Top 11 Ruby On Rails Gems For Web Apps

Ruby on rails is a great framework for developing web apps with influential features and it increases the speed of web app development using an MVC pattern. Ruby on rails is known for its various ready-made solutions that eases rapid software development. Mainly such speed is obtained through using Ruby on rails gems, libraries with explicit functionalities that allows you to prolong and customize your rails application.  There are separate rails gem for every purpose in rails, from authorization and authentication to testing and payment processing. Rubygems.org was the most downloaded gem in 2021 and this gives you the idea of market popularity for ruby on rails. Here we’ll discuss the best ruby on rails gems for 2022. But before digging into it, let’s see how to install gems in ruby?

What Are Rails Gems?

RubyGems is a Ruby package manager which includes a standard format for distinguishing Ruby programs and libraries, a tool for managing gem installation and a server for delivering them. 

Command-line utility controls RubyGems called a gem, that may install and manage libraries. RubyGems works with Ruby run-time loader to locate and laid gems from library directories.

How To Install Gems In Ruby?

1. Install Bundler-

Open terminal and cd to program directory on internet-connected PCs, and type below command-

$gem install bundler

Another way is- once you know which gem you’d like to install, for example, most popular ruby on rails installation

$gem install rails

2. Add Gems To Gemfile-

Find gem file in project’s root folder and add following command-

source ‘https://rubygems.org’
gem ‘[nameofgem]’
gem ‘[nameofgem]’, ‘~>[versionofgem]’
gem ‘[nameofgem]’, :require => ‘[spec]’

3. Installing Required Gem-

Install all the gem required in the gems file using following command:

$bundle install

However if you’re using a database in development mode that is different from database used in production mode, use following command.

$bundle install –without production

4. Review Gems-

View the list of gems installed in app:

$gem list

When you want to get a long list of gems available on RubyGems.org, use following command.

$gem list -r

5. Show Installed Bundle-

Use following command to view where the particular gem is being installed:

$bundle show [bundlename]

6. Add Gemfile And Gemfile.Lock To Repository-

Add gemfile and gemfile.lock files to your repository so that team will use the same gems.

$git add Gemfile Gemfile.lock

Best Ruby On Rails Gems For Web Apps-

1. Active Record-

It is a rail gem having 49.3k stars on GitHub, and latest version is 6.1.4. You can easily embed records using ActiveRecord-import. It functions as suggested by Active record affiliations while just need minor SQL embedded statements. To upload 10 records, Active Record is the best option. By using Perl to transfer a large number of records can be daunting task. It is useful to import external data in very less time. 

Installation–

Install Rails at the command prompt with following command:

$ gem install rails

2. Ahoy-

Ahoy is an analytics solution for native javascript and ruby apps that can track visits and events. It has3.7 stars on GitHub and has latest version is 1.2.0. As Ahoy is a ruby engine, it is not considered a gem. It is in charge of creating visit that include traffic course, origin of location and customer’s device data. Users can think about UTM parameters of their site visits. You can track visits and events with a software.

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