Merb 0.9.0 Released

Merb 0.9.0 was released 5 days ago. It looks like the download instructions on the homepage have also been updated for 0.9.0. You can now install it as a gem or from source, by checking out the code from the Merb Git repository.

Aside from a more modular design, Merb 0.9 also introduces a more flexible application layout. Previously, the layout was essentially the same as for a Rails app. This is still the default, but if you create your app using merb-gen my_app --very-flat or --flat, you get a significantly smaller layout that might be better suited for small applications.

In fact, a --very-flat application consists of a single file with the following contents:

Merb::Router.prepare do |r|
  r.match('/').to(:controller => 'my_app', :action =>'index')
end

class MyApp < Merb::Controller
  def index
    "hi"
  end
end

Merb::Config.use { |c|
  c[:framework]           = {},
  c[:session_store]       = 'none',
  c[:exception_details]   = true
}

That’s not quite as tight as a true micro framework like Sinatra, but it’s pretty close. For very small applications, I have occasionally used Ruby’s built-in WEBrick server, but a very flat Merb app seems quite a bit simpler, as well as more future-proof, as this can be easily transformed into a full app with a more sophisticated layout if the app grows beyond its initial minimal scope.

Oh, by the way: I have contributed my first (admittedly tiny) patch to Merb (part 1, part 2), which adds support for dynamic layouts by allowing you to write something like layout :determine_layout in your controller to specify a method that is used to dynamically determine the layout to use, rather than hardcoding it on the controller level or having to pass it in each render call (yes, this works just like in Rails).