Share your experience about the interaction of the backend and frontend

Hi, I want to ask you to share your experience about the interaction of the backend and frontend.

We face a problem when trying to transfer completed static layout produced by a frontend developer into rails app.

Things are getting worse when an app is finished (or almost) and we need to make some changes on html, images, css etc.

It happens because your front end developers do not experience in rails and their works on separate repo.

How you handle this process? May be you splitting up rails app into two pieces? Or may be you have other solutions that can help me?

Thanks!

Ideally, your front end developer would be integrated in the team. If that is not possible, I prefer having the front end work conducted after the application is mostly complete. That way integration could be as easy as dropping in a new css file.

James, thanks for your reply. I want to clarify something.

You mean frontend dev should know RoR well? In that case both frontend dev and backend dev will work on same repo, right?

If we conduct front end at the end of the project, both devs should care about views, sprites, swgs and other assets or front end dev should knor rails well enough. And we found out that making front end after (or in same time) back end work lead to to many rework.

That describes the problem; doesn't the obvious answer seem to be "don't do it that way"? :slight_smile:

Creating effective, engaging UX involves a lot more than just slapping a last-minute coat of paint over the top of whatever the "back end" devs have done.

I absolutely agree with that you wrote Hassan.

Right now our workflow looks like that:

Design a psd layouts > front end development of static site > back end development complete site > production deploy

And I looking for new workflow because:

We manually transfer assets, swg, css/sass, html into the app. Each time when front end changes we have options or made it directly in the rails app or in the front end repo of the app, and transfer all changes manually again and that the problem.

Then just stop. Train or hire a FE dev that knows enough to be part of the team. S/he doesn't need to be a Rails expert, just understand erb and a modest amount of Ruby/Rails syntax to start.

You can't be agile (small-a) with a waterfall-like process delivering the UI as you describe, and the final product can't possibly be as good as it would if the team were iterating collaboratively.

IMO :slight_smile:

I got it, thank you Hassan.

If possible, the UI developer should be familiar with Rail / erb files. If not, they will become familiar over the course of the project. To start, the UI person can view the generated HTML and give the desired changes to the Rails developer. Integrating the UI changes during development is easier than waiting to later when those changes might cause problems. I prefer the UI person react to my generated HTML such that I can just drop in their css file.

Are you also using Bootsrap, Foundation, or another reactive UI framework? Then both the UI & Rails devs will need to understand it and work together.

I see. Thank you James.