Welcome!

You'll find my course content and collaborative discussion about technology.

I teach as an adjunct faculty in the Computer Information Systems department at Spokane Community College

Email

kblake DOT scc AT gmail DOT com

Presentations/Interviews

RubyLearning.com interview
Course Technology - Ruby on Rails Presentation

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Final Assignment Specifications

June 1st, 2008 | 23 comments »

CIS 284
Final
Due June 10th by midnight

To turn in:

• create new rails app called lastname_final
• zip up assignment
• email to kblake.scc@gmail.com

Objectives:

• Reiterate material covered so far this quarter
  • RESTful Routes
  • ActiveRecord and Validations
  • Forms
  • Sorting
  • Layouts
  • Flash messages
  • Partials
  • Helpers (custom and built-in (cycle, h))
  • Meaningful Titles
  • Before filters
  • “Fat Models, Skinny Controllers”
  • Pagination
• New material
  • Authentication
  • belongs_to/has_many associations
  • Nested routes

To do:

• Create a website that allows a user to manage a collection of drinks (user has many drinks.
• Give the drink model at least 4 attributes.
• Create another model called profile and associate a user to it so that a “user has one profile”.
• The profile model must have at least 4 attributes.
• A user should be able to perform CRUD operations on their login, profile, and drinks.
• Fulfill the objectives listed above

Extra Credit: Implement one or more of these in your final

• I usually don’t give help with EC. If you do it, cool, otherwise don’t worry about it.
• Use of one or more Ajax helpers described in Chapter 12, pages 445-467.
• Use of one or more widgets from: http://www.slideshare.net/paolo.dona/rails-widgets-by-paolo-dona-at-railstoitaly
• http://dummied.org/archives/2007/4/11/endless_pageless_an_unobstrusive_pageless_pagination_in/
• http://jimneath.org/2008/05/15/swfupload-paperclip-and-ruby-on-rails/
• Something else? Go ahead and ask me. :)

Nested Routes Lecture

June 1st, 2008 | 1 comments »

Download App

Please view in full screen

Final Assignment coming soon

May 29th, 2008 | 0 comments »

I’ll be creating another screencast showing how to do nested resources. This will be accompanied by an assignment. It should be coming out in a few days.

Model Associations Lecture

May 28th, 2008 | 3 comments »

Download App

Ok, remind me not to create screencasts after 10:00 p.m. I have another 5 minute spot towards the end where I’m off in lala land. You can fast forward through it or use it as ammunition for our next conversation. :)

RESTFul Authentication Lecture

May 22nd, 2008 | 9 comments »

Download App

I apologize for some delayed times in the screencast (plugin download starting at 1:48 to 2:50) and my space-out, air-head moment (starting at 18:30 to 22:10) on the login and logout routes. Feel free to fast forward through those sections.

Outline for next set of lectures

May 19th, 2008 | 0 comments »

RESTful Authentication

• http://railscasts.com/episodes/67
• Chapter 14 of The Rails Way (NOTE: use as a reference for use not for setup because the plugin setup is different. Some code is the same and the explanations are pretty good.)

ActiveRecord Associations

• The Rails Way, Chapter 7
• http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ruby_on_Rails/ActiveRecord/Associations
• http://www.patchedsoftware.com/RailsEnvy-ActiveRecord.mov (good section right on the middle of the talk)
• http://www.slash7.com/cheats/activerecord_cheatsheet.pdf
• http://biodegradablegeek.com/2007/12/26/understanding-basic-database-relationships-in-rails/ (the migration syntax is outdated, but the concepts are the same)

Nested Routes

• The Rails Way – Chapter 4
• http://www.akitaonrails.com/2007/12/12/rolling-with-rails-2-0-the-first-full-tutorial

Sorting a collection and will_paginate

May 12th, 2008 | 0 comments »

Download app

View in full screen

Assignment 2

May 12th, 2008 | 9 comments »

CIS 284
Assignment 2
Due by Sunday, May 18th by midnight

To turn in:

• zip up rails app named lastname_app, thus, lastname_app.zip
• email and attach zipped file (do not rename zip, send as is) to kblake.scc@gmail.com
• subject line: full name, cis 284, assignment name

Sharpen your skills and helpful techniques:

• View Tricks
• Debugger
• Console Tricks

To do:

• You’ll be updating your KraigsList application
  • Update your website to have meaningful titles
  • use the h helper where appropriate
  • use the cycle helper to prettify your listing
  • clean up controllers and views using techniques shown in lectures: before_filters, helpers, and partials, skinny-contoller/fat model
  • paginate your listing
  • Add Web 2.0 graphic(s) to your site (Have fun but don’t go overboard (remember blink and marquee))
    • http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/06/20/30-resources-to-create-your-own-web-20-site/
    • Create your own: http://creatr.cc/creatr/
• Extra Credit:
  • Add a select list with these options title, price, email. The select list will be used to allow a user to sort by a given field. The default will be ascending. Add a checkbox where a user can select to have the list sorted in descending order.
  • Add a submit, so that when clicked does a form submission and returns a collection sorted in the user selected order.
  • Use Rails helpers to generate the form elements.

will_paginate plugin

May 11th, 2008 |

For those who could not install the will_paginate plugin as shown in my lecture and book, I’ve provided a downloadable zip you can use. Download the file and unzip into your RAILS_ROOT/vendor/plugins directory. I’ve never done it this way but theoretically should work. Let me know.

Download zipped will_paginate

Assignment...

May 9th, 2008 |

coming soon…

Lecture: cycle, h, refactored partials, before_filter

May 5th, 2008 |

Download app

Please view in full screen

Outline for next set of lectures

April 30th, 2008 |

• dynamic titles (http://railscasts.com/episodes/30)
• helper methods:
  • cycle (pg. 394 – The Rails Way)
  • h (pgs. 319-320 – The Rails Way)
  • custom helpers (chapter 11 pgs. 407+ (The Rails Way) controller-specific, application-level)
• filters (Chapter 2 – The Rails Way)
  • before_filter to find a record
• Fat models, skinny controller (jamis buck, http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2006/10/18/skinny-controller-fat-model)
• partials of collections instead of iteration (Chapter 10 – The Rails Way, http://railscasts.com/episodes/80)
• will_paginate (Chapter 11 – The Rails Way, http://errtheblog.com/posts/56-im-paginating-again, http://railscasts.com/episodes/51)

Rails: Layout and Flash notices

April 23rd, 2008 |

Concepts:

• Layouts (Chapter 10)
• Flash notices

Download App

Introduction to Rails articles

April 22nd, 2008 |

Nice introductory articles about Rails:

• http://alistapart.com/articles/creatingmoreusinglesseffortwithrubyonrails
• http://alistapart.com/articles/gettingstartedwithrubyonrails

DHH talk

April 21st, 2008 |

DHH talking about making money; more business oriented. He does talk a little about software development in his question/answer session. Overall very interesting.

http://christophemaximin.com/articles/2008/04/21/the-secret-to-making-money-online-by-my-hero-dhh