What is ruby on rails?
 

What is it? is it its own seperate language from ruby? is it like a quik form of ruby? I have looked at several ruby on rails books, and it doesn't answer my questions. Thanx.

Ruby on Rails (more usually just called "Rails") is a web application framework written in the Ruby programming language.

ah so its sort of like compared to perl its like CGI?

No. Ruby is the language used to create Ruby on Rails web apps. Rails in the framework/library, as Grumpy said, that is written in Ruby. You can use other languages with the Rails framework but Ruby, by far, is the most popular.

Ruby is offen compared to Python.

Ok I think I get it now. So their is one rails framework that can be used by many languages. So do you use regular ruby syntax and code?

Yes, you use the Ruby language to create rich web apps with Rails. Hence, "Ruby on Rails".

Not quite. In Perl you can use the CGI module to create web applications, such as a search engine, webmail service or anything else you can think of. Ruby too has a CGI module that allows you to do exactly the same things.

Ruby on Rails is a step above this. Rails makes it far easier to design complex database-driven applications than with the basic CGI module. Rails provides a framework you can build upon to develop large scale applications faster than most other systems can do. This makes it popular with web developers, as it saves them a lot of time.

Of course, Rails isn't the only web application framework out there, but it is one of the most talked about in recent times.

Also, Ruby on Rails is a framework that is only available for the Ruby language - though plenty of copycat frameworks have shown up in other languages.

Hmm. I once saw in other forum that someone was using "Java on Rails". After reading your post, I went back to the forum and saw that it said "Java on Sails". Lol My bad to the O.P.!

To clarify, Ruby is an interpreted programming language which has features in common with Perl and Python but is OOP from the ground up (you can't do anything in Ruby without using objects).

Rails is a framework which provides tools for creating dynamic web applications which connect the web page interface to a database backend. Ruby provides the programming logic that sits in between. With Ruby On Rails you can use Ruby to program Blogs, eCommerce apps, Wikis and so on. So Rails, in effect, makes Ruby work a lot like PHP but also adds in various other capabilities which assist the programmer in the creation of dynamic sites.

best wishes
Huw

So... is it any good?

Like if I knew PHP would I like Ruby on Rails?