RAILS BEGINNER’S GUIDE
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK CONVENTIONS USED IN THIS BOOK WHAT YOU DON’T HAVE TO READ FOOLISH ASSUMPTIONS HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED PART I: NUTS AND BOLTS PART II: CREATING CODE PART III: REAL RAILS PART IV: THE PART OF TENS ICONS USED IN THIS BOOK WHERE TO GO FROM HERE THE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS AGILITY DATABASES AND THE WORLD WIDE WEB THROWING FRAMEWORKS AT THE PROBLEM ALONG COMES RUBY ON RAILS WHY RUBY? WHY RAILS? LET’S GET GOING SIX PIECES OF SOFTWARE INSTALLING THE RUBY INTERPRETER TESTING THE RUBY INSTALLATION TROUBLESHOOTING THE RUBY INSTALLATION INSTALLING RAILS INSTALLING JAVA INSTALLING RADRAILS CREATING A RADRAILS SHORTCUT ON YOUR DESKTOP TESTING RADRAILS TROUBLESHOOTING THE RADRAILS INSTALLATION CONFIGURING RADRAILS INSTALLING MYSQL INSTALLING MYSQL ADMINISTRATOR TESTING YOUR MYSQL INSTALLATION TROUBLESHOOTING YOUR DATABASE CONNECTION CREATING A DATABASE CREATING A NEW RUBY ON RAILS PROJECT RUNNING YOUR NEW RAILS PROJECT (ALREADY!) CREATING A MODEL CREATING A DATABASE TABLE CREATING A SCAFFOLD USING THE NEW WEB INTERFACE WORDS, WORDS, WORDS WHAT’S INSIDE A VIEW OR AN EDITOR? UNDERSTANDING THE BIG PICTURE SOME COMMON RADRAILS TASKS CHANGING THE PERSPECTIVE SHOWING A VIEW USING A WIZARD TO CREATE SOMETHING USING THE GENERATORS VIEW TO CREATE SOMETHING EDITING AN EXISTING FILE RUNNING A RUBY PROGRAM VISITING A URL CUSTOMIZING RADRAILS TROUBLESHOOTING THE RUN OF A RUBY PROGRAM DOES YOUR RUBY CODE HAVE A SYNTAX ERROR? DOES YOUR RUBY CODE HAVE A SEMANTIC ERROR? DID YOU TELL RADRAILS WHERE TO FIND A RUBY INTERPRETER? DID YOU POINT RADRAILS TO THE CORRECT LOCATION OF THE RUBY INTERPRETER? HELLO, AGAIN A GLIMPSE OF A RUBY METHOD VARIABLES AND VALUES RUBY STRINGS WORKING WITH VALUES DISPLAYING VALUES ASSIGNING VALUES GOING WITH THE FLOW GETTING INPUT FROM THE KEYBOARD USING KEYWORDS FLOWING THE OTHER WAY GOING WITH THE GLOW (OR GLOWING WITH THE FLOW) BUNCHES OF THINGS ARRAYS HASHES USING METHODS METHODS, METHODS EVERYWHERE PLEASE PASS THE HASH WHAT’S THE SYMBOLISM? OBJECTS AND CLASSES CREATING OBJECTS ADDING ANOTHER FILE’S CODE TO YOUR OWN FILE’S CODE CLASSES, OBJECTS, AND DATABASE TABLES OBJECTS HAVE METHODS RUBY’S HANDY ITERATORS FINDING ITERATORS WHERE YOU LEAST EXPECT THEM ENHANCING CLASSES OPEN CLASSES BEING SELFISH DEFINING SUBCLASSES CREATING A MODULE THE WORKING OF THE WEB THE WEB DEVELOPER’S POINT OF VIEW THE HYPERTEXT TRANSFER PROTOCOL WEB PAGES YOUR HTML STARTER KIT START TAGS END TAGS, EMPTY TAGS, AND PAIRED TAGS IF IT FEELS GOOD, DO IT ENTITIES COMMENTS AND DECLARATIONS HTML ELEMENTS DISPLAYING IMAGES USING TABLES TO ALIGN THINGS CREATING AN HTML FORM USING FORM ELEMENTS MODEL/VIEW/CONTROLLER