New to Rails? Read This

Rails
1

I’m still relatively new to rails myself but have been using it now for
about 6 weeks. I’ve read 3 rails books, performed thousands of google
searches, saved everything important to my current work scope, and want
to make it easier for those that come after me.

If you are reading this then you probably already realize that it’s
sometimes difficult to find information on certain topics. To make it
easier to find things you need, please look below:

========= Direct Tutorials/Walkthroughs ==========

http://www.buildingwebapps.com/learningrails

Summary: This is one of the best learning rails sites I’ve come across.
Everything works with Rails 2.3.2 and both persons that teach on this
site are very experienced with rails. I can personally attest to
Christopher Haupt who has on numerous occassions, personally answered my
emails to assist me with questions. The entire site is free and will
walk you through creating a custom content management system from start
to finish.

In addition, it goes through a lot of core foundations and these guys
are really good at explaning things.

========== SCREENCASTS ==========

Summary: This is the home of Ryan B., a very masterful rails
programmer that has created an extremely large archive of screencasts
(all free) that take you through many core rails fundamentals (basic and
advanced).

Ryan is a great all around guy and will teach you things you never
thought possible.

========== GUIDES ==========

Summary: The often unnoticed guides are the ones perhaps the easiest to
find, but people tend to miss them. The guides listed at
rubyonrails.org are very informative and will teach you many nuances of
rails.

http://www.fortytwo.gr/

Summary: Another really good guides site is fortytwo. They house many
informative articles and tips for rails that will help you when you feel
a bit lost.

========== DATABASE ==========

http://databases.about.com/lr/database_normalization/24903/1/

Summary: Many people, including myself, forget to normalize their rails
databases. Because rails works with a lot of associations, it is very
important to first make sure your databases are normalized. Most people
will agree that if you want to use relationships like HABTM, you need to
normalize to a minimum of 3NF (3rd Normal Form).

This site will showcase exactly how to normalize your database and is
fairly easy to follow.

========== BOOKS ==========

Agile Web D. with Rails 3nd Edition Beta
Foundation Rails 2
Enterprise Rails

Summary: A lot of books are either out of date, or no longer workable
with Rails 2.3.2. These books still are effective learning tools.

Foundation Rails 2 teaches you things in order of importance. Agile Web
is a very good read. Enterprise Rails is important because it gives you
the database/model associations and how to use them effectively in your
projects.

======================================

If anyone wants to add important links, tips, or other comments that
might help someone new to Rails, please do so here.

Thanks.

2

Thanks for this post. I too am coming into this new (except for a
heavy Java background) and the onyl thing I would add to your list is
this newsgroup. My personal goal here is to keep learning, hopefully,
be able to answer other people’s questions on this newsgroup. -Janna B.

3

Testing Rails can be cumbersome but it’s also very necessary. You can
hand-test all your code and do the greatest job possible but in the end,
it won’t be enough. So, you should become familiar with a few testing
platforms you can use with rails.

By default, whenever you create anything new with rails 2.3.2, test
files are automatically created for you. These tests, called Unit Tests
are the very barebones basic test platform you can use with Rails.

** UNIT TESTS **

You can find information about Unit Tests here:

** RSPEC **

But, Unit Tests may not be enough for you and you will find that there
are some more popular methods of testing available. One of the more
common testing platforms is called Rspec.

http://wiki.github.com/dchelimsky/rspec

Screencast tutorial from Ryan

The tutorial screencast is a little old but it gives you an idea of how
to test with rspec…

** AUTOSPEC **

A lot of people refer to autotest and autotest became Autospec.
Autospec is very simple to use (it’s also referred to as ZenTest,
because of the gem name). You can also use Autospec with Rspec to add a
more complete testing platform for rails:

http://ph7spot.com/articles/getting_started_with_autotest

http://www.nateclark.com/articles/2008/09/17/_autotest_-is-now-_autospec_-how-to-set-up-autospec-for-rspec-and-rails-with-zentest

** SHOULDA **

Another new kid on the block is Shoulda. It is actually a very
interesting testing platform and it might not be as famous as RSpec but
it’s really easy to use and I’m starting to lean towards using shoulda
over rspec, personally. However, go with what platform you feel is best
for “YOU”…

http://wiki.github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda/rails
http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/testing/shoulda
thoughtbot case studies featuring design and development projects for websites, mobile and web applications.?

