One Day Workshop
How to get started with Ruby on Rails
Discover the beauty and simplicity of Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails is a full stack MVC (model view controller) framework for developing database-backed web applications. It's used by some of the biggest apps on the web today such as Basecamp, Twitter and our very own event management system called EventStream.
Rails provides a complete package to help you on your way to building a powerful and flexible app using the mantra of "convention over configuration". This workshop, presented by EventStream's lead developer Adam Cooke aims to introduce you to the framework by demonstrating the key features of Rails by building a complete application. The process will highlight everything you’ll need to build your own application.
What you'll learn:
- About the MVC pattern
- An overview of Ruby and RubyGems
- What are the best tools to use for development
- How to create your own application using Rails
- How to include a RESTful API with your app
- The benefits of testing
- How to deploy your finished application into production
This course is aimed at anyone who has an interest in learning Rails to speed up their web application development. Although a basic understanding of the concepts of web programming are desirable.
If you have any questions or prefer to pay by credit card over the phone, just email
Where and When?
- Wednesday July 30th 2008
- Workshop: 9am — 6pm
- Social: 7pm till late
- The Carsonified Office, 19c Charles St, Bath, BA1 1HX
By registering you agree to our terms
What You'll Walk Away With
- The Survival Kit
- - Each attendee will receive our exclusive Survival Kit. It's companion CD is chock-full of practical examples, links and snippets of code that we use everyday.
- Best Practice Advice
- - There will also be a section covering best practice plus a full set of presentation slides from the day.
- Practical Knowledge
- - We're not going to bore you with theory. At our workshops we aim to give you practical training that focuses on what you need to help you get started right away.
Who should attend?
This course is aimed at anyone who has an interest in learning Rails to speed up their web application development. Although a basic understanding of the concepts of web programming are desirable.
Past Reviews
"I gained tons of practical advice. All valuable hands-on stuff."- Henrik Pettersen, MTV
"The question and answer section was excellent" - Mark Francis, Yahoo!
"The workshop was extremely useful and well organised" - Duncan Ponting, BBC
"Comparing example architecture to our own gave us some really great ideas" - Richard Keen, Multimap
"It was invaluable to get confirmation that other big players are using the same approaches as us" - Erki Esken, Skype
"I loved the real-life practical examples and insight into the rules behind web standards" - Andy Brockie, Guardian Unlimited
"It was great meeting other quality developers" - Ryan King, Technorati
"The workshop was great for comparing experiences" - Jeff Veen, Adaptive Path
"Being able to ask questions and participate freely was great" - Marcia Palmer, Cabinet Office
"No fluff, just good real-world info. Bravo!" - Christopher Kelly, State Farm Insurance
"Great real-world examples." -Ahren Gerber, elliance.com
"Superb organisation and preparation - thankyou!" - Andrew Hoskings
"What a great workshop! Both engaging and useful." - Chris Graver, Bank of America
How large is the workshop?
We've limited the number of attendees to 10, to enable everyone to participate in the practical elements of the course and get the most from the day.
Schedule
- Registration & Fresh tea, coffee and pastries: 8:15 - 9:00am
- Introduction
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- What is Rails?
- MVC - Model, View, Controller
- Components of Rails
- Ruby Overview
- RubyGems
- Installing Rails
- The Rails Basics
-
- Development Tools & your environment
- Generating an Application
- The Directory Structure - where stuff goes...
- Starting up your app - the Ruby Web Servers
- Database Options
- “RESTful Rails”
- Routing & URLs
- Templating with Erb
- The Rails ORM - ActiveRecord (callbacks, validations, migrations)
- Coffee Break: 10:30 - 10:45
- Building an App
-
- Generate, configure & start
- Scaffolding your first controller and model
- Making things prettier
- Adding some validation
- Models from scratch
- Establishing relationships between objects
- Controllers from scratch
- Protection with authenticatio
- Using plugins to add permalinks
- Fully catered lunch: 12:30 - 13.30
- More Advancement
-
- Eager loading to speed up your application
- Extending our models
- Looking at useful helpers
- Writing your own helpers for an easier template life
- Looking at our XML API
- Testing
-
- Unit testing our models and fixtures
- Testing controllers with functional tests
- Helpers need testing too!
- When things go wrong?
-
- The Logger
- Debugging
- Coffee Break: 15:30 - 15:45
- Deployments
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- Source Control with git
- Deploying with Capistrano
- Finishing up
-
- The Rails Codebase - the source, bugs, tickets
- Any questions?
- Q & A: 17:30 - 18:00
-
- Discussion on topics of your choice
- Dinner (Optional): 19:00
-
- Join members of the Carsonified team for dinner and chat at a local restaurant
Who's presenting?
Adam Cooke
In a former life Adam developed web sites in PHP but moved over to Ruby on Rails in 2006 and hasn't looked back since. He started his own company aTech Media in July 2005 straight after leaving school!
In 2008 he launched aTech Labs which is based in Dorset and specialises in Ruby on Rails development. They have developed a number of applications in Rails including codebase, radar, desklamp, emate and SMI.
Adam is also the lead developer of the recently launched Carsonified event management system called EventStream. You can find him online at www.plasticrain.com and on Twitter.
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