Truely nubie - Just installed Rails 3.1.0. What next?

rubyonrails-talk
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Hello team, I just installed Rails 3.1.0 on my LINUX (Red Hat) box. I also installed Apache2 and IBM DB2 9.7. I searched the web for a beginner’s tutorials for Rails. Found a few, although some conflicting. One tutorial said that I could run: rails demo. I tried but it did not work. Another tutorial calls for running: rails new /opt/rails_3.1.0/Code/Ruby/weblog …, which I did. But then what??? Bottom line, I would love to find a good tutorial that has been tested so I can start playing with rails. BTW, I also purchased couple rails book over two years ago. One I recall is Rails Recipes. But I prefer soft copy materials.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

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Have a look at railstutorial.org, I think that has some rails 3.1 stuff. It is necessary to make sure that the tutorial is for the correct version of rails (first two digits anyway, 3.0, 3.1 etc.) or you will get confused. 3.1 is very new so there is probably not much about yet.

Colin

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Be careful of any learning materials. Rails 3.1 with updated versions of Ruby have new syntax. I'd get something recent to save you the hassle.

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Be careful of any learning materials. Rails 3.1 with updated versions of Ruby have new syntax. I’d get something recent to save you the hassle.

True.

See that:

@rails_apps Daniel Kehoe

Top Recommended Resources for Rails http://j.mp/imROnG

Good luck.

5

OP,

Best place to start IMHO would be the guides.rubyonrails.org. There is a page for getting started; on there you can Create a blogging application from ground up.

When you feel comfortable enough with Rails, you should read up on the other topics on the guides or visit api.rubyonrails.org for more technical insight.

Regards, iGnition.

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I’m running ruby -v ruby 1.9.2p180 (2011-02-18 revision 30909) [x86_64-linux].

I appreciate the info giving me here so far. I am trying to avoid stuff too old to be relevant to Rails V3.1. I’ll start with the link provided by Colin.

Thank you all.

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Ruby Student wrote in post #1025143:

Hello team,

I just installed Rails 3.1.0 on my LINUX (Red Hat) box. I also installed Apache2 and IBM DB2 9.7.

While DB2 might be fine for production. I would recommend learning Rails using its default SQLite 3 database. Doing so will make working with Rails easier, since you'll likely do a lot less fighting with trying to get your database configured.

I searched the web for a beginner's tutorials for Rails. Found a few, although some conflicting. One tutorial said that I could run: *rails demo*. I tried but it did not work.

Another tutorial calls for running: rails new /opt/rails_3.1.0/Code/Ruby/weblog ......, which I did. But then what???

There was a time when Rails used a set of script kept under ./script. Most of these old scripts have been rolled into the rails command. So using "rails new" you're asking rails to create a new application, as opposed to say starting the server "rails server" or optionally "rails s". You can also do other things like start rails instance and enter the console "rails console" or "rails c".

You also use the rails command to generate various parts of a rails application:

rails g[enerate] model User rails g[enerate] controller users rails g[enerate] scaffold Post first_name:string last_name:string email:string

Bottom line, I would love to find a good tutorial that has been tested so I can start playing with rails. BTW, I also purchased couple rails book over two years ago. One I recall is *Rails Recipes*. But I prefer soft copy materials.

"Rails Recipes" is a fairly old book. Unless it's been updated to work well with the latests version of Rails a lot of things in there might not work as shown, or may be out-of-date. It's also a book intended for programmers familiar with Rails rather than a book to teach Rails.

Pragmatic Programmers is one good source for books on Ruby and Rails:

But, before you go anywhere else looking for how to get started with Rails, begin your reading here:

The API reference for Rails, which you'll need to get more details about specific parts of Rails, go here:

http://api.rubyonrails.org/

Between these two resources there is enough information for reasonably experience programmers to find just about anything they need to know. But, if you're looking for something that will walk your through building a real world application with Rails I would highly recommend the following book:

You might also want to take a look at other books related to Ruby on Rails:

http://pragprog.com/categories/ruby_and_rails

You might also find this book useful in you haven't found it already:

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Robert, this is great information. I truly appreciate your time writing these recommendations and the recommendations given by others.

Thanks a bunch!