Enjoy!

4

Älphä Blüë wrote:
[…]

** AUTOSPEC **

A lot of people refer to autotest and autotest became Autospec.
Autospec is very simple to use (it’s also referred to as ZenTest,
because of the gem name).

Almost. AFAIK, autotest used to work with both Rails’ built-in tests
and RSpec, but at some point the script was split. So now you use
autospec for RSpec and autotest otherwise.

Autospec and autotest are part of the ZenTest package, but ZenTest is
more than just those scripts: it contains the logic necessary for
autotest to do incremental testing. So it’s a bit of an
oversimplification to say that autospec is referred to as ZenTest.

[…]

** SHOULDA **

Another new kid on the block is Shoulda. It is actually a very
interesting testing platform and it might not be as famous as RSpec but
it’s really easy to use and I’m starting to lean towards using shoulda
over rspec, personally.

I’ve noticed a lot of people going this way. Why? What are Shoulda’s
advantages over RSpec?

I like what you’re doing with this thread, BTW!

Best,

Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
[email protected]

5

Almost. AFAIK, autotest used to work with both Rails’ built-in tests
and RSpec, but at some point the script was split. So now you use
autospec for RSpec and autotest otherwise.

Autospec and autotest are part of the ZenTest package, but ZenTest is
more than just those scripts: it contains the logic necessary for
autotest to do incremental testing. So it’s a bit of an
oversimplification to say that autospec is referred to as ZenTest.

Thanks for the reply Marnen - great to see the differences between those
two. I personally did not realize this.

** SHOULDA **

Another new kid on the block is Shoulda. It is actually a very
interesting testing platform and it might not be as famous as RSpec but
it’s really easy to use and I’m starting to lean towards using shoulda
over rspec, personally.

I’ve noticed a lot of people going this way. Why? What are Shoulda’s
advantages over RSpec?

I’ll set aside some links that would do a better job at explaning the
pros/cons or the opinionated versus arguments between the two. Please
note that I like Rspec and I also like Shoulda. I haven’t gained enough
knowledge of both to reply with my own opinions unfortunately. My
attempt was to bring more of an awareness to the different testing
platforms out there and allow others to make their own educated guess as
to which one works well for them.

Rspec vs. Shoulda

http://kylebanker.com/blog/2008/08/from-rspec-to-shoulda/
http://www.vimeo.com/3296561

6

Today’s post revolves around communication and SME appreciation. SME’s
are Subject Matter Experts and every language or platform discussion
groups have them. These are generally people that have a great deal of
experience and house a wealth of knowledge that they share with others
in the community.

There are numerous SMEs that assist with answering questions by the
minute and it would do well to thank them and be appreciative of their
help.

However, how do you communicate your topic and readily obtain answers
from different SMEs?

======================
-------: Rule One:

Make certain that your topic is descriptive enough to highlight your
issue. Having trouble with queries or models - simply say so.

Example of a bad topic thread:

“I’m having trouble, please help”

– this doesn’t describe anything and your topic might be avoided.

Example of a good topic thread:

“Need assistance with model/query issue”

– this describes the problem as being related to models/queries.

======================
-------: Rule Two:

Make certain that your topic contains all of the pertinent information
surrounding your issue. More information is always better than less
information.

If you were having a model/query issue you would want to post a general
idea of what both your controller method initiating the query looks
like, and the model method being called looks like. You would also want
to make sure you tested that query in a console so you could see what
the output is. Supplying these three things would make it much easier
for someone to assist with a model/query issue for instance.

========================
-------: Rule Three:

Always make sure you try the simple things first before posting on an
issue. A lot of issues stem from a simple restart of a server because
some changes never took effect.

Make sure your syntax looks appropriate in the editor you are using.
Make sure you at the very minimum try to test or debug the code in the
console. Doing this will make it easier when adding information to your
topic.

=========================
Lastly,

Thank the people that helped you resolve your issue. Patience,
understanding, reflection on the way a person helps you and your end
response goes a long way. These SMEs are giving their own volunteer
time and knowledge to help you. Make sure you show them the respect
they deserve.

==================================================
Channels and Communication Forums / MIRC:

http://www.ruby-forum.com
http://railsforum.com

Start here to choose the forum that best describes your needs. Ruby on
Rails is my choice each and every day.

