Sue Brandreth's Learning Resources

You’re probably here because you want to learn the Ruby on Rails (http://rubyonrails.org/) framework but you may not be entirely sure what it is.  Well, Rails is just a bunch of Ruby code written to handle the parts of a web application that you don’t often want to think about.

Rails uses, as you’ll often hear, “convention over configuration”.  That means that the creators of Rails have made a lot of decisions for you about how things should be structured and how the code should run. You can change them, but it’s best if you just go with the flow and work within their rules.

As you saw in the introduction:

Why Rails? Why not. There are dozens of possible technologies out there to choose from and, frankly, they do pretty much the same things. Rails is attractive because it’s a relatively straightforward and very well documented framework that’s used by many great startups and tech companies today and it has a very strong community of developers and students who support it. It lets you put up a functioning website in hours not days or weeks. The “in” tech will probably be something completely different in a few years, as it always is, but Rails presents a great platform on which to build the skills you need to carry you to that next phase.

Because Rails has made a lot of decisions for you, you can work incredibly fast. You can have a website up on the internet (though it won’t look like much) within a couple minutes. The very first time you generate a new project, everything is in place so you just have to fire up your local server (by typing simply $ rails server) and you’ll already see the Rails welcome page up there. Then it’s just a matter of plugging in all the pieces you actually need to make your rich web application run.

It also means that you can start immediately making small changes and seeing how they affect your application where before you would have had to build a ton of infrastructure and write lots of code before seeing a single thing change live. Rails makes your life a whole lot easier!

Rails also firmly organizes your code using an MVC pattern.

The best way to understand Rails is to use it, so we’ll spend a bit of time on some videos and reading but you’ll mostly be building your own Rails sample app.  You may have no idea what you’re doing, and that’s okay, but at least you should begin to understand what you DON’T know and what you’ll want to pay attention to going forward. A good tactic is to write down all the things that confuse you and either go looking for them on your own or keep them in mind for later.

Points to Ponder

Look through these now and then use them to test yourself after doing the tasks

• What is Rails?
• What language is Rails written in?
• Refresher: What are gems?
• What are the seven gems that make up Rails?
• What is the purpose of the gemfile?
• What is the command to create a new Rails app from the command line?
• How is a GET request different from a POST request?
• What is REST?
• What is a view?
• What is a controller?
• What is a model?

Tasks

1. Watch this basic overview of Rails Ruby on Rails 3 – An Overview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_DJdmvBStE) from Michael Hartl. It will walk through the creation of a very basic web application.

3. Go through the Learn Rails the Zombie Way tutorial (http://railsforzombies.org/) which lets you begin programming Rails right in your browser! It goes pretty quickly and you’ll probably need to re-watch the videos.

4. Watch the YouTube video Ruby on Rails: Understanding MVC architecture | lynda.com overview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mQjtk2YDkM

Additional Resources

• Read How I TRAINed to learn Rails (https://medium.com/how-i-learned-ruby-rails/how-i-trained-to-learn-rails-e08c94e2a51e#.tl2ir3a4d)

• Read MVC for Noobs (http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/mvc-for-noobs–net-10488).  This uses PHP as an example later in the article.

• Go through this Ruby on Rails Tutorial (http://www.codelearn.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial)

• Go through the Learn Ruby on Rails tutorial (https://www.codecademy.com/en/learn/learn-rails)

• Go through The Best Way to Learn Ruby on Rails tutorial (http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-best-way-to-learn-ruby-on-rails–net-21820)

In this project, you’ll get the opportunity to actually build a real Rails application.

The point here is to get familiar with the process of creating a Rails app, what things generally look like, and what you don’t know. When you get to the end of this project, you can consider yourself remarkably persistent and resilient.

1. Set up a Github repository for this project as previously.  See http://bedford-computing.co.uk/learning/ruby-on-rails/web-development-101-odin-project/

2. Go through the Jumpstart Labs Blogger 2 tutorial (http://tutorials.jumpstartlab.com/projects/blogger.html} sections 10 to 14. Pay attention to any error messages you get, both planned (because the tutorial walks you through a common error-guided workflow) and unplanned. You’ll see all these messages again and again when you’re building Rails apps, so it’s helpful to start getting familiar with which portions of the message you should pay attention to.

3. Here is a list of some common errors that may be encountered completing the Jumpstart Lab Blogger -especially if you are running into issues with routes, deleting, partials, and redirect_to (https://gist.github.com/burtlo/4970471).

4. Add in authentication in section I5. Warning: There is currently an error in this section of the tutorial. Make sure to enter the :username parameter into both your _form.html.erb and authors controller. Otherwise you will see an error like this: “authors.username may not be NULL:”

5. Try doing the final Extras section I6.

6. Don’t forget to deploy your app to Heroku!  See Deploy a Rails App (http://installfest.railsbridge.org/installfest/deploy_a_rails_app)

Extra Credit

• Michael Hartl guides you through creating a sample app using scaffolding as the first stage of his Rails tutorial (https://www.railstutorial.org/book/toy_app). Just do Chapter 2 – you’ll be doing the rest of the tutorial later.

• Look at the GIT Basics section (http://bedford-computing.co.uk/learning/ruby-on-rails/web-development-101-odin-project-3/).

Additional Resources

• Go through Code Learn’s Understanding Rails Directory Structure overview (http://www.codelearn.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial/rails-directory-overview)

• Watch the YouTube video Ruby on Rails – Part 3: Basic Rails – an older and slightly more technical 1.5 hour video introduction to rails from Armando Fox of UC Berkeley RAD Lab (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuuKDyUYFTU)

• Go through Getting Started with Rails (http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html). Another Ruby on Rails Guide. This walks through a similar blogger app and will help you add some extra features to your blog such as deleting comments.