A highly recommended online Ruby on Rails class is currently on Skills Share
http://skl.sh/116I1an Have anyone taken this class before?, it has excellent reviews, and I would recommend an online course, rather than self studying offline, the community (the class), the instructor, the project and assignments, and the milestones will motivate and get you more committed. And the price is ridiculously low.
Have Ruby on Rails Installed on Windows the Best Way
This is a complete step by step instructions with minimal explanations, on how to set up your Windows machine for starting building your RoR application in the most efficient and professional way.
Most of this is inspired from the Michael Hurtl most recommended Rails book
1. Download and install RailsInsaller
2. Download and install Console 2
3. Download and install Sublime Text 2
4. Download and install Herkou Toolbelt
5. Open Console 2
6. Navigate through cd commands to a folder where you want your app folder to be created
7. Run rails new applicationname (will create the application directory with all rails default sub-directories and files)
8. Open gemfile with Sublime Text 2 and change as per your required gems. I found the gemfile used by Rails tutorial book is perfect to use in every application, then add gems when you need later. But make sure you:
– remove rb-fsevent, growl, rb-inotify, libontify
– add
gem ‘rb-fchange’, ’0.0.5′
gem ‘rb-notifu’, ’0.0.4′
gem ‘win32console’, ’1.3.0′
Google the pages of these gems to check their latest version and change the version number accordingly
9. Navigate with Console 2 to your newly created app folder and run bundle install
10. Run rails s
Congratulations you now have rails server running with some beautiful essential gems.
11. git init
12. git add .
13. git commit -m “Initial commit”
14. Create git account on github
15. git remote add origin https://github.com/%5Busernane%5D/%5Brepositaryname%5D.git
16. git push -u origin master
Congratulations you have just set up Git to work smoothly with your app.
17. Create a heroku account
18. Run heroku login on console 2
19. heroku create
20. git push heroku master
Congratulations you have hosted your app on Heroku.
The most recommended testing environment is rspec, and here is the best way to install it with the best supporting gems and options.
21. In console 2, run rails generate rspec:install
22. bundle exec guard init rspec (guard gem for autotesting)
23. change content of guardfile to the one used in the tutorial
24. bundle exec spork –bootstrap (spork gem for speeding up tests)
25. Change content of spec/spec_helper.rb to the one used in the tutorial
26. Change content of .rspec file to
--colour --drb
27. bundle exec guard init spork (to tell rails to use spork with guard)
28. add :cli => ‘–drb’ argument to guard ‘rspec’ line in guardfile
29. In sublime text 2 go to preference -> Package Control and select install package find rubytest and have it installed.
30. preference -> Package Settings->RubyTest->Settings – User add bundle exec before any rspec you find
Congratulations you now have rspec testing framewrok installed with the best supporting gems to autotest, notify, and speed things up. You can also now run tests from Sublime Text 2 itself.
In thirty steps you now have everything ready for the best development environment on Windows for any serious application development.
Posted in The Beginning, Uncategorized
How to get help while developing in Ruby on Rails?
Am sure I will need to search online help almost everyday in my first year developing RoR.
Here where am posting my questions currently:
stackoverflow: the best. make sure you tag your questions well. But I will let you know about the amount of responses I get. Am really not sure how is the RoR community on stackoverflow, but I have used for other coding questions, and I found it to have a great deal of experts, and used to get Drupal related answer within 48 hours.
ruby on rails talk on Google Mailing List
I have posted one question there. a few minutes ago. I have no experience using Google Groups. The interface looks like from the 10 year old Internet. Anyway I will be updating you about the Google Group RoR community.
If you are in the States, not my case. You can call the free Rails Hotline.
There is also the Rails Forum , I have not tried it yet.
Will keep the list of support resources updated.
Related articles
- Giving back to the community (bob-roberts.net)
Posted in The Beginning
Recommended Tools for the Ruby on Rails developer
After reading lots of users feedback, and watching top RoR developers tutorials.
I created the below list, which shows the best choice of “tool/software/server/…”in every category
Putting in mind that am talking Windows, not MAC or Linux..
Rails Installer: which includes the latest of Ruby,Rails,Bundler.Git,Sqlite
Console 2 instead of the default very outdated Windows Command Prompt. Console 2 support multiple tabs for example.
Use POSTGRESQL as production database, when your app is live.
Heroku as a host
Git for versioning, it is also a part of the Rails Installer bundle, they got also a nice desktop vrsion, but am using the command prompt instead of the desktop version.
Sublime Text 2 for code editing
RubyMine is the IDE of choice, but I would suggest learning Ruby on Rails using the command prompt and Sublime Text 2, this is the way most developers work.
As for the front end.
JS (Coffescript)/HTML5/CSS3(SASS)
Bootstrap a collection of CSS and HTML convention, it will help you not worry much about the design of the front end.
Posted in The Very Beginning
New Organizers Apps Made With Ruby on Rails
Check these two new web apps also made with RoR
Thoughtboxes makes it easy to get organized, complete tasks, and collaborate.
Exobrain Brainstorming tool
Two Collaboration Tools for Tech Teams Made with RoR
I recently stumbled upon the two below tools for communication of tech teams.
Both are built with Ruby on Rails!
Deveo is a collaborative code hosting service for software development projects
https://www.flowdock.com a collaboration web app for technical teams.
Finding great modern tools being built with RoR, makes me more excited in my way to become a Rails expert.
A Better Windows Command Prompt
If you are like me, developing Ruby on Rails under Windows. You will not stop saying ” only if ” when working on the default Windows command prompt.
The most “only if” you would see your self repeating is, “only if it had multi tab support”.
Well, it doesn’t.
In my opinion the best free alternative to Windows default Command Prompt is Console 2.
My top two features which I cannot beleive they are not implemented with Windows default console are:
- Multi tab support.
- Save default start-up directory.
One thing you should note is that to select a text on the screen you need to press the shift key. This confuses a lots of users.
- If you are looking for even more features but less attractive look and feel, you may consider these available Windows Command Prompt alternatives are:
- PowerCmd
- ConEmu
- TCC/LE
Posted in The Beginning
Roadtrippers, Another Great Ruby on Rails Website
Raodtrippers another great site recently launched and guess what! It is built with Ruby on Rails!
A beautifully designed website to plan road trips in The States.
A New Wonderful Ruby on Rails website
See, Click, Fix just launched. A site to report neighborhood issues and see them get fixed.
Once I saw this site, I directly felt that behind this simple yet effective design and concept there must be good developers who are using Ruby on Rails. I verified, and yes it was made by Ruby on Rails. Soon this site will be a very important tool in Americans lives. Congratulations Ruby on Rails. Sites made by you keeps on impressing me.
How to Insert Code Snippets in a WordPress Post?
While am writing this blog, I had the need to display code snippets in a different format than the usual writing.
I found this support article from WordPress! The good news is that WordPress understands programming languages, I mean it color-highlights text based on every language syntex!! And it knows a lot, lots of programming languages!
You could also use <pre></pre> for simple code snippets, it will use a fixed width formatting.
Of course make sure you are on the text table of the body, not the visual.
so now from one I will be using very frequently these :
[sourcecode language="ruby"]
my code here
[/sourcecode]
Posted in Uncategorized
