[ANN] Arrow-0.1.0

  • Thread starter Michael Granger
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Michael Granger

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Hi Fellow Rubyists.

I'm pleased and proud to announce (finally) the first public release of
the Arrow Web Application Framework.


## General Information

Arrow is a web application framework for mod_ruby. It was designed to
make
development of web applications under Apache easier and more fun without
sacrificing the power of being able to access the native Apache API.


## Why another web framework?

We chose to write this framework despite the existance of several
interesting
and excellent frameworks already written in Ruby for several reasons:

* mod_ruby: No existing frameworks (that we know of) run under
mod_ruby, or at
least not with the same kind of access as a first-order handler.

* Apache: Some current frameworks are very compelling but for one
thing: they
run using their own webserver written in Ruby. While this is fine for
some
lighter applications, our experience showed that this strategy does
not
scale as well as Apache, nor does it allow the application developer
to
leverage all of the other functionality already built in to Apache or
available as modules.

* Advanced features: While there are some current frameworks that
provide some
of the features we desired for application development, there were
none that
supported them all.

* Extensibility/customizability: Many of the current frameworks make it
difficult to override or extend their built-in features. We wanted
something
that would allow us to adapt to any situation.


## Design Goals

Our primary intent when creating Arrow was to make development of
applications
under mod_ruby easier without sacrificing power. To that end, we
started with
four major goals:

1. Apache API: The developer should still have access to most or all of
the
Apache API, but without being required to know or care about most of
it if
she does not want to.

2. Persistant resources: Applications should be able to take advantage
of
persistant resources like cached database handles, connection pools,
etc.

3. No fork overhead: Like with native mod_ruby handlers or registry
CGIs, the
overhead of the fork and compile phase should be minimized.

4. Automatic reload: Maintain the immediacy of CGI with auto-reloaded
applications, configuration, and templates to avoid the
server-restart cycle
that is required with every change in programming with mod_ruby
handlers.


## Features

We also wanted to add some features which are useful in most all web
application
programming:

* Templating: To separate presentation HTML from application logic, we
decided
to provide an integrated templating system that uses valid XHTML
documents (or
document fragments) for templates. We also realized that there are
already
many excellent templating systems available for Ruby, and so we tried
to make
it as easy as possible to use your own preferred templating library
instead of
ours if you should so choose.

* Sessions: Many web application developers find it necessary to
maintain state
between connections in their applications, so Arrow includes sessions
that are
very easy to use, but can be configured to use one of a number of
different
configurable strategies on the back end for storage, locking, and key
generation.

* Argument validation/untainting: Web applications need to handle input
from end
users which needs to be untainted and validated against a definition
of what
constitutes legal data. Fortunately, Travis Whitton already wrote an
excellent
Ruby data-validation library called FormValidator, which is built
into Arrow.

* Modular applications: Very often, web applications need to share
several
subsystems (e.g., authentication/authorization, state checkpointing
and
validation, etc.) which are orthogonal to the main application logic
but still
necessary. Arrow allows some apps to act as delegators, providing some
functionality for all apps which are chained through it.

* Graceful error-handling: Sometimes applications fall on their face,
and there
is little more frustrating than having to track down an error trace
from
within the bowels of your app. Arrow provides a customizable
error-handling
mechanism that can be used to speed development and act on errors
intelligently.

* Strong introspection: One of Ruby's strengths is its strong
introspection
features, and we wanted to build on those strengths. Arrow has some
powerful
introspection facilities that let the developer examine the state of
applications, templates, sessions, etc.


## Current Status

This is a beta release. Things will probably break, but the APIs are
fairly
fixed and it's feature-complete for the 1.0.0 release. If you do find
something
broken, please let us know.


## Contact

Project Page:
http://www.rubycrafters.com/projects/Arrow/
Tracker:
http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?group_id=231
Download:
http://www.RubyCrafters.com/projects/Arrow/Arrow-0.1.0.tar.gz
Manual/Tutorial (under construction):
http://www.RubyCrafters.com/arrow-manual/


Thanks for your time.
--
Michael Granger <[email protected]>
Rubymage, Architect, Believer
The FaerieMUD Consortium <http://www.FaerieMUD.org/>

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