Welcome to the Ruby on Rails Back End Class!

Below is a quick outline of this course. Remember to keep pace with the
mentor groups, and don’t hesitate to ask lots of questions! Slack is the best place for your questions, and you have a Slack channel for that purpose. Get oriented on the Student Resources page. Students are expected to attend at least two Mentor Sessions a week. Sign up for mentor sessions using the Calendly links below.

If you need assistance with non-curriculum items please contact your Cohort Instructional Leader on Slack or by this email: dragonfish@codethedream.org

Course Calendar

The calendar below shows the start date of each week of the course and includes breaks and special events.

Course Sections

Week	Start Date	Due Date	Lessons
0	Feb 28, 2023	Mar 7, 2023	Machine set-up Git-hub Cookbook AND Pre-class Information
1	Mar 8, 2023	Mar 14, 2023	Lesson 1.1 SQL Basics
2	Mar 15, 2023	Mar 21, 2023	Lesson 1.2 More SQL, Introduction to Ruby
3	Mar 22, 2023	Mar 28, 2023	Lesson 2.1 Ruby Collections, Loops, and Conditional Statements
4	Mar 29, 2023	Apr 4, 2023	Lesson 2.2 Ruby Methods, Classes, and Blocks
5	Apr 5, 2023	Apr 11, 2023	Lesson 2.3 Ruby Test First Development
6	Apr 12, 2023	Apr 18, 2023	Lesson 3.1 Rails Basics
7	Apr 19, 2023	Apr 25, 2023	Lesson 3.2 Rails Active Record Associations
8	Apr 26, 2023	May 2, 2023	Lesson 4.1 Additional Rails Topics
9	May 3, 2023	May 9, 2023	Lesson 4.2 Rails Testing with RSpec
10	May 10, 2023	May 16, 2023	Lesson 4.3 Bringing it All Together
11	May 17, 2023	May 23, 2023	Lesson 4.4 Bootstrap 4 Basics; Bootstrap in Rails
12	May 24, 2023	May 30, 2023	Lesson 5.1 Building an API, Swagger ✔ Complete only sections 5.1.1 and 5.1.2 this week
13	May 31, 2023	Jun 6, 2023	Lesson 5.1 continued Building an API, Swagger ✔ Complete only section 5.1.3 this week
14	Jun 7, 2023	Jun 13, 2023	Lesson 5.2 Calling the API Using Fetch
15	Jun 14, 2023	Jun 20, 2023	Final Project work begins Mindset Curriculum Assignment
16	Jun 21, 2023	Jun 27, 2023	Final Project work continues Mindset Curriculum Assignment
17	Jun 28, 2023	Jul 4, 2023	Final Project work completed Mindset Curriculum Assignment
	Jul 5, 2023	Jul 7, 2023	Final Project Presentations Two nights, Time TBD
—	Jul 17, 2023	Sept 12, 2023	PRACTICUM

What You Will Be Learning

Rails is a widely used production grade web application framework. You will be learning to develop applications within that framework, which is based on the Ruby language. You will also learn some SQL, which is used by most back end frameworks to store and retrieve data. You will learn about

Basic SQL operations: Select, Insert Into, Update, Delete
Combining SQL table data using joins
Ruby syntax, variables, conditional statements, arrays, hashes, and loops
Ruby methods, classes, and blocks
Ruby test driven development
Rails simple applications using scaffolds
The Model/View/Controller organization of functions within Rails
Routes, and how you associate route URLs with controller methods
REST principles and operations: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE
Communicating with the database using the ActiveRecord Object/Relational Mapping
How data models affect the structure of your controllers and views
Assocations between data models: one to many, many to many.
Views that show dynamic web pages with embedded Ruby
Diagnosing problems and debugging
Communicating messages to the user
Logging
Testing
Styling your application using the Bootstrap framework
How to build a back end API
How to enable the back end API for Swagger testing/documentation
How to call the API from Ajax

Before You Begin

Please set up your machines for Ruby and Rails development, as described Here.

Submitting Your Assignments

For each lesson, you will have one or several assignments. Each assignment is provided to you as a git repository, and a link will be provided to you for that git repository. You should have basic familiarity with git before starting this course, but if you aren’t confident in your git skills, see this Github Cookbook. For each assignment, you will do the following steps:

Fork the repository into your own git account. The fork should be public.
Clone your fork onto your workstation. Important: Clone your fork, not the original repository.
Create a branch for your lesson. Commit changes to that branch periodically, and push them to github.
When the lesson is complete and all your work has been pushed to github, open a pull request for your branch.
Then fill out your homework assignment submission form. Include a link to your pull request. (Be sure the link is for your pull request, not your github repository.) A mentor will then review your assignment, putting comments into the pull request.

Some of the git repositories will be used for several lessons. You should create a separate branch for each lesson. Each time you will create the new branch from the branch for the previous lesson, so that your work builds on previous steps.

After your assignment has been reviewed, you can, if you like, merge it into the main branch. It is best not to do this merge until your assignment has been reviewed, as your reviewer may recommend changes. You do the merge on Github, by merging your pull request. Then, on your workstation, check out the main branch and do a git pull.

When Submitting Your Code

When you submit your code, it should be working. If you are not able to get your code working, ask for help on Slack, or bring up questions in a mentor session, or ask for a special mentor session.

Ruby code should be readable. There are many aspects to good Ruby code style, but the most important for right now is indentation! The content of blocks, methods, and classes should be indented two spaces. The end statement should line up, being indented the same number of spaces, with the statement that begins the block, method, or class. Here’s an example:

def my_method(my_array,my_boolean)
  if my_boolean
    my_array.each do |entry|
      puts(entry)
    end
  else
    puts("The boolean was false.")
  end
end

We need proper indentation in order to be able to review your assignments. You need proper indentation to make sure your code is structured correctly.

Mentor Information

Traditional / Group Mentors

Traditional Mentors are volunteer mentors who will host one or more one-hour long group sessions weekly. Typically these sessions are question-answer format so be sure to bring your questions from covering your learning materials or working on your coding assignment to the session. To sign up for a group mentor session:

Click this link to be taken to the Mentor Session Sheet – a Google Spreadsheet
Find the session(s) you wish to attend for the week and list your name in that column. The document auto-saves so other than typing your name, there’s nothing else you need to do!
By appointment mentor Calendly links are also listed in the first column of that spreadsheet. You can use those links or the links below to sign up for one on one sessions.

If you need help finding your way around the spreadsheet, watch the video below.
NOTE: This recording was for a previous class, so dates and names in the video will not match dates and names for this class!

1:1 / By Appointment Mentors

By Appointment Mentors are volunteer mentors who will help you one-on-one. If you’re unable to make a group session, or would just like to have one-on-one assistance, use the links below. To sign up for a one on one session:

Click on the orange “Sign Up with this Mentor” button under the mentor with whom you want to meet
This will open their Calendly page in a new window. Click on the blue circled date for the day you want to meet with them. A list of times they’re available that day will appear on the right side of the calendar. If a day does not have a blue circle, they are not available that day.
Click on the time to the right of the calendar to select what time you want to meet with them
Click Confirm
Use the instructions or link in the email confirmation you receive after clicking Confirm to join your session on the day and at the time you selected