Very Flat Merb Projects, New in 0.9.0

Man oh man am I happy. I recently discovered Merb, a more lightweight thread-safe alternative to Ruby on Rails. I might devote an entire post to this framework because there’s a lot to be said, but I want to get this off my chest.

I need a mini-framework

I’ve been looking at all these different frameworks to find something that can run more efficiently on my tiny little ghetto server, because I don’t have the resources to run these memory hogging rails apps for my relatively tiny websites. I really need a small framework for the kind of apps I make. You know, pull out a quick blog, wiki, or other, with no DB access at all. What about Camping? No, that’s a little too small. I settled on Merb. Merb is considerably bulkier than Camping, and for a bit I was wondering if even it was too much, until now…

The Merb guys have just released a developer version 0.9.0 which has some neat changes, but what definitely caught my eye was (from the last few lines of the post) the --very-flat option for the application template generator. No need to explain, I’ll just show you how awesome it is:

titanium:merb jinx$ merb-gen blog --very-flat
Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:57:23 GMT ~ Not Using Sessions
RubiGen::Scripts::Generate
      create  /blog.rb
      create  /README.txt

Now, if we load up the one file created for our project:

Merb::Router.prepare do |r|
  r.match('/').to(:controller => 'blog', :action => 'index')
end

class Blog < Merb::Controller
  def index
    "hi"
  end
end

Merb::Config.use { |c|
  c[:framework]           = {},
  c[:session_store]       = 'none',
  c[:exception_details]   = true
}

BAM!

Imagine that? That's all there is to our app. That's the entire source code-- program logic, configuration and support files. It's fully executable as its own application with the command merb -I blog. Microframework indeed. Granted, it's pulling all of the 'merb-core' gem, but that's pretty small. This code is super portable (in the put-it-on-a-usb-key sense, not the platform-to-platform sense) and really quick to develop with. Step aside, Camping.

Granted, I don't think I'll use this method of development since it's the same reason I won't use Camping, but it's nice to know I can drop down to the really simple level if I need to just prototype one quick "one-button" app and still have room to grow it out. The fact that Merb can actually do this is what's most mindblowing. It's a true testament to the modularity and extensibility of the framework's design. Getting Rails to run without ActiveRecord is a pain enough, let alone pulling out everything but routing and controllers.