Intro to Roda (a Ruby web framework) Episode 1

Roda is a routing tree web toolkit which, if you’ve read my post about Sinatra, seems to provide the same simplicity to write routes for a web application, with the added advantage of a tree structure to avoid repetitions (more on that later, if/when it applies to my project).

For now, I thought that a similar “Intro do Roda” post was in order, as this may be the framework that I use in the future, and learn more about, and complete more episodes about on this site.

Starting with Roda is as simple as requiring it and adding blocks with your routes. Here is the example from the website (very pretty and clear, compare to the docs for Sequel, also a gem by Jeremy Evans):

And here is my first route:

You will notice two additions:

• first, the render plugin, which allows easy rendering of an erb template (you just have to place it in a views folder). You then use render("menu") to render a menu.erb template located in that folder. Or, if you also have a layout.erb template within which you wish your pages rendered, you use the command view("menu") as I have in this example. I can then have a navbar.erbpartial in the same folder, and call it in my layout.erb by adding render('navbar') just above the yield call.

• second the public pluging simply allows you to place a CSS file in a public/css folder, and by just adding r.public to your route block, your CSS will get picked up. Again, quite simple to recreate my home page:

Now, same as with Sinatra in the previous post, it’s time to add more complex features… in Episode 2!