Building Real-Time Applications with Ruby on Rails and WebSockets

Ruby on Rails is a popular web development framework that allows developers to build robust and scalable applications. While Rails is primarily designed for building traditional request-response style applications, it can also be used to build real-time applications using WebSockets.

WebSockets is a communication protocol that enables real-time, bidirectional communication between a client and a server. Unlike traditional HTTP requests, which are stateless and require a new connection to be established for each request, WebSockets allow for a persistent connection to be established between the client and the server.

To build real-time applications with Ruby on Rails and WebSockets, you’ll need to use a library or gem that provides WebSocket functionality. One popular gem for this purpose is Action Cable, which is built into Rails starting from version 5.

Action Cable provides a framework for handling WebSockets connections in Rails applications. It allows you to define channels, which are logical units of communication, and provides a set of APIs for broadcasting messages to clients and handling incoming messages.

To get started with Action Cable, you’ll need to add the gem to your Rails application by including it in your Gemfile and running the bundle install command. Once the gem is installed, you can generate the necessary files and code by running the rails generate channel command.

This will generate a channel file, which is where you define the behavior of your WebSocket channel. You can define methods for handling incoming messages, broadcasting messages to clients, and performing any other necessary actions.

Once you’ve defined your channel, you can use it in your views or controllers to establish a WebSocket connection with the client. You can use the provided JavaScript library to handle the client-side WebSocket connection and interact with the server.

With Action Cable, you can easily build real-time features such as chat applications, live notifications, and collaborative editing. It provides a simple and intuitive way to handle WebSocket connections in your Rails application.

In conclusion, building real-time applications with Ruby on Rails and WebSockets is made easy with the Action Cable gem. By leveraging the power of WebSockets, you can create interactive and dynamic applications that provide real-time updates to your users.