Rails vs Django vs Express comparison - Hands-On Comparison

Build a Simple Web App with Rails, Django, and Express

📖 Scenario: You want to create a simple web app that shows a list of books with their titles and authors. You will build this app using three popular web frameworks: Rails (Ruby), Django (Python), and Express (JavaScript). This will help you understand how each framework handles data setup, configuration, core logic, and final output.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple web app that displays a list of books with their titles and authors using Rails, Django, and Express. Learn the differences in how these frameworks structure data, configure settings, handle core logic, and render output.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a data structure to hold book information

Add a configuration variable for minimum author name length

Filter books based on the author name length

Render the filtered list of books in the web app

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Web developers often need to choose between frameworks like Rails, Django, and Express. Building the same app in each helps understand their differences and strengths.

💼 Career

Knowing how to set up data, configure variables, apply core logic, and render output in popular frameworks is essential for backend and full-stack developer roles.

1

DATA SETUP: Create a list of books

In your Rails controller, create a variable called @books that holds an array of hashes. Each hash should have the keys :title and :author with these exact entries: { title: 'The Hobbit', author: 'J.R.R. Tolkien' }, { title: '1984', author: 'George Orwell' }, and { title: 'To Kill a Mockingbird', author: 'Harper Lee' }.

Ruby on Rails

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use an instance variable @books and assign it an array of hashes with the exact book details.

2

CONFIGURATION: Set minimum author name length

Add a variable called min_author_length and set it to 10 in your Rails controller. This will be used to filter authors with names longer than 10 characters.

Ruby on Rails

@books = [
  { title: 'The Hobbit', author: 'J.R.R. Tolkien' },
  { title: '1984', author: 'George Orwell' },
  { title: 'To Kill a Mockingbird', author: 'Harper Lee' }
]
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just create a variable min_author_length and assign it the number 10.

3

CORE LOGIC: Filter books by author name length

Create a variable called @filtered_books that holds only the books from @books where the author's name length is greater than min_author_length. Use the select method with a block that checks book[:author].length > min_author_length.

Ruby on Rails

@books = [
  { title: 'The Hobbit', author: 'J.R.R. Tolkien' },
  { title: '1984', author: 'George Orwell' },
  { title: 'To Kill a Mockingbird', author: 'Harper Lee' }
]
min_author_length = 10
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use select on @books and check if book[:author].length is greater than min_author_length.

4

COMPLETION: Render filtered books in the view

In your Rails view file, use an each loop to go through @filtered_books. For each book, display the title inside an <h2> tag and the author inside a <p> tag.

Ruby on Rails

@books = [
  { title: 'The Hobbit', author: 'J.R.R. Tolkien' },
  { title: '1984', author: 'George Orwell' },
  { title: 'To Kill a Mockingbird', author: 'Harper Lee' }
]
min_author_length = 10
@filtered_books = @books.select { |book| book[:author].length > min_author_length }

Need a hint?

Use ERB tags to loop through @filtered_books and display the title and author inside HTML tags.