[kungpoo]

I'm not trying but be harsh but I've never really understood the need for this project. I mean, Rails just boils down to a collection of gems right? So wouldn't you be best just cherry-picking your own gems? Or using something barebones to begin with, like sinatra/padrino?

[wycats]

If you're in the mood to hand-roll your own stack and figure out, on your own, how to integrate the pieces, you are not the target market for this project.

This project aims to provide the integrated development experience of Rails targeted at an API or JavaScript-heavy use-case.

I personally use Rails extensively for these use-cases, which was my driving force behind creating the active_model_serializers gem with José Valim. José and I also worked together on a project at Strobe that used a stripped-down, more API-focused version of the runtime stack.

Since Rails 3, Rails has been flexible enough for anyone to do this sort of thing, but Rails is all about having good defaults and leveraging conventions. This project is an attempt to see whether a relentless focus on the API use-case will yield some conventions that benefit those of us who are not using Rails primarily to generate HTML.

[irahul]

> So wouldn't you be best just cherry-picking your own gems?

I skimmed through the README. This project is picking up a default set of components needed for API. You can add or subtract components based on your needs. So instead of you cherry picking all your gems, you choose either none or some. For many people, having a default working set with non-needed components removed is good.

> Or using something barebones to begin with, like sinatra/padrino?

I have used sinatra and though I like it, I much prefer rails. Sinatra has its charm, but it's too open ended that in a big project, you end up creating half of rails yourself. Some people mount sinatra apps in their rails application, but I prefer letting Rails handle the api.

[felipesabino]

Rails loads ton of stuff you don't need if dealing with a simples REST API, for example... So yes, you could only start with sinatra/padrino and add the things you want, or do like these guys and start with rails and remove everything you do not need.

[paulbjensen]

I think that you've hit the nail on the head, and highlighted 2 differing styles of building web apps within the Ruby community.

There is a great post about this here: http://rubysource.com/rails-or-sinatra-the-best-of-both-worl...