Beautiful Rails

This past couple of weeks I was back again working with Rails. This was after an initial discussion with Indian Railways GM who said a prototype/demo might help them with the service proposal. I was after their API but apparently at this point, if someone wants to use their API, it is burdened with huge price and unrealistic requirements. At some point, they had 20 lakhs of deposit and 5 crores of turnover to even qualify to use their API. It is mind-numbingly cruel on their part to ignore young budding entreprenuers but that is for a different topic.

While I was experiment about their APIs, I wondered if it would as restful as Rails is. I still have no idea but I still had to come up with a prototype to discuss what I intended to offer. Rewind 2 weeks, I had no site, no code written. Today, albeit in a dev environment, I have couple of pretty decent Rails sites that talk to each other via XML, all written to be Restful.

Technology is wonderful, the ones that make sense and are easy to use are even more satisfying. Rails is cool, easy to prototype and amazingly fast to adapt. The plugins that are available to support are just limitless.

As part of this effort, I ended up using the following open source resources:

• Ruby on Rails
• Passenger (Deployment of RoR apps in an easy and robust way on Apache)
• Subdomain-Fu
  (Helps in subdomain management)
• Nifty Generators
• AuthLogic
• Dyndns (the site that helps you host on your box by managing your dynamic IP address at home)
  
• ActiveResource (part of rails)
• Apache

I just wish there was open source hosting sites that would let you host until you move to commercial space. Not all of us are seed funded. All in all, exciting two weeks. I plan to enhance it further until the folks in Delhi ask for one or deny. If they do not ask for a demo, backup plans are to contact other OTA's or go solo. Either ways, its exciting.