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You've probably heard of Ruby on Rails, which is Ruby's most popular framework for writing web apps. But there's a much simpler alternative, called Sinatra. Rails uses a complex software development pattern called Model-View-Controller to generate HTML pages for users. Sinatra just gives you the request, and lets you generate a response any way you want. It's a great way to understand what web apps are all about, before moving on to the added complexity of Rails.
[MUSIC] 0:00 Hi, I'm Jay and today I'm here to teach you how to write web apps using a Ruby 0:04 library called Sinatra. 0:08 Ruby is great for writing apps that run on the terminal but 0:10 it can run apps that people use from their web browsers too. 0:12 You've probably heard of Ruby on Rails, which is Ruby's most popular framework for 0:16 writing web apps, but there's a much simpler alternative called Sinatra. 0:20 Believe it or not, what you see on the left is code for 0:23 a complete Sinatra web app and what we see on the right is its output. 0:26 Rails uses a complex software development pattern called model view controller to 0:32 generate HTML pages for users. 0:35 Sinatra just gives you the request and 0:38 lets you generate a response any way you want. 0:40 It's a great way to understand what web apps are all about before moving on 0:43 to the added complexity of Rails. 0:46 We'll start the course by showing you how to install the Sinatra library and 0:49 how to create a simple app, then we'll move on to a more complex app, 0:52 a wiki, that lets users view text pages you've created. 0:56 We'll set up a form that allows users to create their own wiki pages, and 1:00 then have our app save those pages to text files. 1:03 We'll let users edit or delete existing pages and we'll end by using layout files 1:06 with CSS to make the entire site look more appealing. 1:11 Ready? 1:14 Let's get started. 1:15
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