# Some basic questions about discourse and rails

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/some-basic-questions-about-discourse-and-rails/66852
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [July 26, 2017, 1:06pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/some-basic-questions-about-discourse-and-rails/66852 "2017-07-26T13:06:38Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 2

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### Author: ![vinothkannans](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/vinothkannans/32/86465_2.png) [@vinothkannans](https://meta.discourse.org/u/vinothkannans)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2017, 8:23am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/some-basic-questions-about-discourse-and-rails/66852/2 "2017-07-27T08:23:17Z")

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1. `.html.erb` files are only for bots and non-javascript browsers. In source you can see many html entities inside `<noscript data-path="/">` tag. That all rendered in server side using Rails and `.html.erb` files.  
And you can see an empty `<section id='main'>` tag in source. This is where handlebar files with ember will be rendered after the javascript and ember initialization.  
Almost all the UI you see visibly in your browser are ember rendered html after all initializations.

2. Discourse Front-End handlbed by EmberJS. Most of the Ember views are in `/app/assets/javascripts/discourse/templates` and `/app/assets/javascripts/admin/templates` not inside `/app/views/` (It is `.html.erb` files for Rails.).

3. I guess in ember, notifications are received from rails by [message bus](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-discourse-stays-online-message-bus-faye-long-polling/3238).  
If you just want to run a script after some time interval then just use [`Ember.run.later`](https://www.emberjs.com/api/ember/2.14/namespaces/Ember.run/methods/later?anchor=later) function.

4. Yes. EmberJS 👍.  
Also if you only need to change the front-end then you can try developing [themes / theme components](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-develop-custom-themes/60848) instead of plugins.

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