We Talked Sinatra with the Experts…

Ok, we may as well kick off then. For those of your that don’t know, @daz4126 is the author of Jump Start Sinatra, and @rkh is the expert reviewer. They are today’s experts. So what are your interests in Sinatra. Anyone already a user?

I work for rundavoo. Live in Los Angeles. Developing Sinatra API.

Any one else already start reading the book?

What are your thoughts on it so far @srpsco

Hi guys!

And @daz4126 is here. :)

I haven’t used Sinatra yet

I didn’t have the time to start the book but I’m looking forward to it

but it’s cool

I am interested if the abstraction of Sinatra hurts underlining development?

@ServerStorm how do you mean?

@HAWK So far so good I am only 1/3 done

@serverStorm, what sort of abstractions?

As you are not working with RAILS directly, what happens if something breaks can you easily debug it in Sinatra or do you have to climb into RAILS deeper to do this?

For those of you that haven’t seen the book yet, you’ll find it here https://www.sitepoint.com/launch/8396b1

@HAWK I am thinking of doing a review for dzone when I am done

@ServerStorm Sinatra does not sit on top of Rails.

I have a question. I would like to develop a Sinatra API for a stock exchange. I imagine that most existing stock exchanges use C++/C#/Java. Is it practical to develop a high volume API in Sinatra?

@serverStorm You don’t need to use Rails at all, Sinatra only uses Rack and Ruby

Sounds great @srpsco – if you’re on Twitter, make sure you tweet us a link

@George I think Sinatra is for simpler applications

Oh ok then I have much to learn ;)

Can it scale to millions of requests per second?

@HAWK will do

Thanks @srpsco!

@George Scalability is not really a question of language or framework.

It’s more about architecture

I’m quite curious about Sinatra but I have yet to make time to start learning. Would Sinatra be a equivalent to PHP’s Codeigniter? as far as weight and liberties go?

@George I know of Sinatra apps having response times of under 24 ms.

Is it practical to create the architecture that supports such a Sinatra API?

I think you could write this sort of thing in Sinatra, it would depend on the api used by the stock exchanges you were connecting to

What are the key strengths of Sinatra over competing frameworks?

@alme1304 I think it is closer to laravel

I am creating the exchange. Other people connect to it using REST.

I’ll jump in here and let you know that I’ll be giving away a couple of free copies of Darren’s book at the end of the session to people that ask great questions.

@alme1304 Sinatra is much more lightweight than CodeIgniter

Code Igniter is based on Rails

Welcome @Hiro – we’ve just kicked off. Feel free to jump in with questions at any time, or just to lurk if you’d prefer!

Is getting it up and running on Windows difficult?

@mib not at all, using the “Ruby Installer” it’s actually quite easy to get it running on Windows.

Just tried that a few days ago.

Windows is such a mess..

but yea should be easy

@Hiro Asari?

@HAWK thanks

@rkh Yes, sir.

How about security? Is it too difficult to enforce security with Sinatra? I would assume that it has functions for hashing and all that

Is Darren here? Do you have an answer to my question?

@molona good question

@srpsco and as far as deployment goes, how does it work, do I have to use something like heroku or is the wider selection of deployment options compared rail?

@molona in contrast to Rails, etc, Sinatra is only about HTTP, but it does provide security mechanisms out of the box.

rails*

@serverStorm Sinatra isn’t really a framework, it’s a DSL (domain specific language). It’s strength is in its flexibility – you can choose how to construct the architecture of your application

I’m on it George!

If you are using a REST API then you should easily be able to build it with Sinatra

@alme1304 anything that can run rails can run sinatra, there is a wide selection, and you basically just need to get ruby running.

Do it use OOP conventions or procedural or both?

thanks

I know very little about Sinatra. Does it manage sessions and cookies?

@alme1304 Heroku is an option and one that is very easy, ut it can be done with a vps, aws I also think engine yard offers support

@watjen yes Sinatra handles sessions and cookies for you. It’s covered in the book

@ServerStorm internally, it is object oriented and you can easily write fully object oriented apps, but the DSL is declerative

Thanks you

Don’t forget Appfog

Welcome @dorthe. Feel free to jump in with questions if you have any.

yikes maybe I can learn to speak English today :(

Yes there are loads of deployment options nowadays, anything that supports Ruby

@ServerStorm You speak French?

