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Lotus, a web framework for Ruby

lucaguidi.com

31–40 of 143 posts

Re: Lotus, a web framework for Ruby

#32

Thank for great fw. I'm by no mean a Ruby expert but finding Sinatra is so simple to create complex apps, and Rails is so complex atm to pick up. I'm making slowly progress in Rails and always not sure if I done thing correctly in Rails way. Lotus seems small enough, and good enouh, balance between Sinatra and Rails for me. Keep up the good work. Thanks.

sinatra is more powerful than you maybe have realize..

Re: Lotus, a web framework for Ruby

#33

I'm all for new frameworks that emphasize different ideas and philosophies. If nobody ever tried experimenting with a new approach, we wouldn't have Rails in the first place. So kudos to Luca and his fine work in developing Lotus. I like much of what I see. That being said, I feel like YARWF (Yet Another Ruby Web Framework) is not the most pressing matter in the web space today, and I take exception to the notion tha…

>A complete web framework has client-side components that facilitate two-way communication to/from the server, data binding, HTML5 history state-based page/view swapping, etc. In other words, the type of stuff being addressed by Angular, etc. No. I can't possibly disagree with this any more strongly. I'm probably on the wrong side of history here, but Javascript absolutely should _not_ be a requirement for using a we…

I respect your opinion, but I will happily disregard it when it comes to building web apps. If that means I someday lose you as a customer, so be it.

Re: Lotus, a web framework for Ruby

#34

I'm all for new frameworks that emphasize different ideas and philosophies. If nobody ever tried experimenting with a new approach, we wouldn't have Rails in the first place. So kudos to Luca and his fine work in developing Lotus. I like much of what I see. That being said, I feel like YARWF (Yet Another Ruby Web Framework) is not the most pressing matter in the web space today, and I take exception to the notion tha…

>A complete web framework has client-side components that facilitate two-way communication to/from the server, data binding, HTML5 history state-based page/view swapping, etc. In other words, the type of stuff being addressed by Angular, etc. No. I can't possibly disagree with this any more strongly. I'm probably on the wrong side of history here, but Javascript absolutely should _not_ be a requirement for using a we…

You are fighting a losing battle.

Re: Lotus, a web framework for Ruby

#35
post #3

Whenever I hear lightweight and complete, I always wonder if they handle one of the hardest things to do cleanly in web-apps: user authentication and access control of resources. Does Lotus support this out of the box?

It doesn't, nor is supposed to. It is composed of small parts with as little responsibility as possible. The idea of Lotus is to not force you to use any tool or favor any kind of approach to such things, but instead give you enough "frame work" to compose with other tools that are responsible for such tasks like authorization, authentication, persistence, or really any kind of stuff you need to do.

Re: Lotus, a web framework for Ruby

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A complete web framework has client-side components that facilitate two-way communication to/from the server, data binding, HTML5 history state-based page/view swapping, etc. In other words, the type of stuff being addressed by Angular, etc. No. I can't possibly disagree with this any more strongly. I'm probably on the wrong side of history here, but Javascript absolutely should _not_ be a requirement for using a we…

>If your website doesn't work with NoScript turned on, I won't utilize it. You're definitely in the minority then, most users don't even know what javascript is let alone NoScript. I find it ridiculous that people are arguing against javascript, we're using a computer and not allowing it to run code.

I was, and am, mostly on the side that argues that client-side javascript support can be assumed to such a degree that it can safely be considered requirement in a lot of cases.

However, I do have some reservations of a more 'ideological' nature when it comes to requiring javascript when it isn't strictly necessary.

I still believe one of the most powerful things about the web is the (relative) simplicity of the request/response server-side-rendering approach. There are so many ways in which a web page can be consumed (scraped, read-later-tools, etc.), within 'fair' boundaries of course. And this often falls apart because of client-side javascript.

This is fine when it concerns a web-app that is specifically made for browsers (where ideally there's also a public-facing API). But for most other things it should not be necessary, and I believe it harms the possibilities of the open web. And quite often I find that it deceases the usability in general (back-button breakage, etc.).

Of course, my ideal solution is both server- and client-side support, used appropriately, through something like React or PhantomJS.

Re: Lotus, a web framework for Ruby

#37

sinatra/base, rack-urlmap and sequel, why would you want more fluff?

It looks like you're missing the point. As an example, I've built the adapter for DynamoDB[1] so you can throw sequel out in matter of minutes even for existing app, and most likely without any code change.

[1] https://github.com/krasnoukhov/lotus-dynamodb

Re: Lotus, a web framework for Ruby

#38
This is a promising start. I've felt for a while now that we need some strong alternatives to Rails for the folks who feel like the Rails Way and the Ruby Way don't always get along.

It still feels a bit DSL-centric from the examples I've seen thus far, and haven't dug into things to see what the generated Ruby looks like -- but if it's anything close to simple, this is something that has a chance to become an important part of the Ruby ecosystem.

If nothing else, it's great to see things like this because they provide concrete example code for discussions that (IMHO) need to happen.

Re: Lotus, a web framework for Ruby

#39

By what I've seen I like the spirit of Lotus, but I sense a movement away from complete web frameworks to pure API back-ends with the emergence of great single page JS frameworks like Ember. One ruby one that I like is https://intridea.github.io/grape/ . One interesting node API framework I mean to try is http://loopback.io/ .

That's a trend indeed (and personally I like it pretty much).

But lotus has a view component that allows you to do stuff """just like rails""" (many quotes intended). That's the beauty of it: it's modular and not opinionated, so you can pick an mix the tools you want to compose in order to suffice your needs.

Re: Lotus, a web framework for Ruby

#40

I'm intrigued. Just signed up for the mailing list. Do you have any links to applications built in Lotus?

There aren't many applications using the solution as a whole - as it was just made public recenltly, but you can check some example applications used for tests in the lotus repo: https://github.com/lotus/lotus/tree/master/test/fixtures/
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