I just started the second of the 3 TeaLeaf courses for back-end web-application development using Ruby on Rails.
The last exercise in Course 1 was an introduction to web-app development in Ruby using the Sinatra framework. Rails, as I understand so far, is a much more intense framework as compared to Sinatra. So, it has a much steeper learning curve. All the more true, for a web-app newbie.
Listed below are some of the key notes i made as i went through the precourse material and attempted the exercises.
Major Takeaways:
- The first few things to look at in a pre-existing Rails app's code
- .README.markdown
- ./Gemfile: Gives an idea of the complexity of the app based on the variety of gems it depends on
- ./config/routes.rb: Has code to generate various routes the app has
- use
rake routesor\rails\info route to list various routes - ./config/database.yml: database related info
- Rails has a lot of "magic" going on in the background owing mainly to its conventions (expectations and auto creation of files & code based on a single line of code / shell command)
- For the same reason, lot of hands-on practice would be needed to get used to all (or most) things going on in rails, ranging from folder & file structure to more advanced features
rails generate ...should be used sparingly as it can be confusing and/or redundant (generates lot of unnecessary files/code)- no data from the database is actually pushed to Git (.gitignore file is set to ignore the default db's '.sqlite3' files for git operations)
- the migration file and schema.rb which is modified by the
rake db:migratecommand is what goes into the repository
- the migration file and schema.rb which is modified by the
Learning Resources:
- The getting started guide: This is pretty good as a first-time Rails tutorial… i just powered through as many questions were raised following the steps listed! The page has links to more detailed descriptions of the concepts; some important ones are:
- The Rails Tutorial (Book): This looks like a good comprehensive tutorial and i plan to use it to refresh my Rails knowledge a while after i finish the course!