I started Ruby tonight. While I was installing, they explained that Ruby runs as a client-server model which can be broken down by understanding three components. Our web browser acts as the 'client', the Ruby application acts as the 'app server', and the app server can gather its' information from a server or 'database'. These components make up the ecosystem of a Client-Server model application. While I'm going thru this particular course I keep reminding myself that it's an introduction to Ruby on Rails and it is intended to give an idea of what it is like to program a basic application. After this module, there is a Ruby Foundations module which should go more in-depth and elaborate further on syntax, etc... So anyway, here's what I've picked up so far:
rvm use 1.9.3 : will start version of ruby
rails new nameofapp : to create a new directory within current directory
rails server : will start the rails server
hold ctrl + C : will stop rails server
rails generate scaffold : will assist in creating the variables for the app
--> this will pertain to publishing the project to github, for collaboration
git init : will initialize the git repository
git add . : will add project files to git - the period lets git know to add the repository within the current directory
git commit : will commit files and will freeze the current project files
-m "..." : will allow you to add a message when publishing
git push -u origin master : will publish repository to github after entering credentials
git clone : creates local repository for project from GitHub. This will need to be followed by the SSH url directly from GitHub.
bundle : when cloning (duplicating for collaboration) a repository it will install all needed bundles
-->/GitHub (now talking about Ruby on Rails, again.)
views : HTML templates used for page layouts
ERB : embedded ruby, which is a simple template language
<%= code %> : ERB ouput tag which will output the value of code in the template.
link_to 'link text' , url : creates an <a> tag with the given text and url
view partial : a view that is included as part of another view. signified by a leading _underscore.
render 'partial_name" : renders the content of the given partial into the page.
layout : a special view that wraps a page view and gives it common structure
yield : renders the page view into the layout view
bootstrap : framework by Twitter to help with application stylesheets
min (minifying) : removing white-space and comments to minimize file size
api.rubyonrails.org : resource for all methods, etc...
Ruby on Rails' ability to spit code out is impressive.
I was stumped for a long time on one of my final code challenges of the night. I buckled down and went back through the code I followed along with and tried to match things up. What's promising is that I was able to complete it after being stuck for a decent amount of time. With the amount of resources available for this particular language, I can foresee it being difficult to choose a particular one when seeking a specific piece of information. It appears as though http://api.rubyonrails.org would be a good go-to guide, anybody have any recommendations for this?