BeginningRuby on Rails

Most Ruby on Rails training assumes that the student is already an experienced programmer. Beginning Ruby on Rails Bootcamp provides comprehensive coverage of Ruby on Rails programming, but assumes only that the student is intelligent and motivated.

The first two days of the course are devoted to learning Ruby, followed by our five-day Ruby on Rails Bootcamp. In 7 challenging days, Beginning Ruby on Rails Bootcamp will take you from complete novice to being able to build your first Ruby on Rails application. In addition, you'll become an active participant in the Ruby on Rails programming community, allowing you to continue learning upon completion of the class.

The class is taught on Rails 3.0 and takes advantage of many Rails 3.0 features including REST, MultiView, ATOM, ActiveSupport, and more.

What You’ll Learn

Upon completion of Beginning Ruby on Rails, the student will be able to:

Ruby

• Understand the fundamental concepts of object oriented programming
• Run code using the interactive Ruby shell and the Ruby interpreter
• Understand objects, methods, and classes
• Define classes and equip them with attributes and actions
• Demonstrate familiarity with important built-in classes and useful methods
• Use code blocks for iteration
• Interact with files using Ruby
• Use mixin modules to add class functionality
• Raise and handle exceptions
• Test code with unit tests
• Use RubyGems to download and install Ruby libraries
• Document source code correctly

Ruby on Rails Bootcamp

• Understand the major components that make up Rails (ActiveRecord, ActionPack, ActionMailer, and ActiveSupport)
• Understand the Model View Controller (MVC) pattern and how Ruby on Rails conventions encourage efficient design
• Apply Ruby on Rails best practices
• Install, setup, design, develop and deploy new Ruby on Rails applications, as well as update, manage, and maintain existing Ruby on Rails applications
• Understand how ActiveRecord provides associations, validations, and easy interactions with powerful database queries
• Understand how ActionPack's ActionView simplifies web interfaces through layouts, partials, helpers, and ERb templates
• Understand how ActionPack's ActionController provides powerful handling of web requests by providing mechanisms for routing, redirects, and renders, as well as handling parameters, sessions, and caching
• Build, parse, and manipulate XML Documents by generating RSS feeds, and creating and consuming Web Services
• Create and run Tests using built-in processes such as unit tests, functional tests, fixtures, assertions, and validations
• Avoid Security pitfalls and deployment problems
• Debug applications using breakpoints, logging, and prototyping in an interactive console
• Make rich and dynamic interfaces using Ruby on Rails' extensive, easy to use AJAX libraries
• Utilize Ruby on Rails generators, plugins, engines, and Ruby libraries to quickly add extended functionality and features
• Deploy and Maintain Ruby on Rails applications using Capistrano, and a trusted Rails deployment stack

Section	Contents

Ruby	Click to Show

Ruby	Click to Hide
Background and Introduction	Ruby's history Object-oriented vs. procedural languages, interpreted vs. compiled languages, strengths and weaknesses of an object-oriented interpreted language
Starting Out	Running Ruby interactively with irb, using the Ruby interpreter, creating simple Ruby executable files
The Basics	Introduction to classes, methods and variables, looking at a built in class and its methods, understanding objects and attributes
Defining Classes	Learning how to create user defined classes, understanding local, global, object and class variables, class inheritance and polymorphism
Methods	Class methods vs. object methods, overriding existing methods, associating methods with blocks
Standard Types	Understanding basic building blocks (numbers, strings, regexp, arrays and hashes)
Flow Control	Implementing basic looping constructs and logic operations, understanding code blocks, iterators and the yield keyword
Input and Output	Opening and closing files, reading and writing to files
Modules	Understanding mixin modules and how to incorporate them into a class, namespaces, learning to break up code into separate files
Exceptions	Dealing with errors by raising exceptions, handling exceptions using a rescue clause, catch and throw
Testing	Understanding the principles behind test-driven development, implementing basic unit testing
Ruby Gems	An introduction to Ruby's package manager, useful Ruby gems
Documentation	Learning the correct syntax for documenting source code, learning how to generate HTML documentation with RDoc, explore the `ri` command line utility
The Ruby Community	Learning where to get help, talk about Ruby, find documentation, or contribute to the cause

Ruby on Rails	Click to Show

Ruby on Rails	Click to Hide
Introduction	Introduction to Ruby on Rails, the instructor and the course. Understanding what Rails is and isn't.
Diving Right In	A look at a real-world Rails app. Quick tour of default app. Overview of environments. Brief demo of Active Record, Action Controller, and Action View.
MVC (Model View Controller)	Detailed look at Rails MVC implementation. Full lifecycle of web request.
Active Record basics	The Active Record Pattern. Models, Tables, Columns, Attributes. Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD).
Action Controller basics	Actions, Controllers, Routing requests, Params, Sessions, flash messages.
Action View basics	ERb templates, layouts, partials, views, components, helpers.
More Active Record features	Validations, Associations, Aggregations, Accessors, find_by_*, overriding defaults.
More Action Pack features	Request filters, render versus redirect, caching, responds_to, form helpers.
Testing	Testing controllers (functional), testing models (unit), creating mock objects (fixtures), assertions, rake.
Routes	Routing requests, creating patterns, error-handling
Request Filters and Callbacks	after, before, around (prepend_around), callbacks
Debugging	Breakpointer, logging, script/console
AJAX	AJAX form requests, effects, controls and JS helpers. RJS templates
Action Mailer Basics	Sending mail, processing mail, using generator, testing mail
Web Services and XML	using Builder, RXML, generating RSS feed, producing, consuming Web Service
Extending Rails	Active Support basics. Plugins, Engines, ruby libraries
Benchmarking and Performance	Caching (fragments, partials), eager loading, profiling, benchmarking
Deployment	Sample server setups, Capistrano configuration, recipe creation

Requirements

Some programming experience is helpful, but not required.