Tag: Middleware

Real World Uses of Rails Metal and Middleware

There are times when Rails feels very heavy! Jason Seifer has joked for ages about how Rails can’t scale, and we all know that’s a fallacy, but there are times when you know a bit of code is simple and could be really lightweight but having it as part of a controller, having gone through the Rails routing process and all the filters would just slow it down.

At the end of 2008 Rail Metal was introduced and it came like a breath of fresh air. It simply works as a lightweight class dropped in to /app/metal/ that is given the opportunity to handle a request before the main Rails stack.

When I first started reading about Rails Metal/Middleware it seemed like a great idea, but it didn’t really offer anything with a real tangible benefit. Can it be used in real life, or is it a nice bit of icing – something fancy to show off to non-Rails/Rack developers?