Middleman: The missing front end of the Rails API stack

There’s a lot of talk around using Rails as a JSON API back-end, but less on how to use the same great tools we’ve been using in Rails to build front end single page JavaScript apps.

Learn how Middleman, a Ruby static website generator, is used by Poll Everywhere to build massively scalable and responsive front end JavaScript apps that talk to a Rails API server. I discuss topics including dependency management between several front ends and an API, env targeting with Foreman, deployments using rsync and nginx, and more.

Additional links

• Middleman - A modern static site generator
• Active Model Serializers - The “Rails API”
• Firehose - The “Stream API”
• Fannypack - Base classes for building single page Backbone applications
• The Twelve-Factor App - Manage Middleman environments and deployment targets
• HTML5 app on a floppy disk