CREATING A CONTROLLER AND A VIEW WHY YOU SHOULDN’T RENAME FILES THE RAILS WAY OF LIFE CONVENTION OVER CONFIGURATION DON’T REPEAT YOURSELF (DRY) WRITING WHAT YOU WANT WHERE YOU WANT IT SENDING TEXT TO THE CONSOLE THE ART OF WEB SERVER REDIRECTION MAKING THE CONTROLLER DO THE WORK THE CONTROLLER SHAKES HANDS WITH THE VIEW USING PARAMETERS GETTING PARAMETERS FROM A FORM DIVIDING THE WORK OF THE VIEW CREATING AND USING A PARTIAL (A PARTIAL WHAT?) A VIEW’S LITTLE HELPER A WEB SITE FOR PHOTOS PROGRAMMING WITH A RAILS MODEL USING ACTIVE RECORD REQUIRING A GEM CONNECTING TO THE DATABASE DISPLAYING DATA MODIFYING A DATABASE MORE RAILS PROGRAMMING TRICKS DELETING ROWS ADDING ROWS FINDING ROWS USING SQL USING ID NUMBERS DISPLAYING AN IMAGE CREATING CODE UNDERSTANDING THE CODE PASSING PHOTOS FROM PLACE TO PLACE IMPORTING FILES IMPORTING FILES THE EASY WAY IMPORTING FILES THE GEEKY WAY ENHANCING YOUR PROJECT’S CODE FOLLOW THE BOOK’S LONGEST STEP LIST KNOW THE FLOW UNDERSTANDING THE ENHANCED CODE CREATING A DATABASE TABLE MOVING ON TO MORE CODE CREATING A FILE INPUT FIELD CREATING A PHOTO INSTANCE READING THE IMAGE BITS COMPOSING AN IMAGE TAG SENDING IMAGE BITS TO THE VISITOR’S BROWSER WHEW! BLOGGING YOUR DREAMS VALIDATING THE VISITOR’S INPUT ADDING COMMENTS ADDING KEYWORDS CONNECTING DREAMS WITH KEYWORDS HOW THE RAILS CODE DOES WHAT IT DOES USING AJAX REFRESH PART OF A PAGE, NOT THE ENTIRE PAGE INCORPORATING AJAX INTO A RAILS PAGE SENDING E-MAIL DON’T BLAME ME IF IT DOESN’T WORK RAILS MAIL CREATING AND CONSUMING WEB SERVICES HOW TO AVOID SCREEN SCRAPING BUILDING A WEB SERVICE USING RUBY ON RAILS TEN RUBY SITES DOCUMENTATION OPEN SOURCE RUBY PROJECTS STARTING POINTS FOR RUBY RESOURCES DISCUSSING RUBY A WEEKLY CHALLENGE ADD-ONS FOR RUBY MEET PEOPLE WRITE RUBY CODE ON A DESERT ISLAND HOW TO BE MULTILINGUAL AGILE DEVELOPMENT TEN RAILS SITES STRAIGHT FROM THE SOURCE’S MOUTH FIND A WEB HOST GET HOOKED ON RADRAILS DISCUSS RUBY ON RAILS A RAILS-FRIENDLY OPERATING SYSTEM READ THE LATEST NEWS STEAL SOME CODE BRUSH UP ON SQL THE SEMINAL AJAX DOCUMENT OPEN CLASSES DUCK TYPING MODIFIERS BLOCKS EVERYTHING IS AN OBJECT OBJECTS MIGHT HAVE THEIR OWN METHODS MIXINS BUILT-IN UNIT TESTING BUILT-IN REFLECTION CONVENTION OVER CONFIGURATION MODEL/VIEW/CONTROLLER (MVC) DYNAMIC DISCOVERY OF A DATABASE’S CHARACTERISTICS OBJECT-RELATIONAL MAPPING (ORM) USING GENERATORS CREATE, READ, UPDATE, AND DELETE (CRUD) USING MIGRATIONS USING PARTIALS OVERRIDING THE DATABASE NAME OVERRIDING A DATABASE TABLE NAME OVERRIDING A CONTROLLER NAME OVERRIDING THE NAME OF A TABLE’S PRIMARY KEY USING SINGULAR NOUNS CREATING IRREGULAR PLURALS OVERRIDING A DEFAULT LAYOUT CREATING ADDITIONAL WEB PAGES MODIFYING THE MEANINGS OF URLS CHANGING THE SERVER ENVIRONMENT