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

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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

Editing data lecture

April 21st, 2008 |

Concepts

• Update attributes (Chapter 6)
• Partials (Chapter 10)
• More RESTful routes (Chapter 4)

Download app

CIS 284 - Assignment 1

April 17th, 2008 |

CIS 284
Assignment 1
Due Sunday, April 27th 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

To do:

• You’ll be creating a KraigsList with postings
• Each posting has these characteristics
  • title (required)
  • price (required, validate for numeric)
  • email (required, validate format)
  • description (required)
  • location (optional)
• Allow one to create a posting
• View all postings (order by highest price)
  • Display postings count
  • Extra credit: provide hyperlinks to view ordered by lowest or highest price)
• Editing of postings (in a later assignment, we’ll allow users to edit their own posts only)
• Delete a posting (make sure there is a javascript confirmation before deleting)
• Use the flash notices to display what “action” just occurred
• Use a layout to contain the views

Rails Application: creating new stories and validation

April 14th, 2008 |

Concepts:

• New/Create RESTful routes (Chapter 4)
• Forms and form helpers (Chapter 4 and 11)
• Validations (Chapter 8)

Download Latest Rails App

Starting a Rails App

April 11th, 2008 |

Concepts

• ActiveRecord Basics
• Migration Basics
• Creating a controller and a view

Download Rails App

1. Download
2. Unzip
3. Navigate into folder and run rake db:migrate
4. ruby script/server
   
   

Tutorials and speed of the course

April 10th, 2008 |

Please do not get sidetracked by tutorials you find on the web. Use them as a reference for what I want you to do. Instead follow my instructor blog (and notes) for direction. Currently, I only need you to know how to create a rails app, write some erb, and link a few pages together as shown in last week’s lecture. The scaffold was something I was demonstrating to show how quickly you can get a database-driven app up and going. You can use the scaffolded code as a reference. You are not yet expected to know how the scaffolded code is supposed to work. Over the next couple of weeks we are going to build a database driven app from scratch so that I can address some very important concepts (like ActiveRecord and routing) along the way.

REST and routes

April 9th, 2008 |

Reference: Chapter 4 (The Rails Way)
In Rails, by adding map.resources :stories to config/routes.rb, you get 7 predefined routes:

• stories GET /stories {:controller=>”stories”, :action=>”index”}
• POST /stories {:controller=>”stories”, :action=>”create”}
• new_story GET /stories/new {:controller=>”stories”, :action=>”new”}
• edit_story GET /stories/:id/edit {:controller=>”stories”, :action=>”edit”}
• story GET /stories/:id {:controller=>”stories”, :action=>”show”}
• PUT /stories/:id {:controller=>”stories”, :action=>”update”}
• DELETE /stories/:id {:controller=>”stories”, :action=>”destroy”}

Slowly but surely we are going to build an app from the ground up and use all of these RESTful routes. Its very important to understand what each of these do and how to incorporate them into your application. These routes control how we setup our controller, actions, links, and forms. It is amazing how much is conventionalized around one configuration line map.resources :stories

• POST is a CREATE
• GET is a READ
• PUT is an UPDATE
• DELETE is a DELETE

New Rails App

April 8th, 2008 |

Did everyone get a Rails app up and going? I’d like to start in on ActiveRecord and then how we apply to a web app. Does that sound cool?

Working with databases

April 6th, 2008 |

References

• Read from: “The Rails Way” – Chapter 6
• Active Record Presentation
• Migrations Presentation (ignore mysql at beginning)

Objectives

• Configure Rails to work with a database (database.yml)
• create table (migration)
• use ActiveRecord to interact with our database
• use script/console to learn how ActiveRecord works

Model

• handle application state (usually in the database)
• encapsulate business logic, such as data validation and rules applied to data

ActiveRecord

• ORM (object-relational mapping)
• Instead of dealing with database through SQL statements, ORM layer presents records as a collection of objects
• Table represents a collection of objects(stories)
• Record represents an object/model (story)
• Field represents an object attribute (title)

CRUD operations on database

• C: create, insert record into table
• R: read, select record(s) from table
• U: update, update record(s) in the table
• D: delete, delete record(s) from the table

FREE Ruby Text Editors

April 4th, 2008 |

I thought I’d start a list of text editors to use on Windows. Scite, although great for ruby editing, does not have a file explorer and Context pretty much bombed. Ugh!

• Komodo Edit
• jEdit
• Netbeans
• Not Free but recommended
  • E – TextEditor
  • UltraEdit

Notes from Lecture

April 4th, 2008 |

Notes

How did installations go at home? Share tips here.

CIS 284 - Rails Introductory Lecture

April 1st, 2008 |

Thursday
12:30 p.m.
Room 1116

CIS 284 - Research Paper

April 1st, 2008 |

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddhknw46_70df9v62c8

CIS 284 - Syllabus

March 31st, 2008 |

http://docs.google.com/View?docid=ddhknw46_69gzdd2bhj

CIS 284

March 30th, 2008 |

I’ll have a syllabus up by Monday or Tuesday night. I’m thinking about coming in to do a lecture to get us started right. Any days or times work best for you?