Ruby on Rails Beyond the Basics

In this sequel to the popular Ruby on Rails Essential Training, expert instructor Kevin Skoglund teaches comprehensive techniques for web developers who already feel comfortable with the fundamentals of Ruby and the Rails MVC framework. This training will help developers move toward creating full-featured Ruby on Rails applications. Kevin begins by explaining how to update software and projects to the latest versions. He then demonstrates alternative ways to interact with Ruby and your Rails applications and teaches the intermediate aspects of the Ruby language. Kevin provides step-by-step instructions for creating a custom blog and content management application. He uses this practical example to show how to work with database migrations, how to get more from ActiveRecord and avoid common pitfalls, how to create flexible controllers and views, and how to improve performance, security, and code management. Exercise files accompany the tutorials.

Table of contents

Introduction

• Introduction 2:00 1.4 MB
• Using the exercise files 2:34 2.5 MB

1. Maintaining Ruby and Rails

• Updating Ruby 9:24 16.9 MB
• Updating Rails and Gems 7:44 10.8 MB
• Updating previous Rails projects 6:47 11.5 MB
• Freezing Rails to a version 3:51 6.8 MB
• Offline Ruby documentation 5:32 7.9 MB
• Offline Rails documentation 6:10 9.7 MB
• Installing Subversion and Edge Rails 7:05 14.0 MB

2. Working Directly with Ruby and Rails

• Ruby from the command line 3:53 2.2 MB
• Interactive Ruby (IRB) 3:55 2.7 MB
• Getting more out of IRB 8:18 9.8 MB
• Rails console script 4:56 7.9 MB
• Rails runner script 3:58 3.0 MB

3. Intermediate Ruby

• Arrays 9:56 5.4 MB
• Hashes 7:14 4.7 MB
• Code blocks: Each 11:59 6.6 MB
• Code blocks: Find 7:58 5.1 MB
• Code blocks: Merge 4:21 3.7 MB
• Code blocks: Collect 8:19 6.1 MB
• Code blocks: Inject 8:20 5.2 MB
• Code blocks: Sort 8:07 5.8 MB
• Custom code blocks 6:01 3.9 MB
• Classes 13:29 11.9 MB
• Methods 6:57 3.5 MB
• Modules 10:58 8.3 MB
• Control flow 5:36 2.5 MB
• Catching errors and raising exceptions 11:42 9.9 MB

4. Describing Your Project

• Project description overview 2:50 1.8 MB
• Blueprinting the presentation layer 3:10 2.5 MB
• Blueprinting the database 5:10 2.3 MB
• Previewing the finished blog 3:26 6.7 MB
• Creating the project files 1:37 2.0 MB

5. Databases and Migrations

• Why use migrations? 3:31 2.5 MB
• Creating a database and granting privileges 6:07 9.3 MB
• Creating a migration with a model 6:00 6.5 MB
• Customizing a migration 8:02 9.4 MB
• Generating a migration 3:42 5.5 MB
• Writing the AlterPosts migration 9:16 11.4 MB
• Migrating a join table 3:49 5.7 MB
• Migrating a simple join to a rich join 5:53 8.2 MB
• Accessing models within migrations 2:43 5.7 MB
• Migrating from legacy databases 7:40 15.6 MB

6. Configuration Options in Rails

• Loading in other files 8:13 8.1 MB
• Logging 4:34 8.0 MB
• Session configuration options 5:38 7.9 MB
• Session storage options 9:06 10.3 MB

7. Getting More from ActiveRecord Models

• Setting the table name 3:42 3.6 MB
• Specifying the class name and foreign key 4:34 8.0 MB
• Handling dependent related records 4:37 5.7 MB
• Creating custom relationships 2:35 3.0 MB
• Using has_many :through 4:55 5.1 MB
• One-to-one relationships using has_one 3:54 1.6 MB
• When does ActiveRecord save to the database? 7:23 8.4 MB
• Examining the difference between length and size 6:00 10.5 MB
• Adding a counter cache 9:50 11.7 MB
• Save before making many-to-many joins 3:01 3.7 MB

