Since I started my new job, I had to learn Ruby On Rails in a real quick pace. My employer wanted to step up to the next level with the web applications the company developed. For that, they chose for Ruby On Rails, so off course, like I was the new kid in the house, I had to start learning it.
Ruby is a very nice language to code in. It is totally OO and the application structure and implemented patterns like ActiveRecord and MVC are just to die for. Not that I stop working in PHP (on the contrary, when I start developing in Rails, I simultaneously started learning the PHP Symfony framework).
During my learning proces in Rails, I came in touch with Active Scaffold. A quick way to develop a CRUD interface that adapts itself to your DB schema. So whenever you add an attribute later on to your table, You’re CRUD interface will automatically change.
At the beginning I have to say, I was a bit skeptical. I was still learning Rails (and still am) and the whole Active Scaffold thing was just overwhelming. I found it hard to get things done the way I wanted, just out of ignorance. But after working with Active Scaffold for 2 months, I have learned its true power. Active Scaffold is just configurable in every way you want.
We have a project running at the moment that is totally build upon Active Scaffold. Every CRUD functionality is based on Active Scaffold, and believe me, we have done some wacky things with it.
So living with Active Scaffold has been a real treat. I couldn’t work without it anymore. You save a lot of time creating a nice interface (you can easily edit the CRUD to fit your needs in any way you want). I would suggest it to any Rails developer out there.
Anyone of you ever used Active Scaffold? If not, do it right away and let me know if you like it :). Even you readers who have used it and probably still do, share your experience with me, maybe you know some tricks I have not yet hear about.
