There are few programmers (especially beginners) who are able to keep in mind the names of all the necessary methods, as well as the number, order and purpose of the parameters passed to them. There are API references for this.
In this post, I’d like to bring together some useful Ruby on Rails reference resources (including APIs) that are always handy to have on hand in the next tab of your browser.
apirubyonrails – official documentation
This is most likely the first online Ruby On Rails API reference that will catch the eye of a novice RoR programmer. The user won’t find anything special here – it’s official documentation, so it looks like a pure_rdoc_generated frame-based website. C grade navigation – you have to search with a “dictionary in your hands”, because there is no built-in search.
wiki.rubyonrails
A resource with a different specificity than the official API documentation. Here, first of all, various kinds of articles, guides and F.A.Q. for setting up, as well as various lists (communities, hosting, etc.) are collected and introductory descriptions of working with one or another module are provided, provided with brief code examples.
In general, the resource causes very conflicting feelings – on the one hand, it is located on the official subdomain, on the other hand, it turns out that there are very few articles, many of which are in the stub state, while others have long lost their relevance. First of all, it is of interest as a collection of instructions for setting up and deploying the application, setting up communication with the database and installing plugins.
guides rubyonrails
This resource is a collection of articles. Is closer to programming than wiki rubyonrails Here are large articles covering all aspects of using the framework in detail and with examples: routing (routing), rendering; work with models and controllers is comprehensively considered. Each article is richly supplied with transparent examples. Among the project maintainers is Pratik Naik, who is part of the Rails Core Team.
Being a regular on stackoverflow, at first, I was repeatedly sent to read an article on a topic of interest to me here.
railsapi
Personal favourite. The site has super-convenient navigation with search and a pleasant interface. Implemented on the basis of frames with little use of JavaScript’a. The guide itself seems to be generated based on the official documentation directly from the RoR sources. And although, in theory, it is only a decorated copy of the official version, the inscription on the main one still makes one think about the preference of this particular reference book to the official one.
Search by methods is performed not only full-text (the search engine is not too lazy to search, including somewhere in the middle of the name), but the so-called. smart search: for example, for a round request, among other things, the proxy_found method will be found (which, of course, is good, but it is not clear when this may be needed).
Pleasant, ascetic design does not distract from searching and reading information. The speed of work is also pleasing – the delay in loading a new page is almost imperceptible (on a 512 Kbps channel).
On the Internet, there is also a younger brother of railsapi railsbrain. He did not get into this review due to the fact that in addition to the ajax wrapper (in fact, only the search) above the off. documentation, it is no longer remarkable.
apidock
Generated based on official documentation. You can write a note for each individual article in the directory (which, in fact, is what the users registered there do). Notes usually contain various undocumented techniques for using the methods described in the article. Also, each article is assigned a special character, which determines the documentation of the class or module in question. In addition, each article has a timeline of Rails versions, which can be used to determine how the article has changed from version to version.
It seems very doubtful to use the directory in everyday mode due to inconvenient navigation (it seems that railsapi is still out of competition in this regard.). The only thing that is perhaps of interest here is user notes, which, in difficult times, can quickly answer the question that has arisen (although here it would probably be preferable to use the good old stackoverflow).
Conclusion
It is best to use railsapi as the main tool at hand. As a quick collection of recipes, and an online guide for a thorough understanding of certain things – guides rubyonrails. For setup/installation instructions – wikirubyonrails.
The rest is a matter of taste. Who knows, maybe some people will like the ascetic design of the official documentation, while others will like the flashy shades of red on the apidock.
Web development courses with Ruby on Rails
Periodically, I went to the coursera to see if any applied courses were available there. It was tritely interesting to see if any ray of light would flash behind a harsh theory. I looked at programming languages, project management, analytics. And today I saw a course, information about which I wanted to share.
Its name is in the title, and the translation of the description is below, but for now a few words, why I think that it is useful to everyone:
Beginners can learn a new technology for them or pull up knowledge that has not yet been strengthened.
Railroad gurus can earn a Verified Certificate and thereby prove their knowledge to the public. For example, you can attach it to LinkedIn or indicate it in freelancing responses.
We turn to the translation of the course content. Free translation. Reformulation of phrases, if something hurts the ear, write in a personal.
About the course
In this course, we will look at web application architecture development from an engineering perspective. We will look at the fundamental design patterns and philosophy of modern web application architecture, including its main components. By the end of the course, I expect you will be able to:
Design, develop and deploy modern web applications
This course is not about how to create a beautiful web page, it’s about how to develop and deploy the full stack of protocols and technologies that are required for a complete web application. This does not mean that you will become an expert in this field in a few weeks. My goal is rather to get you on the right track by talking about a solid foundation and a framework that will help you understand web applications, allow you to dig deeper and learn much more on your own.
You will learn to understand the main architectural components in a web application and how they interact
Modern web applications are quite complex. A typical application includes a database with a lot of scripts on the back end, a web server in the middle that delivers information over the Internet, and a browser. Even getting to grips with these three components can be a good task! Consider only the programming languages of a typical technology stack: from a database (SQL) to a web server (scripting languages) and a browser (JS, HTML, CSS). It turns out as many as five programming languages, while the protocols with which they work are not mentioned. But you have to deal with them! We will introduce you to different design patterns that will help you deal with the apparent complexity.
Using Ruby on Rails
We are going to learn about web applications using the Ruby on Rails framework. Rails is a web application framework that was born in the early days of the Ruby programming language. I believe that this is one of the best frameworks for learning web applications, which has proven its effectiveness in commercial projects. It is worth noting that there are many other frameworks and the concept you learn here can be transferred to other frameworks.
Better understanding of modern development practices
We will use the latest web development tools and practices, version control, testing, application deployment. This includes familiarization with agile development practices, a large number of tools that every web developer should be able to use, as well as cloud resources, which have been increasingly used in web development lately.