PHP to Ruby: Lesson 1

March 14th, 2009

The very basics

The Ruby language is object-oriented. PHP is not object-oriented, but has objects. Ruby’s object-oriented nature results in some areas of it’s syntax to look very much like JavaScript. PHP’s echo is puts in Ruby. PHP uses semicolons. Ruby uses semicolons, but only in specific cases. For clean, readable code, assume you won’t be needing semicolons. Lets being…

The Basics

PHP creates arrays and hashes with the same function array(). 
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# PHP
$array = array('my', 'php', 'array');
$hash = array(
   'my_index'=>'my_value',
   'my_second_index'=>'my_second_value'
);

Ruby handles arrays and hashes separately.

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# Ruby
array = ['my','ruby','array']
hash = {
   'my_index'=>'my_value',
   'my_second_index'=>'my_second_value'
}

Take note that Ruby creates arrays and hashes in the same syntax as JavaScript. Also note that there is no semicolon. Ruby doesn’t use them unless multiple commands are on the same line. That can lead to messy code or for loops so we’ll get into that later.

PHP uses curly brackets for blocking multiple commands and no curly brackets for single commands. 
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# PHP
if($is_php)
   echo "Yes this is PHP"; # single command

if($is_php) {
   echo "Yes this is PHP"; # first command
   echo "Its great!";
}

Ruby uses do and end for blocking multiple commands and curly brackets for single command blocks.

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# Ruby
if is_ruby { puts "This is ruby!" } # single command

puts "This is a backwards if statement" if is_ruby # variation of single command

if is_ruby do
   puts "This is ruby!" # first command
   puts "Its awesome!" # second command
end

Still pretty basic

PHP has the foreach() function. 
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# PHP
$array = array('this','is','a','php','test');
foreach($array as $el)
   echo "$el";

Ruby has an each method.

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# Ruby
array = ['this','is','a','ruby','test']
array.each do |el|
  puts el
end

array.each { |el| puts el } # the single lined version

Another Javascript similarity. The method each should look familiar to anyone that has used any of the popular Javascript frameworks Prototype, Mootools, and jQuery.

Ruby and the web

One of Ruby’s best web friends is eRuby (embedded Ruby). eRuby will make the PHP to Ruby transition that much smoother. For example:

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# PHP
<? if($is_php) { ?>;
  PHP is great!
<? } ?>
And with eRuby: 
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# Ruby
<% if is_ruby do %>;
  Ruby is awesome!
<% end %>

That will wrap up this entry, but there is more to come.

Posted by dane Filed in JavaScript, PHP, Ruby

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