Yes some but I’m supposed to be a native English speaker, it just isn’t showing well currently

Am I allowed to plug in the PaaS that I work on? ;-)

haha

Tx -i don’t know anything about sinatra – was just curious

(@Hiro is from RedHat and on the JRuby team)

I assume that even if it doesn’t need Rails it should do fine with Rails too? or am I assuming too much?

@dorthe Sweet – feel free to lurk then!

@haWK is offtopic link-posting allowed?

@molona it works fine with rails

@ServerStorm… you still speak better English than I do :D

Do you know of any larger commercial projects that have been developed using Sinatra?

@nicksh Yeah – this is pretty informal. I may edit them from the transcript though

@molona github is one rails app and ~30 sinatra apps, all running in the same process

and no, I don’t speak French :p

@ServerStorm yes, lots

@dorthe Sinatra is a Domain Specific Language that lets you build web apps in Ruby by helping you connect to HTTP

Is Sinatra a stand alone server?

@ServerStorm http://www.sinatrarb.com/wild

@serverStorm gaug.es uses it

Thanks rkh

@watjen ruby ships with a server and sinatra can manage it for you

does siantra or rack cahe views and layouts

yes

@srpsco yes

@srpsco it does

There is a bit in the book about caching

The cache control is really easy to use

@daz4126 thanks I have only gotten to chapter 3 will finish the rest tonight

What are the best tools to use when developing Sinatra? Are there specific IDEs or do you use simple text editors

@srpsco great, would love to know what you think. I wrote a bit about caching here too https://www.sitepoint.com/sinatras-little-helpers/

ahh. I’m new to Ruby but i’m thinking to get the sitepoint book

Will a Sinatra app run on Passenger?

@serverStorm definitely just a text editor! I use gedit

@ServerStorm I prefer Sublime Text 2 for everything

@ServerStorm I use textmate, there is a bundle for it, you can also use the RubyMine IDE.

Gedit is also good with plugins

@watjen yes

I use eclipse but I’m sure it will work too :)

probably

@serverStorm should do

I used NetBeans at one time to do Sinatra development

How long has Sinatra been around?

since 2007

You can build apps in a single file, so you could even use …(shock horror) … notepad!!!

(scary music)

Hey! I use Notepad… ++ :p

At least Notepad++

It has really come on loads since @rkh started maintaining it

Is it a real advantage to cram it all into one file?

Was started by Blake Mizerany (of Heroku)

companies using Sinatra include Apple, the BBC, GitHub, LinkedIn, houghtbot and many more

my current 2 favorite apps for dev are PHPStorm (though a bit overkill at times (read that as slow) but lately I’ve been enjoying working in Sublime Text 2

Good job rkh!

@serverStorm not for big apps, but it’s cool to do it for little demos

Is it possible to make a quick guide to get started – maybo put on on the Facebook page

@ServerStorm thanks

get ‘/’ do

“hello world”

end

That’s your basic app

Wow – even I could do that ;)

To get started … install Ruby, install the Sinatra gem

It seems that “Hello World” is the only application that I’ve learnt to write in any programming language :p

save the lines above as hello.rb

if you have a decent ruby version installed, you can also run this on the command line: ruby -rsinatra -e “get(‘/’) { ‘Hello World’ }”

then type hello.rb into a terminal/console

@molona ha ha, same here for me with many languages

If you considered building the same small application in ASP.NET, Symphony, Node.js using Coffee Script, and Sinatra is the development cycle faster, slower? Is the code base the smallest?

here is a complete chat implementation, everything in one file: https://github.com/sinatra/sinatra/blob/master/examples/chat.rb

thanks rkh

@serverStorm some of them are languages (like ruby) and some are frameworks so not easy to compare

@rkh thanks. Great resource :D

Is there a set of community standards or guidelines when developing apps or does everyone have different methods

@alme1304 great question!

there are a lot of sinatra clones in other languages, btw.

There aren’t really any standards – this is a good and bad thing!

Is Node.JS’s Express similar to Sinatra?

yes

Although it’s easy to build a MVC architecture using Sinatra (like Rails uses)

Yes, I’m just trying to understand what advantages it has over other framework choices in other languages. I know this is a loaded question, but never written a line in Sinatra it is a valid question

@nicksh express was written by a former sinatra contributor

and is inspired by it

The advantages are that development is very quick and you get to choose how it is set out

I’m wondering about resources… the book seems to be a good starting point but where would be possible to find more examples/advanced information?

