Previously I described a new project to explore a few different client-side/rich web application frameworks such as SproutCore and Cappuccino, by implementing a fairly trivial application in each of them.

In order to see just how loosely coupled this arrangement can be, I’ve implemented a fairly stock Rails application to serve as the back end for all of the front end implementations. Basically this could be done with any server-side framework that can provide a JSON HTTP API, but I chose Rails because that’s what I’ve used the most. This has certain implications, such as making frameworks that are geared toward Rails-style REST APIs seem easier to work with, so that’s worth bearing in mind.

This Rails app basically serves up two resources, projects and project sessions (it would have just been sessions but that name is reserved in Rails). A project can have a name, start date, project status and any number of associated project sessions. Each project session can have a start and end time and a description.

The source over on github at http://github.com/bruz/clocky-backend-rails. It’s nothing to get excited about on it’s own, but will provide a necessary back end from which to build.