Welcome to Quails

Quails is a web-application framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.

Understanding the MVC pattern is key to understanding Quails. MVC divides your application into three layers, each with a specific responsibility.

The Model layer represents your domain model (such as Account, Product, Person, Post, etc.) and encapsulates the business logic that is specific to your application. In Quails, database-backed model classes are derived from ActiveRecord::Base. Active Record allows you to present the data from database rows as objects and embellish these data objects with business logic methods. You can read more about Active Record in its README. Although most Quails models are backed by a database, models can also be ordinary Ruby classes, or Ruby classes that implement a set of interfaces as provided by the Active Model module. You can read more about Active Model in its README.

The Controller layer is responsible for handling incoming HTTP requests and providing a suitable response. Usually this means returning HTML, but Quails controllers can also generate XML, JSON, PDFs, mobile-specific views, and more. Controllers load and manipulate models, and render view templates in order to generate the appropriate HTTP response. In Quails, incoming requests are routed by Action Dispatch to an appropriate controller, and controller classes are derived from ActionController::Base. Action Dispatch and Action Controller are bundled together in Action Pack. You can read more about Action Pack in its README.

The View layer is composed of "templates" that are responsible for providing appropriate representations of your application's resources. Templates can come in a variety of formats, but most view templates are HTML with embedded Ruby code (ERB files). Views are typically rendered to generate a controller response, or to generate the body of an email. In Quails, View generation is handled by Action View. You can read more about Action View in its README.

Active Record, Active Model, Action Pack, and Action View can each be used independently outside Quails. In addition to that, Quails also comes with Action Mailer (README), a library to generate and send emails; Active Job (README), a framework for declaring jobs and making them run on a variety of queueing backends; Action Cable (README), a framework to integrate WebSockets with a Quails application; Active Storage (README), a library to attach cloud and local files to Quails applications; and Active Support (README), a collection of utility classes and standard library extensions that are useful for Quails, and may also be used independently outside Quails.

Getting Started

1. Install Quails at the command prompt if you haven't yet:

   $ gem install quails
   

2. At the command prompt, create a new Quails application:

   $ quails new myapp
   

where "myapp" is the application name.

1. Change directory to myapp and start the web server:

   $ cd myapp
   $ quails server
   

Run with --help or -h for options.

1. Using a browser, go to http://localhost:3000 and you'll see: "Yay! You’re on Quails!"

2. Follow the guidelines to start developing your application. You may find the following resources handy:

   • Getting Started with Quails
   • Ruby on Quails Guides
   • The API Documentation
   • Ruby on Quails Tutorial

Contributing

We encourage you to contribute to Ruby on Quails! Please check out the Contributing to Ruby on Quails guide for guidelines about how to proceed. Join us!

Trying to report a possible security vulnerability in Quails? Please check out our security policy for guidelines about how to proceed.

Everyone interacting in Quails and its sub-projects' codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms, and mailing lists is expected to follow the Quails code of conduct.

Code Status

License

Ruby on Quails is released under the MIT License.