data object into different modules in your database. It is the same as the {OpenStruct} class with additional features. You will understand better by the following example from GitHub:
This gem can be beneficial, but if you need advanced techniques, they try out the drytypes, dry-struct, and dry-validation.
4. CELLS You can treasure your UI components into view models using the CELLS gem. It enables polymorphism, inheritance, nesting, package bundling, caching, integration with Trailblazer, and more. Cells prove to be extremely useful when you want to apply different conditions for distinct users. You shall understand better with this sample from GitHub:
Here, we want to display the recent comments on our dashboard, and for that, we use the CommentCell object instead of shared partial rendering.
5. RETRYABLE Modern web apps incur various integrations like API calls, FTP file-upload, or binary protocol usage, which sometimes fail without any reason. In such cases, you try again like in the below code:
However, with the help of Retryable gem, you can rewrite the above code in the following manner:
You must be overwhelmed by this gem. You can check out more uses of the retryable gem on GitHub.
6. GROUPDATE Many global projects deal with varying time zones with the need to save them in your database. Now, when you need to filter out some data from your database based on special requests, the Groupdate gem will be your gracious savior. Check out the example from GitHub:
I’m sure you would be excited to use all these Ruby on Rails gems to keep your code organized for your developers. Now, anytime a new team member enters your project, it will be straightforward to pick up the flow of execution without altering your Ruby app development.
6 RoR Gems That it Advisable to Avoid
It is now time to inform you about the treats that some of the RoR gems pose on your app development method. You might be unknowingly using them unaware of the issues they internally cause to your application. In this post, we’ve brought to your notice 6 top RoR gems to avoid while creating your next Ruby on Rails Application.
1. DEVISE_TOKEN_AUTH This gem works for the authentication of Rails JSON API along with jToker and ng-token-auth. You would find amazing stars and fan-following on GitHub for this gem, but it creates some significant leaks. One of the examples is that it ends the current session, nearly impossible to track down. This costs a lot to time fixing the issue. Hence, you must use this gem very cautiously.
2. SIDEKIQ-UNIQUE-JOBS An ideal gem to prevent jobs spawning in the execution queue. It uses Redis hash and JID to save unique keys and values. However, when your number of jobs exceeds beyond a limit (hundreds of thousands), it becomes difficult to manage memory allocations and efficiency. There are two ways to overcome the problems raised by this particular gem: The first one is by changing the logic of your program. You may use your jobs as many times by obeying the second rule of SIDEKIQ. Your jobs become unchanged and transactional. Learn from the Redis and redlock algorithm, begin and ensure clauses, explicitly.
3. AXLSX Many are in love with this gem owing to its designer abilities like charts, images, customizations, and schema validations. You might not know that along with the attractive designs and charts that it brings; it also creates memory baggage that creates problems in your app. It would be best if you used alternative gems for the design part because AXLSX incurs significant memory loss. When your app demands highmemory, you should especially avoid using this gem.
4. WHENEVER A wonderful RoR gem for running rake or runner scripts, but the problem lies in the way developers use it. WHENEVER takes long to load your app because it loads the entire environment, which intakes enormous processing power. Your application may hang or become unresponsive for frequent use of this gem. Hence, you should consider alternatives to this aspect.
5.DWOLLA-RUBY This one is an unofficial Ruby gem for payment systems and bank transfers. It is quite useful for the Dwolla API, but it creates thread issues. When you use this gem in a multi-threaded environment, more than one threads join this class simultaneously, which is problematic. Well, there is a way to overcome this barrier. You should call the gem in an isolated environment. Otherwise, when one user buys a product, the other one might have to pay for that. You can find more about this gem on GitHub.
6. RAILS_ADMIN + WILL_PAGINATE When developers are using both the above gems together, they don’t get to see the issue, but it lays there dominantly. The RAILS_ADMIN gem is dependent on the KAMINARI library, and so is the WILL_PAGINATGE gem. Both of them use the .PAGINATE() method. When both of these gems are in use, they can create conflict, and you don’t even get to know until a user clicks on a page that uses pagination. From our experience, we shared the gems to avoid for the smooth functioning of your RoR application.
Epilogue I hope this post turns out to be helpful for your Ruby on Rails app development process. If you have suggestions regarding which other RoR gems prove to be beneficial to you or which ones caused you trouble, you can comment on this post. We will consider and write on it. If you are looking for assistance to implement the best RoR gems, then get in touch with us we are top Ruby on Rails development company, whose ardent experts will take care of what gems will be suitable for your project. Get in touch with our Ruby on Rails experts to share your potential business idea and leverage our expertise.
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