Fall 2007 - Notes & Links
Software
We will be using Ruby on Rails as our development platform for this class. Ruby is a reasonably new object-oriented, interpreted language.Rails is a web development framework written in Ruby. Like other similar frameworks, Rails includes support for integration with relational databases, object-relational mapping, html templates, and an integrated web server.
To complete the assignments in this course, you'll need several pieces of software:
- Ruby, gem (the ruby package manager), and Rails
- The MySQL relational database.
- A text editor. My favorite is emacs. jEDIT, gVIM, and others are available as well.
You may also want to concsider the HeidiSQL graphical front -end for MySQL, which can simplify the process of creating databases and examining database contents. I ran into problems creating databases with the MySQL command tool: HeidiSQL worked much better for me. If you have problems, try it out.
If you prefer, you can also consider using the Instant Rails or Locomotive all-in-one Rails installations, for Windows and OS X respectively. As I have not used those tools, I might not be able to help you if you run into trouble with them.
Some other Ruby & Rails Links of interest:
If you come across anything else that should be on this list, please let me know.