A Ruby on Rails gem is a reusable package of Ruby code that enhances application functionality. Gems provide pre-built solutions for tasks like database integration or handling web requests, saving development time and effort. They streamline projects and enable faster delivery, especially in Ruby on Rails development.
There are several categories of Ruby on Rails gems:
- Performance Optimization
- Security Enhancement
- Productivity and Developer Tools
- Testing and Quality Assurance
- Frontend and UI
With so many gems available, choosing the right one can feel overwhelming. Which one should you pick, and why? In the following sections, I'll walk you through the must-know gems.
🤔 What are Must-have Ruby on Rails Gems?
Ruby on Rails gems extend the functionality of a Rails application and make development faster, easier, and more efficient.
Bundler
The Bundler gem is one of the most popular, with over 2,000,000,000 downloads. It provides a consistent environment for Ruby projects by tracking and installing the exact gems and versions needed. Based on your Gemfile, a single call to Bundler with $ bundle install will automatically download and install all the required gems.
RuboCop
RuboCop is a Ruby code style checking and code formatting tool. It aims to enforce the community-driven Ruby Style Guide. In addition to identifying issues in your code, RuboCop can automatically correct many for you. This gem is used widely across Ruby on Rails development services to ensure code quality and maintainability.
Bullet
The Bullet Gem helps boost your application's performance by minimizing the number of queries it executes.
It monitors your queries during development and alerts you when to add eager loading to address N+1 queries, when existing eager loading is unnecessary, and when to use counter cache.
📝 Summary
Gems significantly speed up the development process, improve code quality, automate repetitive tasks, and enhance application security and performance. The world of gems is tremendous; there are more than 183,000 gems in the latest official Ruby gems base. Whatever gem you choose, you make one step closer to fostering your application development process.
🙋 Want to Dive Deeper?
Explore this topic in greater detail in my blog post published on @monterail blog, where I've covered more Ruby on Rails Gems that help build more performant, secure, and maintainable applications. It is a perfect read for developers looking to enhance their Ruby on Rails applications.
Cover image source: Lokalise
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