Ruby on Rails Beyond the Basics
I’m happy to announce that my latest video training, Ruby on Rails Beyond the Basics, has been released on the lynda.com Online Training Library.
Ruby on Rails Beyond the Basics is the sequel to Ruby on Rails Essential Training and is 11.5 hours of video training for web developers who already feel comfortable with the fundamentals of Ruby and the Rails MVC framework. I teach more of the Ruby language and spend a lot of time on code blocks. Then, using the example of a blog as a project, I show you how to use migrations, demonstrate how to create CRUD that doesn’t simply mimic scaffold, and give you a better understanding of ActiveRecord and some of the pitfalls that often trip up developers. I also cover validations, callbacks, routes, pagination, performance improvements and more.
Ruby on Rails Beyond the Basics is available online as streaming video to subscribers of the lynda.com Online Training Library ($25/month, $250/year, $375/year with exercise files included). It is will also be available as a CD-ROM soon both through lynda.com and Amazon.com.
If you are a beginner, you will be better off if you first start with Ruby on Rails Essential Training which is available online to lynda.com OTL subscribers and on CD-ROM, both through lynda.com and Amazon.com, for $99.95.
If you try either of them and find that they are helpful, be sure to let me know!
Topics include:
- Updating Ruby, Rails and projects
- Using irb and the Rails console
- Intermediate Ruby language techniques
- Understanding code blocks
- Catching errors and raising exceptions
- Using migrations to manage database changes
- Understanding ActiveRecord and avoiding common pitfalls
- Creating flexible controllers and views
- Improving performance with eager loading and cache counters
- Working with form validations and model callbacks
- Using partials and helpers to organize views
- Salting passwords for increased security
- Choosing how to store session data
- Understanding and defining custom and named routes
- Pagination
- Using plug-ins
October 18th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
I saw this on Lyndia the other day. I’m looking forward to this. Many thanks.
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Viewed some hours of that course and I really have to say it’s excellent !
It’s teaching rails, I mean TEACHING not just describing.
The information provided is extracted from real world situations and
the amount of information is just right.
The examples are easy to follow but not too simple.
It’s not the most important aspect but I have to mentioned that I also like
your voice which is ‘lively’ without overdosing - if you know what I mean
What I missed is a cheatsheet which sums up some information because
it would moderate the disadvantage of video sequences which is looking up specific
information. But that’s something the lynda.com people should thing about.
Bottomline: Excellent product, makes learning fun.
Thanks and keep it up !
November 5th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
I can see talent there! Got both tutorials from Lynda.com and I must say I am impressed. They’re worth every penny and more. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK !!!
Cheers,
Cezar
November 13th, 2007 at 3:50 am
I am a safari premium member and learned a lot from your basic RoR series. I am exited to watch your new series but cannot find it on safari. Is the new series available on safari? If not, will it be at some future point? Thank you.
November 13th, 2007 at 11:18 am
@john: As far as I know, my trainings haven’t been on Safari. They are available online from Lynda.com and as a CD-ROM from both Lynda.com and Amazon.com. (Links are in the post and also in the sidebar to the right.) I hope you’ll watch Beyond the Basics and let me know what you think.
November 13th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
@Kevin,
I am a Safari Library member and I have access to your Essential Training course. See - http://safari.oreilly.com/1596713089.
Your material is great and helps justify paying oreilly 39.95 per month.
November 16th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
@john: I did some checking. You are correct–some of the Lynda.com titles are on the O’Reilly site too as part of a special program they worked out. Currently the titles are limited only to the “Essential Training” level and not to more advanced titles like “Ruby on Rails Beyond the Basics”. So you’ll have to go to Lynda.com or Amazon.com to watch “Ruby on Rails Beyond the Basics”.
November 17th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
I signed up at lynda.com for this training set.
Just finished watching all 17 chapters and I must say, well explained and easy to follow…
Thanks.
November 23rd, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Hi Kevin,
Compliments. I want to thank you for producing the Beyond the Basics series for RoR. I live in Africa and I haven’t had the opportunity to see the previews yet but I have read the curriculum on lynda.com.
Here’s what I want to do: I want to build a social networking site such that each registered user shall have a solid blog system. Can I use your training, Kevin, to learn how to build a blog, and then to make that blog available to each registered user of my social networking site?
Secondly, I want to build a video blog as well, i.e. a flash player app above with a comment system below. Can I also glean the fundamentals of building such a system from your training title minus the flash player app?
Thanks Kevin and I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
Victor
November 26th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
@Victor: The training will teach you how to use Ruby on Rails and I use a simple blog as a sample project in Beyond the Basics. I don’t teach exactly the project you describe, mostly I’m using the blog project to make other points about how Ruby on Rails works and how you can get the most out of it.
Ruby on Rails is certainly capable of doing the type of project you are describing, and I think Ruby on Rails Essential Training and Ruby on Rails Beyond the Basics will give you enough skills to accomplish it.
December 4th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
The RoR tuts on lynda are incredibly easy to follow, and if programming has been a bit intimidating this is the easiest route I’ve found so far. If you can’t get it with this……well there’s always something else I guess. Unfortunately The tutorial has been on hold in my world due to me forgetting the mysql password. I’ve had a pretty hard time trying to reset it with no luck. So if You do take the course REMEMBER YOUR PASSWORD.
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Kevin,
I love the lynda.com tutorial videos you made for Ruby on Rails, but as a total newbie I’m getting stuck when it comes to scaffolding and some other things that have changed in version 2.0. The tutorial steps don’t work and I’m at a loss as to what to do to keep going. Do you have any plans to release updates or notes to help users get through the tutorials with the latest version of ROR?
Thanks!
February 25th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Emily,
There are 2 main things that have changed since Rails version 2.0.2 came out.
1) scaffolding has been removed. You can still watch the movie where I demonstrate it. As I’m showing it, you’ll notice that I say something to the effect of “Cool trick, but you’ll never actually do it this way when developing.” The important point is that Rails is based on sensible defaults, so sensible that a single command used to give you all the CRUD of a basic database application.
2) The default database is now SQLite. Rails with MySQL still works exactly as I demonstrate, but you’ll have to edit your database.yml file to match mine. By default it will be hoping to use SQLite.
I’m talking to Lynda.com now about how to best handle these revisions.
In the meantime, I hope that helps!
May 4th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Kevin,
Great RoR tutorials on lynda.com. I am having the same rails 2.0 issues as noted above.
1) Hello World in not working; but with further review I have found that the database has to be up and running first before a RoR applications will work. Is this true? (I was able to get Mysql up!!)
2) It seems that scaffolding is a trick of the past. Should is skip the lessons on that or should I install the the scaffolding plugin? If yes, do you know a good place to find info on adding the plugins needed?
Regards,
Jason
May 5th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Jason: Yes, you need to have a database configuration now for Rails to start. I’m hoping they reconsider this change to the default settings in the next version (which is due out soon).
Don’t bother with the scaffolding plug-in. Scaffold only shows off the sensible defaults that let you get basic CRUD (create, read, update, delete) running quickly. It’s not actually useful for development. Just watch the movie to get the idea of what it used to do and to see what standard CRUD pages look like.