Introduction
This portion of the curriculum will be the most build-heavy so far. You will still be asked to read docs, check out blog posts, and watch videos before building, of course, but projects will be the major focus.
After each lesson or two, you’ll be asked to build one or more independent projects utilizing the concepts that were just covered (which is exactly what we’ve been doing up until now).
The roadmap
After preparing for deployment and installing Rails, we’ll be starting with an overview of important topics like HTTP, MVC, REST, APIs, Cookies and Authentication for some context before moving into the really fun stuff.
We’ll move front-to-back, starting with the routing layer and moving into controllers and views so you can build a functional (if not yet pretty) interface for your data. Next you’ll learn about storing and finding data in databases with SQL then how to turn that SQL into Active Record queries. We next cover web forms, an area that has a lot more going on behind the scenes than you might expect, and authentication, which is essential to securing your application. We’ll cover some other intermediate topics like state and the asset pipeline to round out your initial understanding of Rails.
But we can’t stop there, so we’ll get back into ActiveRecord to give you the tools to really make your data dance, as well as the knowledge of the forms that is required to bring that advanced functionality to the user. This is the really important side of Rails, so we’ll spend a good bit of time working with it.
Finally, we’ll cover additional useful topics like how to send emails from your application, building and interfacing with APIs, design patterns, metaprogramming and advanced routing before having you build your final project.
Our tools and texts
The most important resource that we’ll leverage is the Rails Guides. We’ll use these guides along with the Rails API, which allows you to search for specific Rails methods.
The Rails Guides are so comprehensive that they are essentially a completely open-source textbook and reference manual for Rails. At times, they’ll get a bit more technical and in-depth than you might like, and it may be okay to skim at that point. When you Google for help as you build your projects, if you don’t find a direct solution on Stack Overflow, then your best bet will be to dive into the relevant Rails Guides links.
Additional resources
This section contains helpful links to related content. It isn’t required, so consider it supplemental.