The new Reactive release is based on a simple architecture.
Let’s take an example: An application issues a request, this request will be processed by a dispatcher which will likely produce a response. This response should be treated by the application, it will through an output handler.
So an application is a bundle of dispatchers and output handlers.
What is a request like?
A request may be “list all my books”, so the response should be a representation of the books list. The user should see this list.- The dispatcher is responsible of handling the request, thus getting the book list.
- The output handler will expose the book list to the user in a form chosen by the request but created by the dispatcher.
In the current release, I provide a dispatcher that is capable of handling request in a MVC manner, this is reactive-mvc. I also provide an output handler which present the result with the WxWidgets toolkit, using wxRuby ,this is reactive-wx.
Here is a more detailed architecture schema:
You may see that several dispatchers may live at the same time in a Reactive application. Same goes for the output handlers. Each of these are seen as plugins (which are gems) by Reactive, this let’s you construct an application architecture in a modular fashion.
Now that you know who does what, jump to the create a reactive 0.2.0 application article.