How to learn Ruby On Rails

Recently, many of my friends asked me about Ruby On Rails and how to start web development using this great framework. Most of them have already looked for ROR, checked many blog posts and tutorials about it but i think they would like to know the best way On Rails.

What i'm going to do is to list some points that i used to mention for those who want to learn about Ruby On Rails.

So, let's move on!

Prerequisites:

Before we begin, you have to know the prerequisites for web development. I recommend that you be familiar with HTML, Javascript, CSS, jQuery and to know how HTTP works, as you will definitely use them later in your rails application. W3schools is your friend in this!

The way to Ruby:

Ruby On Rails is a web framework which is built on Ruby, so It's more convenient to KNOW about Ruby before going On Rails.

There are many books and tutorials about Ruby, but honestly i don't think that you have to be a Ruby Geek to start learning Rails. You'd better to take just an overview from this tutorial, reading until section (Ruby Regular Expression) is enough. By the end of this tutorial, you should be able to know about ruby Symbols, Classes, Arrays, Ranges, Blocks and IRB will be your best friend.

The best way On Rails:

By now you are familiar with Ruby code. Let's go ahead to Rails...

During my internship at BadrIT, they recommended Agile Web Development with Rails for me. There are many editions from this book, each one covers a specific version of Rails. You'd better to check the latest edition for the latest rails version.

This book is divided mainly into two parts. "Building an Application" is the first part, it's the best step-by-step tutorial to build a Rails application from scratch. Most of Rails basics are covered in this part, so you'd better to follow the steps for "The Depot Application" example and to apply these steps by your hand to see your rails app running on your host!

In part two "Rails in Depth", you will find advanced topics in rails, more details about ActiveRecord, ActionView, Migrations ...etc. In my opinion, you can skip this part and go directly to build your own rails application. Just take an overview about it, check for its content, as you'll probably back to it when you find yourself stuck or in need for more detail about Rails.

Finally i can't forget to talk about Railscasts. This website contains a bunch of absolutely useful videos about Rails. Ryan (the guy who created these videos) creates these short and brief screencats focusing on one technique so you can quickly move on to apply it to your own project. You can search for episodes about ActiveRecords, Migrations, Routes ...etc. as a beginner, you will get something from them!

If you have any comment on the notes above or have something to be added, please leave me a comment and i'll add it as soon as i see it.

Thanks and see you in the next post :)