1 Rails for the Ruby-Impaired John Paul Ashenfelter CTO/Transitionpoint

2 Why Build a Web App?  Solve a (customer’s) problem

3 What Makes an Web App “Better”?  Good  Fast  Cheap

4 The Holy Grail of Web Apps  Build an application that solves a problem better, faster, and cheaper than anyone else

5 Keys to Successful Web Apps  Follow standards  Use best practices  Reduce, reuse, recycle code  Focus on quality and consistency  Gracefully respond to change

6 Why Is Rails So Hot?  Integrates/encourages best practices  Inherently agile  Keeps the framework out of the way  Convention over configuration  Self-contained  Extracted from real-life applications  Open source

7 Why Should I Care?  Hits the ColdFusion sweet spot easy to use flexible fast (development and run-time) everything is built-in  Java developers are adopting… and competing against you  Lots of real-world momentum

8 Learning from Ruby on Rails  Ruby and CFML are similar Scripting-oriented Dynamic (eg duck-typing)  Rails and CF Frameworks are similar Built for web applications MVC ORM options

9 Rails Components  Active Record migrations  Action Pack Action Controller Action View  Action Mailer  Active Support  Rake  Web 2.0/AJAX Prototype Script.alicio.us RJS  Generators  Plugins  Servers Webrick mongrel

10 Code: Create a Rails app  Create application skeleton You’ll be using the command line  Create the database Not much config for dev/mysql  Start server Server options Development modes  Generate a scaffold

11 ActiveRecord  Built-in ORM CRUD validation filters  transactions  callbacks (16!)  observers  migrations

12 Code: Making the db invisible  Conventions Names for keys, tables Magic columns  Migrations  ActiveRecord sugar has_XXX associations acts_as_XXX

13 Action Controller  routing REST  flash  filters before, after, around  caching  cookie, session management

14 Code: Interacting with the user  Default and custom routes  The “flash”  RESTful routes and methods

15 Action View  templates rhtml (embedded Ruby) rxml (Builder) rjs (AJAX)  helpers paging, form/field, formatting  layouts  partials and components

16 Code: Showing your work  Templates, layouts, and partials  Helpers  Forms  RJS (AJAX)

17 Code: Other Cool Stuff  fixtures and YAML  the vendor/ directory  plugins  capistrano  JRuby

18 Rails Lessons for Web Frameworks 1.Best practices are, well, best. 2.Make the database invisible 3.Easy things should be easy 4.Testing is crucial… and should be easy

19 Call to Action for CF Frameworks  More convention, less configuration  Pick an ORM and integrate it We need a migrations library  Pick a AJAX library and integrate it  Pick a testing library and integrate it And automate the creation  Don’t be afraid of the command line Leverage Ant for automation where possible

20 Getting Started Resources  Rails Environments InstantRails (Windows) Locomotive (Mac) >gem install rails (any Ruby installation)  Rails Editors Eclipse with RadRails (radrails.org) Textmate (Mac) Other plugins… (Netbeans, Dreamweaver, etc.)  Agile Web Development with Rails, 2 nd ed.

21 Thanks/Questions  John Paul Ashenfelter  Transitionpoint Consulting Training Mentoring