Two completely different ways have emerged for using Ruby on Rails as the back end to a rich client-side JavaScript application.
* The 37Signals “Russian Doll” approach, where the server generally returns HTML to the client. This approach uses aggressive caching and a little bit of JavaScript glue to keep the application fast.
* The “Rails API” approach, where the server generally returns JSON to the client, and a JavaScript MVC framework handles the actual display.
Which of these will work for you? We will look at code to see the structural difference between these two approaches and see what the speed, extensibility, and maintainability trade-offs are. At the end of the talk, you will be better equipped to chose a structure for your next rich-client application.
Video producer: http://www.railsconf.com/