Thanks daz

There is also minimal amount of fuss and set up when you are getting started

@ServerStorm simplicity, security, maturity

Cool

some larger companies use it because they can do a complete security review in a week or less

For those interested in an example, here is a blog post of how I built and deployed a simple site in a couple of hours using Sinatrahttps://www.sitepoint.com/sinatra-heroku-super-fast-deployment/

some companies use it because it plays nice with their pre-existing software

what about security? Sinatra can’t possibly be buttoned as tightly as Rails? http://guides.rubyonrails.org/security.html

for instance, linkedin added it on top of their java business logic

A big advantage is it uses Ruby … and Ruby is a nice language!

@watzit it can’t indeed, because it does not know about your database

*JRuby* ;-)

@daz4126 Can’t agree more :D

Why would I want to use Sinatra instead of Rails?

@watzit this comes with sinatra: https://github.com/rkh/rack-protection

@molona RubySource has articles and there are other things floating around on the net

@watjen Simplicity

I don’t know Ruby… would you suggest me to learn Ruby first? or should I be fine if I learn as I learn Sinatray

?

https://www.sitepoint.com/

But after reading the book, the main thing would be to improve your Ruby … because anything written in Ruby can then be plugged into the web using Sinatra

So the limiting factor becomes your Ruby Skills

Yes, there’s lots of information around the net but it is always so hard to know what’s good and what’s bad :(

The Sinatra google group is always a good place to go for info too

@molona Sinatra is straight forward and really simple, so the big thing will be learning Ruby anyways.

@molona that’s why @daz4126 wrote a book :)

Here’s a good place to learn basic Ruby http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/

@rkh good reply :D

@daz4126 nice link

@daz4126 Don’t forget TryRuby :D

For anyone that is planning on getting into Ruby/Sinatra, I’ve started a Podling group for support https://podling.com/invitations/298-talk-sinatra-with-the-experts/325/edHfz8B6yP

Is Sinatra’s handling of AJAX pretty easy? What about database connectivity?

@watjen Here’s a link where people compared using Sinatra and Rails https://www.sitepoint.com/rails-or-sinatra-the-best-of-both-worlds/

And of course there are the forums https://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?227-Ruby-amp-Rails

@ServerStorm yes, doing ajax is straight forward.

Of course @nicksh the interactive one http://tryruby.org/

@serverStorm db connection is very easy and supportsseveral different DB’s

And specifically this thread, where @daz4126 is answering questions specifically https://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?960208-New-Book-Jump-Start-Sinatra&p=5299210#post5299210

@ServerStorm there are a couple of database libraries to choose from

thanks rkh and srpsco

@serverStorm you can connect to any database really easy. In the book we use DataMapper to connect to a sqlite database

But you can also use things like MongoDB if nosql is your thing

What about NoSQL support

Ajax is covered in chapter 6 of the book

for our product we use ActiveRecord, which originally comes from Rails

… and ajax is covered here https://www.sitepoint.com/the-robot-factory-part-two/

I love ActiveRecord

@ServerStorm there are libraries for any popular and most unpopular nosql solutions out there. sinatra it self does not care.

@serverStorm and postgres for heroku folks you can test locally with sqlite and with nearly no changes move to heroku/postgres

I never really liked it, but I gather it’s got better recently

for us it’s that we moved from a rails app to many sinatra apps

That’s nice srpsco

@srpsco yes in the book, that’s what we do – sqlite locally and then use postgres on Heroku for live deployment

I really like the mongo syntax and the whole idea of schemaless dbs so will be trying to use that this year

Have to try that too… I’ve never used a no sql database

btw I just installed sinatra

Yes I’m still not clear on the support for mongoDB or other NoSQL databases

@serverStorm yes it supports most of them

@serverStorm mongodb is supported

great

@nicksh nice one!

you’ll love it

@ServerStorm there is a library called MongoMapper and an alternative called Mongoid that give you top MongoDB support with Sinatra

@ServerStorm http://mongomapper.com/

Thank you rkh :)

Another thing I really like about Sinatra is that you get to see what is happening more … there’s less magic going on, so you get more control over how your app behaves

I’ll compile all these resources into a post on sitepoint.com along with the transcript, later today

@ServerStorm MongoMapper also has a similar API to DataMapper, which is used to talk to SQL databases in the book

How do I make it run on port 80?