Mirc Channels:

Ruby Language: #ruby-lang on the irc.freenode.net server
Ruby on Rails: #rubyonrails on the irc.freenode.net server

There are a lot of people on the ruby on rails channel. There are a
great many SMEs there that assist by the second. Please be patient when
asking for help on IRC.

If you need help with IRC chat and you need some code looked at, make
sure you go to Pastie.org before asking for help:

http://pastie.org/

You can put all of your code that needs help with on here and it will
give you a nice neat link. You can link that into IRC chat and anyone
can see the code and assist you. It’s also properly formatted
automatically for you!

7

Just a few more comments and nitpicks, in the hope of keeping this
thread as useful as possible…

Älphä Blüë wrote:
[…]

There are numerous SMEs that assist with answering questions by the
minute and it would do well to thank them and be appreciative of their
help.

Indeed. (I think Frederick C. may very well be superhuman…)

However, how do you communicate your topic and readily obtain answers
from different SMEs?

======================
-------: Rule One:

Make certain that your topic is descriptive enough to highlight your
issue. Having trouble with queries or models - simply say so.

Example of a bad topic thread:

“I’m having trouble, please help”

– this doesn’t describe anything and your topic might be avoided.

Example of a good topic thread:

“Need assistance with model/query issue”

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I recently saw a subject line that was
something like “Rails problem” – which, when you think about it,
probably describes 2/3 of the posts on this list, so it’s not terribly
helpful. :slight_smile:

I do think that your “good” subject could be made even a bit more
specific, but it’s a great place to start.

[…]

==================================================
Channels and Communication Forums / MIRC:

The chat medium is called IRC. mIRC is the name of one client program.

[…]

If you need help with IRC chat and you need some code looked at, make
sure you go to Pastie.org before asking for help:

http://pastie.org/

Great idea – although Gist ( http://gist.github.com ) might be even
better than Pastie.

Again, thanks for taking the time to write all this!

Best,

Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
[email protected]

8

So yes, it’s important to write your topic with something specific and
interesting so that the experts want to read and help. But with some
luck, you’ll still get views with a poorly written topic. There’s a
better (in my opinion) reason to be specific – to help the people who
have the same issue tomorrow. I try to write a topic such that if it
had already existed (started by someone else last year, for example)
my google searches would have revealed this based on title alone. In
light of that, something along the lines of “How can I make Model.find
use a SQL WHERE clause?” is even better than “Need assistance with
model/query issue” (possibly you agree and were just trying to keep
the example generic).

Sometimes if I’m not familiar with terminology I’m tempted to be
vague, but think of it this way: if I’m specific and inaccurate,
hopefully someone corrects me. Maybe my problem is well understood,
and I just didn’t know how to search for it. The next person who is
equally confused benefits from my specific topic title.

On Jul 13, 10:17 am, “Älphä Blüë” [email protected]
wrote:

– this describes the problem as being related to models/queries.
This is a great thread, by the way! I’ve been using primarily:
Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide for a solid
understanding of the language, Agile Web D. with Rails, and
the guides at rubyonrails.org. I’ll try out some of your other
suggestions tonight. Found anything good on Rails + Ajax yet? I
can’t decide whether to order Scott R.'s book or not since the
abstract seems to indicate I can learn the same things reading
script.aculo.us reference material.

9

Don’t forget the official Rails Wiki - http://wiki.rubyonrails.org.
Lots of good info there.

10

To add another book to the three initially mentioned ( which are all
very good ! )

Ruby on Rails Bible ( released late last year ! )
http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Rails-Bible-Timothy-Fisher/dp/0470258225
http://www.rubyonrailsbible.com/

cheers, Dave P.

On Jul 14, 4:44 am, “Älphä Blüë” [email protected]

11

Found anything good on Rails + Ajax yet? I
can’t decide whether to order Scott R.'s book or not since the
abstract seems to indicate I can learn the same things reading
script.aculo.us reference material.

Well, I’m really glad you asked this particular question. I’m still
going through a ton of resources on ajax/rails.

So, what I find wonderful about rails is that rails + ajax is like
having a perfect marriage. They work so well with each other, it’s
wonderful to implement both in a project. By default, rails uses
prototype and scriptaculous but I’m looking into jQuery at the moment.

jQuery seems to be really solid.

