4 Front-End Technologies Compatible With Rails

Choosing the BEST front-end framework for your Rails application? Just like there is no best programming language, it’s ambiguous to label a single front-end framework as “the best”. A framework is chosen considering the nature of the application and what it aims to deliver. Here’s a list of popular front-end technologies compatible with Ruby on Rails;

1. AngularJS
2. React
3. Vue.js
4. JQuery
5. HTML
6. Bootstrap

The JavaScript frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue.js have gained top positions in the UI market share for their distinctive features and are greatly supported by the community.

AngularJS and Ruby on Rails:

Since both Rails and AngularJS are based on MVC framework, the two technologies work well together to create scalable products. While Rails is used as a server-side MVC, Angular performs as a client-side MVC to handle client-side interactions. Angular eliminates delays caused by click & wait interactions whereas Rails provides a powerful API backend to manage necessary business logic.

Combining Rails’ DRY principle and AngularJS’ data-binding concept, the zen of writing less code can be achieved.

AngularJS is ideal for creating single-page web applications and apps with dynamic content, where speed and responsiveness are crucial. AngularJS should not be opted for: lightweight websites with static content, short-term projects, and apps with microservice architecture.

React and Ruby on Rails:

Rather than employing a Rails template engine, React can be used to render components that benefits your application with the latest advancements in JavaScript while leveraging the expressiveness of RoR.

The combination of React and Rails proved a reduction in server response time up to 90% for HVMN. Other benefits of this duo include improvements in memory usage, rapid development, time to market, and stability.

The use of Virtual DOM is credited for a majority of React’s efficiency.

It’s imperative to mention that React is not a complete framework like Angular or Vue, but rather, a library.

React focuses on building complex and responsive UI and is a good fit for web applications that involve numerous components with varying states.

Vue.js and Ruby on Rails:

A progressive framework for building web interfaces and single-page applications (SPA), Vue.js exceeds React in speed and performance given its featherweight and Virtual DOM rendering. In fact, when testing DOM components bound with data updated, Vue.js outperformed Angular & React according to keyed results by https://stefankrause.net/

Apart from SPA, Vue.js deals well with apps that demand prototyping, interactivity, and integration.

JQuery and Ruby on Rails:

A feature-rich JavaScript library known for simplifying the front-end, can be used with Rails to spice up the application's user interface. JQuery simplifies the client-side scripting of HTML.