8. Creating the Post CRUD

• Generating controllers with actions 3:45 4.7 MB
• Adding layouts and style sheets 7:35 8.5 MB
• Creating the list of posts 8:57 16.9 MB
• Creating the form for posts 4:04 5.4 MB
• Adding authors to the Post form 3:53 8.2 MB
• Saving author information with the post 5:36 6.6 MB
• Adding category checkboxes to the form 11:51 20.6 MB

9. Creating the Category CRUD

• Merging the List, Show, and New actions 4:15 9.0 MB
• Merging the Edit action 2:23 5.3 MB
• Giving the Category form two actions 3:18 6.1 MB

10. Creating the User CRUD

• Creating a list of users 3:30 6.4 MB
• Choosing between two forms 5:02 10.4 MB
• Merging New and Edit into Manage 2:48 4.6 MB
• Merging Create and Update into Manage 5:26 6.9 MB
• Merging Destroy into Manage 4:44 9.5 MB

11. Creating the Comment CRUD

• Creating the list of comments 6:47 9.9 MB
• Moderating comments 6:34 8.8 MB
• Filtering the comments being viewed 4:00 7.9 MB
• Conditional links 2:56 4.1 MB

12. Improving Access Control

• Login Action and View 5:38 6.6 MB
• Protected and accessible attributes 5:44 4.4 MB
• Using callbacks 7:45 9.8 MB
• Improving security by salting passwords 3:36 4.6 MB
• Storing unique salt strings 9:29 10.2 MB
• Hashing old passwords using migrations 5:19 7.5 MB
• Authorizing access with a Before filter 5:11 7.4 MB

13. Creating the Public Site

• Creating the public list of posts 8:22 9.6 MB
• Utilizing view helpers 7:39 11.8 MB
• Writing custom helpers 7:52 11.9 MB
• Using partials with collections 5:50 7.3 MB
• Sharing partials 3:58 5.1 MB
• Passing local variables to partials 7:59 13.2 MB
• Displaying only approved comments 2:52 4.9 MB
• Adding and testing the Comment form 4:54 8.1 MB
• Adding the comment count as a link 3:53 7.1 MB
• Eager loading with Include 8:06 20.1 MB

14. Validations

• Basic validations 6:36 10.9 MB
• Custom validations 4:12 7.8 MB
• Validation callbacks 4:31 7.9 MB

15. Creating the Category and Archive Views

• Creating a list of category links 4:28 8.8 MB
• Viewing posts by category 5:22 9.2 MB
• Creating a list of archive links 5:16 8.5 MB
• Viewing posts by month 4:11 7.3 MB

16. Routes

• Overview of Rails routing 4:34 3.5 MB
• Understanding the initial routes 5:45 7.7 MB
• Defining a route alias 4:11 6.2 MB
• Setting default values 3:30 7.0 MB
• Putting parameters in custom routes 4:59 6.0 MB
• Filtering routes with requirements 5:53 7.5 MB
• Named routes 5:03 10.1 MB
• Viewing route definitions 3:05 5.3 MB

17. Pagination

• Pagination overview 2:12 1.4 MB
• Classic pagination 3:50 5.9 MB
• Custom pagination 4:08 6.2 MB
• Plug-in pagination 3:34 5.1 MB
• The will_paginate plug-in 4:39 8.0 MB

18. Final Steps

• Finishing the project 3:05 3.5 MB
• Generating application documentation 3:48 7.1 MB
• Reviewing application statistics 1:36 1.2 MB

Conclusion

• Goodbye 0:29 0.5 MB

Appendix A - Installing Ruby on Rails

• Installation overview 7:31 8.7 MB
• Installing Ruby and RubyGems 20:05 40.7 MB
• Installing Rails 3:26 4.9 MB
• Installing MySQL 10:13 17.3 MB
• Installing TextMate 4:42 7.4 MB
• Installing a webserver