Rails - Getting Started
March 17, 2007
There’s a great deal of popularity surrounding the Ruby on Rails framework at the moment, with new projects/sites popping up on an almost daily basis.
I jumped on the bandwagon a little over a month ago and it’s been pretty smooth sailing so far I’m finding it far easier to pick up than any other language I’ve tried to learn. The purpose of this post is just to share some resources/experiences to help anyone else thinking of getting started.
Environment/Installation
This is probably the hardest part, having to install ruby, the rails framework, a database and other libraries; if you’re not too familiar with working in a command line this gets daunting quickly!
Thankfully, for those who don’t want to stray down that path there are a few tools that will get everything up and running for you, saving you the effort. This is particularly handy if you’re unsure whether you want to learn the language and just want to test it out quickly.
For windows users, there’s InstantRails which provides a pre-configured solution of ruby, rails, apache and mysql. It doesn’t mess with your system environment either so it’s easy to discard if you decide against using it.
On a mac Locomotive is excellent and is actually what I used before I replaced it with my own compiled environment. You can get instructions on how to do that in a great article over at Hivelogic.
Go Forth and Explore!
Once you have a working install you absolutely must pick up a copy of Agile Web Development with Rails by Dave Thomas and David Heinemeier Hansson. Consider it the Rails bible.
Another book I can recommend as you start to progress is Rails Recipes by Chad Fowler. A great collection of ‘recipes’ that cover authentication, live previews, connecting multiple databases and all manner of other topics.
You should also check out some of these sites, they’re good resources of information and help keep you up to date with rails developments:
- Rails Weblog
- Ruby on Rails Google group
- Official Rails Site
- Rails Wiki
- Rails Forum
- Railscasts (a regular screencast of useful rails snippets by Ryan Bates)
Happy Coding!!
Feedback?
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