Here’s a link which will “create” an up-to-date trend chart when you
click on it using google trends:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=jQuery%2CPrototype+ajax%2Cscriptaculous%2Cmootools%2Cdojo&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

jQuery
Prototype
Scriptaculous
Mootools
Dojo

You also have jMaki but that uses jQuery, but jMaki also has great
support in certain IDE environments like netbeans. But, IDEs are
another subject altogether.

If you notice by the trends chart, jQuery is heavily on the rise.

12

== Tutorial Injection #1 ==

Normally I would just pass some links but at times it’s a little
refreshing to add some very simple tutorials that many people ask about.
This tutorial is about RESTful routing and mapping resources.

=== RESTful Routing and Mapping Resources (advanced) ===

By default, whenever you create a scaffold, 7 methods are automatically
created for you. These are index, new, edit, show, update, create, and
destroy.

In order to map all paths to these resources a simple map resources line
is automatically created for you in your routes.rb file using the
pluralized name of the controller.

E.g. scaffold name product produces a controller called products

map.resources :products

This one little line now maps all of your RESTful resources for this
controller. However, what if you had something like this?

E.g. scaffold name users_allowed produces a controller called
users_alloweds

Now you wouldn’t want people to see yourdomain.com is available for purchase - Sedo.com
would you? That would look very strange or peculiar. So, you can do
something as simple as this:

map.resources :users_alloweds, :as => ‘users_allowed’

Now your url will look like http://yourdomain.com/users_allowed which is
a little better.

But, what if you want to group certain resources by a particular
category. Say for instance you want to group this particular url in a
category called members. Well, you can use a nifty prefix command:

map.resources :users_alloweds, :as => ‘users_allowed’, :path_prefix =>
‘members’

Now your url will look like http://yourdomain.com/members/users_allowed
which gives you a nice category grouping and a singular path name.

And, lastly, for this very simple tutorial, what if you wanted to take
this further and just allow only the index method/view to be accessed
and the rest of the resources not. A simple way:

map.resources :users_alloweds, :as => ‘users_allowed’, :only => ‘index’,
:path_prefix => ‘members’

(acceptable) yourdomain.com is available for purchase - Sedo.com
(not allowed) yourdomain.com is available for purchase - Sedo.com

====================================

If you need to understand more about routing, please visit:

13

And, correcting my own self,…

It might be better to say that Rails is a “framework”… :slight_smile:

… or more precisely, a web application framework…

Ruby = language
Rails = framework

14

=====Ruby and Ruby on Rails=====

Perhaps I neglected to open with a proper introduction to Ruby and Ruby
on Rails. Therefore, I feel it’s appropriate to separate and explain
the two in a very minimalist format.

==What is Ruby?==

Ruby is a programming “language”. It is the very backbone upon which
rails was built. Understanding Ruby is, IMHO, more important than
understanding Rails. Without a proper understanding of the core
programming language that Rails itself is built upon, many trivial
things can become complicated things.

This is why it’s important to remember to read up on your Ruby
programming language resources. There is a wealth of knowledge all
around the web for Ruby.

http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/
http://www.ruby-forum.com/forum/4

==What is Rails?==

Rails is a “platform”. It is easy to confuse and mistake apples for
oranges but Rails is “not” a programming language. It is a development
“platform”. It is also still a very young platform, roughly 5 years
old. It was released as open source in July 2004.

==Making proper comparisons==

When performing research, please make sure you compare apples to apples
and not apples to oranges. For instance:

PHP vs. Ruby on Rails (incorrect)
– PHP is a language and Ruby on Rails is a platform

You can compare various “platforms” that PHP might use to Rails, but you
can’t compare a language to a platform. Many people make this mistake.

15

===== GitHub =====

http://github.com/guides/home

Github is a great place to host your project(s) while you develop.

You can get a free subscription but your projects will be public and
open source (viewable to everyone) or you can get a paid subscription
(costs very little) and have a large storage area, multiple repositories
and you can keep your work private.

Github can be used to commit/add new changes while you work on your
project, much like subversion. This allows you to track changes and
because it’s hosted online, you can add authors and other members to
work on projects with you, if desired.

Github, along with Capistrano, can be used to help you with migrations
and updates from development to production phases. Develop on your own
machine, commit changes to Github and further commit changes to your
server. It’s seamless and once working, very smooth and efficient.

The only drawback is there is a bit of a learning curve with Github and
if you develop on windows, an even bigger learning curve exists. Check
out the guides for more information.

