Padrino was created and open-sourced in 2010. The framework was created by Nathan Esquenazi, Davide D'Agostino and Arthur Chiu based on the prior sinatra_more gem. The framework was created in order to extend Sinatra to more easily support rich web applications.
Features
This is a list of major functionality Padrino provides on top of Sinatra:[4]
Agnostic: Full support for many popular testing, templating, mocking, and database libraries.
Generators: Create Padrino applications, models, controllers i.e.: padrino g project.
Mountable: Unlike other Ruby frameworks, principally designed for mounting multiple apps.
Routing: Full url named routes, named params, respond_to support, before/after filter support.
Tag Helpers: View helpers such as: tag, content_tag, input_tag.
Asset Helpers: View helpers such as: link_to, image_tag, javascript_include_tag.
Form Helpers: Builder support such as: form_tag, form_for, field_set_tag, text_field.
Text Helpers: Useful formatting like: relative_time_ago, js_escape_html, sanitize_html.
Mailer: Fast and simple delivery support for sending emails (akin to ActionMailer).
Logging: Provide a unified logger that can interact with your ORM or any library.
Reloading: Automatically reloads server code during development.
Localization: Full support of I18n
Note that as a user of Padrino, each of the major components can be pulled in separately to an existing Sinatra application or they can be used together for a comprehensive upgrade to Sinatra (a full-stack Padrino application).