If you are in Ruby on Rails world, you probably already know – big event is coming. Pretty soon a big update – Rails 5 – will be delivered. One can already enjoy its beta version and final version won’t make us wait long. Since Ruby on Rails is our main technology, we are all looking forward to the big release. Check what is waiting for us in the new version.
As we already mentioned, Rails 5 is a pretty big release. So we decided to cover only the main features it offers. Check now, how Rails 5 release will make a development world a better place.
1. Rails API is Merged into Core
One big improvement of the new release is that now Rails-API gem will be merged in the core functionality, which would make working with it much easier. To be more specific now using Rails API will be no harder than JSON API and one will be able to develop an app using Rails-API only, which is definitely a big win for developing single page applications and may other purposes.
2. Turbolinks 3
Turbolinks is designed to make a page refresh quicker. Currently instead of refreshing the whole page it refreshes only body contents. This helps to an extent, but there’s still a room for improvement. With the release of Turbolinks 3 in Rails 5 refresh will take less time, which is a good gain. Of course, the main aim of it are single page applications, but other websites would also feel the improvement.
3. Ruby 2.2.1 support
Ruby on Rails community was very happy when Ruby 2.2.0 was introduced. It speeded up the things a lot as well as offered a few niceties. Rails 5 will support Ruby 2.2.1+, which tends to be even faster and better (take for example the improved Ruby Garbage Collector). So Rails 5 is a good push for all RoR developers to get an updated version.
4. Better Test runner
Test runner for Minitests has been significantly improved in the new version. Now one can enjoy an option of single test run as well as more profound error messages and color output. As you see, user-friendliness for Minitests has come through some improvements, which is goods news for both experienced users and those who only start coding on Ruby on Rails.
5. Action Cable
Push notifications are a big deal for marketing nowadays. Until Rails 5, RoR developers had to look for some side solutions. Luckily now with the new release we will have an out of box solution Action Cable, which in fact is a client on the server to manage all the notifications correctly. Thanks again, Rails 5.
These are only a few things why Rails 5 will be great. We can’t wait to use it, since it’s not only a faster and more user-friendly solution, but also a good chance for us to deliver great projects to you on a new level.