-p 80

ruby main.rb -p 80

Yes I’m quite familiar with different Database patterns so I’ll look forward to this in the book

@daz4126 are you saying that Sinatra is easier to debug?

probably with a sudo

tx hawk

@molona not necessarily … that depends on your code!

@rkh still runs on 4567

But you just have more of an idea how everything in your app fits together, so if you want to change something then you know how it works

Welcome @guido2004 and @richybailey – feel free to jump in at any time

Our experts are @daz4126 and @rkh

@richybailey hi mate!

btw I love the start and stop messages of Sinatra

View / Edit paste

== Sinatra has ended his set (crowd applauds)

@nicksh have you seen the page missing and error pages yet?

@nicksh strange, works for me

No

Hi all

@nicksh That’s hilarious!

Haha awesome

@guido2004

hi

@Daz4126 I saw in the book that you used a url like ‘what/time/is/it/in/:number/hours’ would you do this in production where many of the intermediate URLs would not exist?

hi molona :)

welcome to the Sinatra world :p

@guido2004

Hi

@daz4126 the error page is amazing :D

hi serverstorm

@srpsco probably not (unless I linked to it directly) that was just to demonstrate named params

@nicksh it’s great isn’t it … you can make your own really easy though

Yes sing me a song guido2004, Sinatra here :0

@daz4126 thanks just wanted to clarify

@nicksh not_found { “That page is missing” }

wow nice

That’s how you do your own custom missing pages

Oh I forgot to set port to 80

http://www.sinatrarb.com/configuration.html

How would I run a Sinatra app on a server running Apache?

@watjen with passenger (aka mod_ruby)

which would basically work much like mod_php

How does NGINX support Sinatra?

ah, modrails is the name

@watjen you can also setup a proxy to forward to the sinatra port

I was thinking the same question @serverStorm

Hi daz. Hi all. I’m an intruder cos I use .net but as daz has been trying to convert me I thought I’d see what the community think of Sinatra compared to the alternatives.

cool

Btw how do I pass arguments/parameters?

@nicksh to what?

I mean access stuff from URL

I use C#, Node.js, PHP

@nicksh for the url ‘/hello/:name’

@nicksh: that’s what you use params for

You can access the part of the url that says :name using params[:name]

thanks

That’s called a named parameter

oh

Welcome @headmin and @sebastien

So you could do

get ‘/hello/:name’ do

btw, for all non-native speakers (like me), the official sinatra documentation has been translated into 10 different languages besides english

“hello #{params[:name]}”

end

@daz4126 thanks

@nicksh np

@molona one option for NGINX is Phusion Passenger http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Nginx.html

@richybailey Sinatra is simpler than most other alternatives and lets you take a more hands on approach to building the app

Cool. It is good to see that the documentation is in Spanish too… after all it is the best language in the world (at least for me, because that’s what I speak best :p)

a bit just late today and read the sinatra jumpstart sample besides lurking here…

unfortunately @daz4126 book is in English only

Spanish is a beautiful language not the English hodgepog

@headmin hope you liked it :)

Here’s what I wrote so far

View / Edit paste

require 'sinatra'

set :port, 80

get "/" do
	"Ahoy World!"
end

get "/hello/:name" do
	"Hello, #{params[:name]}"
end

not_found do
	"Yerr port not scoured!"
end

@rkh you didn’t offer to translate!

@serverStorm Tanks :D

@nicksh nice work!

@daz4126 I didn’t even translate the readme, other people do that ;)

I meant Thanks :D

@rkh … you’re so lazy ;)

@nick “yerr port …” looks like you are all set for talk like a pirate day

btw if anyone’s interested here’s my GitHub account https://github.com/shvelo maybe I’ll post some Sinatra code soon

@nicksh would definitely like to see it tweet me when you do @daz4126

We’ve got 15 mins left of the session so if you have any unanswered questions, now would be the time to get them in

@srpsco Yes I am

@daz4126 sure

@nicksh and @srpsco feel free to translate the book into pirate :)

Is there a roadmap of the language development yet? If so, how often will the framework be updates?

@daz4126 good idea!

