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Ruby on Rails 5 Basics

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Introduction

3:22 with Jay McGavren

Learn what to expect in this course.

Take These Courses First

If you're not comfortable with these topics, you should strongly consider taking these courses first:

Studying is a skill! You'll have an easier time in this course, and the courses that follow it, if you follow a few basic strategies. We've put together some videos to help:

Installing Rails

We have three different workshops to help you install a Ruby on Rails 5 development environment on these platforms:

The MVC Pattern

One of the conventions Rails follows is a pattern that's widely used in software development, called "Model, View, Controller", or MVC.

  • The models write Ruby objects to the database, and read them out again later.
  • The views show data to users, most often in the form of HTML webpages.
  • Controllers respond to requests from users, usually by coordinating the model and the view.

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    [MUSIC] 0:00
    Hi, I'm Jay. 0:04
    A web developer and teacher at Treehouse and 0:05
    I'm here to introduce you to Ruby on Rails. 0:08
    In this course, we're going to use Rails to create a blog and 0:11
    online journal filled with posts. 0:13
    Rails is an awesome web framework that allows you to quickly create dynamic 0:16
    websites that can store data users enter. 0:19
    Rails helps power popular websites like the hospitality company Airbnb, 0:22
    the project management tool Basecamp and even the Treehouse site. 0:26
    And what makes Rails so awesome is that it favors convention over configuration. 0:30
    In the bad old days of web development, 0:34
    you had to decide what to name your database tables. 0:37
    You had to decide where to store your HTML templates. 0:39
    You had to decide what to name the classes that controlled everything and much more. 0:42
    And then you had to configure your application so 0:47
    that it knew where to look for all those moving parts. 0:49
    It could take weeks before you served your first web page. 0:51
    Rails is different because it follows conventions for all of these things. 0:55
    Database tables have standardized names. 0:58
    HTML templates are stored in standardized folders and 1:01
    the code that controls all this is set up in a standardized architecture. 1:04
    And if you stick to these conventions, 1:08
    Rails will automatically know where to look for everything you set up. 1:10
    Once you know what you're doing, you can have a simple app up and 1:14
    running in a single day. 1:16
    One of the conventions Rails follows is a pattern that's widely 1:18
    used in software development called Model View Controller MVC. 1:22
    The models write Ruby objects to the database and read them out again later. 1:26
    Views show data to users, most often in the form of HTML web pages. 1:30
    Controllers respond to requests from users, 1:35
    usually by coordinating the model and the view. 1:38
    You'll hear us talk about models we use in controllers lots more during the course. 1:41
    Before we start let's make sure we're on the same page. 1:45
    We're assuming you've got Ruby and Rails installed on your computer. 1:48
    If not, check the teacher's notes for 1:52
    a link to our installing a Rails 5 development environment videos. 1:54
    This course assumes you've gone through all the prerequisites 1:58
    listed on the course page. 2:01
    You need to already be familiar with classes and objects, methods and 2:02
    method calls and the differences between local variables and instance variables. 2:06
    If you're not comfortable with all of these things, do yourself a favor and 2:11
    review the prerequisites before starting this course. 2:14
    A bit of knowledge about databases and HTML will be helpful, too. 2:18
    We've included links to useful resources in the teacher's notes throughout 2:22
    the course. 2:25
    If at any point you encounter something you don't understand, 2:26
    check the teacher's notes. 2:29
    The solution is probably there. 2:31
    We've tried to adjust the pace of this material so that it's right overall. 2:33
    But depending on what you know it's probably going to be too slow for 2:36
    you in some places and too fast in others. 2:40
    So take a moment to familiarize yourself with the video playback controls. 2:42
    You can adjust the playback speed to be faster or slower. 2:47
    You can rewind if you need to go over something again and you can pause if 2:49
    there's text on screen that you need time to look at more closely. 2:53
    Don't worry about memorizing the name of every method or 2:56
    the location of every file that you see. 2:59
    This course is meant to be an overview of how Rails works. 3:01
    When you're done, you should know things like what a model class does and 3:05
    how an ERB template works. 3:08
    You don't need to know things like what parameters the form_for method takes or 3:10
    how to make an HTML table. 3:14
    We'll be covering details like that in later courses. 3:16
    Okay, ready? 3:19
    Let's create a Rails app. 3:20

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