Mastering Ruby on Rails: Insider Secrets for Crafting Elegant and Efficient Code

Ruby on Rails has long been a favorite among developers who value convention over configuration, rapid development, and clean, readable code. But while Rails makes it easy to build web applications quickly, mastering it—truly writing elegant and efficient Rails code—requires more than just following tutorials or scaffolding resources. It takes a deeper understanding of the framework’s conventions, its underlying Ruby magic, and the hidden best practices that seasoned developers rely on.

In this guide, we’ll uncover the insider secrets that elevate everyday Rails code into high-performance, maintainable, and scalable systems. Whether you're a mid-level developer looking to sharpen your skills or a senior dev aiming to refine your toolkit, you’ll find actionable techniques, architectural patterns, and performance optimizations to help you write Rails apps that are as beautiful under the hood as they are on the surface.

Let’s dive into the heart of Ruby on Rails and explore how to build smarter, cleaner, and faster—one elegant line of code at a time.

Restful Design

# Bad (non-RESTful)  
get '/add_comment', to: 'comments#add'  
post '/save_comment', to: 'comments#save'

# Good RESTful practice  
resources :articles do  
  resources :comments, only: [:create, :destroy]  
end  

Scope usage

class Product < ApplicationRecord  
  scope :available, -> { where(stock: > 0).order(price: :asc) }  
  scope :cheap, -> { where("price < ?", 20) }  
end  

# Use in controllers:  
@products = Product.available.cheap

Service Objects for Bussiness Logic

# app/services/user_registration.rb  
class UserRegistration  
  def initialize(user_params)  
    @user = User.new(user_params)  
  end  

  def call  
    if @user.valid?  
      @user.save  
      send_welcome_email  
      true  
    else  
      false  
    end  
  end  
  private  
  def send_welcome_email  
    UserMailer.welcome(@user).deliver_later  
  end  
end
  
# In your controller:  
def create  
  service = UserRegistration.new(user_params)  
  @user = service.user  
  service.call ? redirect_to(@user) : render(:new)  
end

Decorators && Presenters

# app/presenters/user_presenter.rb  
class UserPresenter < Draper::Decorator  
  delegate_all  
  
  def full_name  
    "#{object.first_name} #{object.last_name}".titleize  
  end  
end 
 
# In your view:  
<%= @user.decorate.full_name %>

Prevent N+1 Queries

# Bad (N+1 queries)  
@posts = Post.all  
@posts.each { |post| puts post.author.name }  

# Good  
@posts = Post.includes(:author).all

ActiveRecord become usage

class User < ApplicationRecord; end
class Admin < User; end

user = User.find(1)
admin = user.becomes(Admin)

Ruby core: #itself

[1, 2, 3].map(&:itself)
# => [1, 2, 3]

ActiveSupport #delegate

class Order < ApplicationRecord
  belongs_to :customer

  delegate :email, :full_name, to: :customer, prefix: true
end

order.customer_email
order.customer_full_name

Use try and try!

user.try(:name) # return nil if user is nil.
user.try!(:name) # return NoMethodError when user is nil.

ActiveSupport #deep_dup

config = { settings: { theme: "dark" } }
copy = config.deep_dup
puts config[:settings][:theme]  # => "light"

Ruby #define_method

[:email, :phone].each do |field|
  define_method("masked_#{field}") do
    send(field).to_s.gsub(/\d/, '*')
  end
end

Ruby #to_query

{ name: "Samir", age: 30 }.to_query
# => "name=Samir&age=30"

Thanks for reading.

#Ruby on Rails #Web Development #Programming #Software Engineering