Glossary

This Ruby on Rails glossary breaks down technical Rails terminology into clear, easy-to-understand definitions. It’s built to help beginners get up to speed quickly and give experienced developers a quick refresher when needed.

A

Active Record

ActiveRecord is the Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) framework in Ruby on Rails that connects your Ruby objects to the database. It allows you to interact with database tables using Ruby code instead of writing raw SQL.

Action Cable

Action Cable is the WebSocket framework in Ruby on Rails that enables real-time features such as live chat, notifications, and activity updates. It seamlessly integrates WebSockets with the rest of the Rails application.

Active Job

Active Job is the background job framework in Ruby on Rails that allows you to run tasks asynchronously, such as sending emails, processing files, or performing long-running operations, without blocking the main application flow.

Asset Pipeline

Asset Pipeline is a framework in Rails that manages, compresses, and serves assets like JavaScript, CSS, and images efficiently.

Action Mailer

Action Mailer is a built-in framework in Ruby on Rails used to send emails directly from applications.

B

Background Jobs

Background Jobs in Rails allow tasks to run asynchronously, outside the main request cycle, improving performance and user experience.

Bundler

Bundler is a dependency management tool in Ruby and Ruby on Rails that ensures all required gems (libraries) are installed in the correct versions for your application.