----- Building a Repository and Uploading Your Project -----

  1. Signup and register your account in Github
  2. Download/install the latest Git release
    ----- For windows this is
    http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/downloads/list
    2a. See the guides section if you use linux or mac.
  3. Configure your SSH key for git by opening git bash and typing:
    ssh-keygen -C “[email protected]” -t rsa
  4. Configure your profile by typing:
    git config --global user.name “Your N.”
    git config --global user.email [email protected]
  5. Make your rails project directory or go to an existing rails
    project.
  6. Right-click (if windows) and Git Bash Here.
  7. Type “git init” to configure git inside your project directory.
  8. Type “touch README” and enter.
  9. Type “git add README” and enter.
  10. Type “git commit -m ‘first commit’” and enter
  11. Type the following command to set your origin:
    git remote add origin [email protected]:username/YourProjectName.git
  12. Type “git push origin master” to push the readme file to your
    repository.

----- Updating any new changes -----

This is where at times it can get confusing. Several times you might
encounter errors when trying to push to origin. Here’s a pretty fail
safe way of doing it. If anyone else would like to add to this or
change it, please feel free.

  1. Modify your rails project, add new code, etc.
  2. git bash here at your project directory.
  3. Type “git pull origin master” and enter.
  4. Type "git add . " and enter.
    (yes that is a period)
  5. Type "git commit -m ‘some message describing your changes’ and
    enter.
  6. Type “git push origin master” and enter.

=========

Now if you go to your git repository online you will see all the changes
and notes. There is a lot more that you can do with Git and I’m just
touching on the basics and hoping to help anyone who has trouble getting
an initial repository going.

Take care.

16

9 Resources for New R. on Rails Developers:

http://charlesmaxwood.com/9-resources-for-new-ruby-on-rails-developers/

Cheers, Sazima

17

Perhaps worth mentioning what git is: a distributed version control
system. So, independent of github, software version control is an
important practice.

On Jul 14, 2009, at 5:35 PM, Älphä Blüë wrote:

18

Sazima wrote:

9 Resources for New R. on Rails Developers:

http://charlesmaxwood.com/9-resources-for-new-ruby-on-rails-developers/

Cheers, Sazima

Nice - bookmarked.

19

==================================================
Ruby Platforms, Rails Versions, and Other Notables

With any language, there are always multiple versions (platforms) that
you can use. Ruby is no different when it comes to this. In addition,
there are specific OS (Operaing System) distributions for those
platforms. Installation of each platform type, based on the OS type can
be entirely different and at times confusing.

Rails also houses many different versions and each one has specific
nuances versus the other. So, trying to find a good combination of the
two for your development/testing/production projects can be a bit
difficult, considering how much information we become inundated with
over the course of documentation and help searches.

Here is a solid rule of thumb:

Don’t upgrade Ruby platforms OR Rails versions for (production). Don’t
ever do it unless you enjoy some amount of pain, hardship, and reaching
for Tylenol and Motrin.

Conrad T. offered me some great advice when I thought about doing
the former. I’m going to add these thoughts because they do help:

Ruby/Rails platform upgrades:

  1. Download and Install your Ruby version upgrade for non-production
    purposes only.
  2. Optionally install any relevant gems or write a Ruby/Bash script to
    switch between the different implemented platforms.
  3. Read the README file and execute any tests of the gem(s) you need
    for your Rails application against any of the relevant Ruby
    implementations.
  4. Test against the new implementations.
  5. You now have a test harnass in place for your rails application.
20

Älphä Blüë wrote:

==================================================
Ruby Platforms, Rails Versions, and Other Notables

Ruby/Rails platform upgrades:

  1. Download and Install your Ruby version upgrade for non-production
    purposes only.
  2. Optionally install any relevant gems or write a Ruby/Bash script to
    switch between the different implemented platforms.
  3. Read the README file and execute any tests of the gem(s) you need
    for your Rails application against any of the relevant Ruby
    implementations.
  4. Test against the new implementations.
  5. You now have a test harnass in place for your rails application.

Or adopt some sort of virtualization technology, like VMware.

I run an Ubuntu virtual machine for my Rails development. When it was
time to test out migrating Ruby and Rails to newer versions, I cloned
the existing VM, and upgraded the clone, then pulled in the application
from the source repository. Parallel environments with few headaches,
and allows straight up comparative testing.