Ruby on Rails 1.1: What's New, Release History & Support Lifecycle

What Is New in Ruby on Rails 1.1

How does Rails 1.1 improve email handling?

Rails 1.1 introduces Action Mailer, a dedicated framework for building and delivering email messages.

• Mailers are plain Ruby classes that inherit from ActionMailer::Base.
• Templates can be written in ERB or Haml, just like normal views.
• Delivery methods (SMTP, sendmail, test) are configurable per environment.

class UserMailer < ActionMailer::Base
  default from: "[email protected]"

  def welcome_email(user)
    @user = user
    mail(to: @user.email, subject: "Welcome to MyApp")
  end
end

In practice, this means you can generate a mailer with script/generate mailer UserMailer and keep email logic out of controllers.

What routing enhancements are available in Rails 1.1?

Rails 1.1 adds RESTful routing helpers and named routes that make URL generation explicit and testable.

• map.resources :articles automatically creates index, show, new, edit, create, update, destroy routes.
• Named routes via map.named_route 'profile/:id', :controller => 'users', :action => 'show' generate profile_path(@user).
• Route constraints and optional segments are now supported.

# config/routes.rb
ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map|
  map.resources :posts
  map.profile '/users/:id', :controller => 'users', :action => 'show', :as => :profile
end

This matters if your team is moving toward a resource-oriented API; the generated helpers reduce hard-coded URL strings.

Which caching mechanisms were added or refined in Rails 1.1?

Rails 1.1 introduces page caching and fragment caching, giving developers fine-grained control over what gets cached.

• Page caching: stores the full response as a static file; use caches_page :action_name.
• Fragment caching: caches reusable view snippets with cache do ... end blocks.
• Cache store defaults now point to the file system, but you can plug in memcached via config.action_controller.cache_store = :mem_cache_store.

# app/controllers/articles_controller.rb
class ArticlesController < ApplicationController
  caches_page :show
  caches_action :index, :expires_in => 5.minutes
end

# app/views/articles/_summary.html.erb
<% cache @article do %>
  
<%= @article.title %>
  
<%= truncate(@article.body, :length => 200) %>
<% end %>

Watch out for stale content after updates; you must manually expire cached pages with expire_page or expire_fragment.

What generator and scaffolding updates should I expect in Rails 1.1?

Rails 1.1 refines the generator system, allowing custom templates and more granular scaffolding options.

• Generators now accept --skip flags to omit assets, tests, or helpers.
• Custom generator templates can be placed under lib/templates and will be picked up automatically.
• Scaffolded controllers now use RESTful actions by default.

# Generate a scaffold without JavaScript helpers
script/generate scaffold Post title:string body:text --skip-javascript

# Create a custom model generator
mkdir -p lib/templates/model
cp $(rails_path)/generators/model/model.rb lib/templates/model/model.rb

Most teams will appreciate the ability to tailor generated code to their style guide, reducing post-generation cleanup.