First Rails Tutorial

My Setup

I am using TextMate for my editor. I am using the Terminal to access the command prompt. I am using online Rails 2.x tutorials to become familiar with the language, the different commands, and the file system.

The Tutorial

I chose Creating a weblog in 15 minutes with Rails 2. In 15 minutes, it goes from scratch to complete weblog engine with comments, ajax, an ATOM feed, an XML and JSON API, tests, an administrative interface, and much more.

This tutorial showed me a lot of what Rails can do. It gave some insight into Rails MVC archetype. I was able to experience how easy and quick a Rails application can be created. Every change was immediately updated and viewable without having to compile first. I guess that’s what is meant by convention over configuration.

The tutorial was a little fast. It also provided an abundance of information quickly. It didn’t include how to enhance the look of the webapp. The tutorial did provide me with a basic understanding of what’s involved in creating a Rails application.

Other Things I Learned

To use the MySQL as the database, I used the command rails –d mysql appName when creating a new application.

To create the database, I used the command rake db:create RAILS_ENV=’development’