@richybailey … and you get to use Ruby with Sinatra

updated

@serverStorm atm Sinatra just gets incremental updates because it basically does what it needs to do

Does Sinatra have built-in support for object relational mapping? Or do I need to install something like ActiveRecord?

thanks for that image of Sinatra singing what made that scurvy, peglegged ant think it could move that rubber tree palnt aye maties

@watjen you need to install something, but that’s really easy

@watjen no, you need to install whichever ORM you want to use

@daz4126 Can I sell the translation? :D

Thanks @daz4126

@nicksh of course … 50% royalties though!

@hawk can you put the best link to where I can install ruby in the sitepoint post with de other material from this session

Got to go now

too late

@serverStorm If you have a look at the Sinatra codebase you’ll see the closest thing to perfect code I’ve ever seen. It basically does everything it needs to and nothing more.

@dorthe Not quite sure I understand your question. The best link to where you can install Ruby?

dorthe are you on Linux, Mac or Windows?

yes

Before you go @nicksh

Great to hear from you @nicksh, hopefully catch you on Twitter

windows

I think your effort today has definitely earned you a free copy of Darren’s book (if you don’t already have it)?

oh and btw my twitter handle is @shvelo96

no I don’t

@Daz4126 do you have any guidance on when to use a gem vs rack middle ware and riolling your own

wow thanks

Thanks @nicksh

@serverStorm …. and most updates to Sinatra are basically bug fixes or to implement something new (like PATCH requests)

You’re all welcome, see ya

@srpsco rack middleware is what the code is, gem is how you install it. most rack middleware is a gem.

@nicksh see ya

Ok @daz4126

Thanks

thanks

Are there any questions that people don’t have sufficient answers to?

i do think that I will have some serious reading during this weekend :)

@srpsco I always like rolling my own (lots of fun and learning) … but for production you’re usually safer using an already existing gem

let me know how you get on @molona

@molona – me too

same @dorthe

I’m all out so I’m bidding ado. Thanks to @rkh and @daz4126

and @mibsrpsco

See ya Steve.

@serverStorm thanks for all the questions, will catch you on Twitter

@daz4126 sure… I’m truly looking forward to this. Never tried Rube and I guess this is a good excuse to start

Yes you will, I’m going to look into Sinatra in greater detail and will get started with your book, thanks!

it was a pleasure to join this session

Bye

@molona it’s great fun and Sinatra will make it easy for you to get started building apps quickly

@serverStorm byeee!

I think I’ll have to give Sinatra a try!

@dorthe pleasure to have you here!

@watjen you definitely should!

if anybody thinks of any questions, then post them to the forum and I’ll try to answer them https://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?960208-New-Book-Jump-Start-Sinatra&p=5299210

Is it hard to port a rails app to Sinatra?

@george was the answer about the stocks api okay for you?

@daz4126 thankjs for your time and the myway series of posts was a big help when I was learning Sinatra (about the same time as you were writing the posts.

@srpsco wow, great to hear that

@watjen depends on the app, but generally not, we did that

I’m hoping to get I Did It My Way back online soon!

nice

since both use rack and ruby a lot of the parts are really similar

Last call for questions before I cut our experts loose…

@daz4126 In a day like this, it would be more “strangers in the night”… it is night time around these areas and after all most of us have never met :p

@molona … oh dear …. :o

“The best revenge is massive success.”

I’m heading off to bed too. It has been great. Thank you for answering my questions (here and in the forum). I do appreciate your time (yours too @rkh)

@rkh LOL

whatever the revenge is for, but it’s a nice Sinatra quote

@molona a good one. I’m watching denmark plaing handball in spain :-)

@rkh great quote, not heard it before

@molona sure thing

@dorthe I’ve never quite got what handball is all about!

@rkh need to try and get that quote on the website or in the codebase somewhere ;)

Well, that’s a wrap my friends. I’d like to say a huge thanks to Darren and Konstantin for their time.

no problem, it was loads of fun!

Feel free to stick around here as long as you like and chat, but there will be no moderation (for what that’s worth).

I’ll be around for a bit while I wait for some food to cook :)

I’ll need to leave soon, late dinner for me.

Excellent. I have to run as I have nagging kids giving me grief, but I’ll see you round cyberspace.

@rkh you’ve earned it :D

I’ll post the transcript up later today.

@HAWK np, catch you soon

@hawk see u

@daz4126 thanks… but you wrote the book :D

@rkh with lots of help … and you maintain Sinatra!