Up and Running

Introduction

Ruby on Rails became popular quickly because it handles much of the hard work for developers, especially when starting a new project. Rails follows the principle of "sensible defaults" - with just one command, you can create a working application ready for customization.

Setting Up a Rails Project

Installing Rails

1. Open your terminal (Menu > Laragon > Terminal or Ctrl + `)
2. Run the installation command:

   gem install rails

Creating a New Project

1. Navigate to your projects folder (e.g., C:\laragon\app)
2. Create a new Rails application:

   rails new blogger
   cd blogger

3. Open the project in your text editor

Project Structure Overview

The Rails generator creates this folder structure:

• app: Contains your application code (Models, Controllers, Views, Helpers, JavaScript)
• bin: Stores executables (bundle, rails, rake, spring)
• config: Environment settings and initializers
• db: Database migrations and SQLite3 database file
• lib: Reusable code outside the project
• log: Environment-specific log files
• public: Static files
• test: Test files (when using Test::Unit)
• tmp: Temporary cached files
• vendor: Third-party code

Database Configuration

The database settings are in config/database.yml. For SQLite3 (Rails default), the configuration is pre-set to create db/development.sqlite3.

Starting the Server

rails server

This starts Puma web server on http://localhost:3000.

Creating the Article Model

Generate the Article model with:

rails generate model Article

This creates:

• Migration file in db/migrate
• Model file in app/models/article.rb
• Test files

Migration File

Edit db/migrate/[timestamp]_create_articles.rb:

def change
  create_table :articles do |t|
    t.string :title
    t.text :body
    t.timestamps
  end
end

Run the migration:

rake db:migrate

Working with the Console

Access the Rails console:

rails console

Try these commands:

Time.now
Article.all
Article.new

Create and save an article:

a = Article.new
a.title = "Sample Article Title"
a.body = "This is the text for my article!"
a.save
Article.all

Routing Configuration

Edit config/routes.rb:

Rails.application.routes.draw do
  resources :articles
end

View routes with:

rake routes

Articles Controller

Generate the controller:

rails generate controller articles

Index Action

Add to app/controllers/articles_controller.rb:

def index
  @articles = Article.all
end

Create app/views/articles/index.html.erb:

<h1>All Articles</h1>

<ul id="articles">
  <% @articles.each do |article| %>
    <li>
      <%= link_to article.title, article_path(article), class: 'article_title' %>
    </li>
  <% end %>
</ul>

<%= link_to "Create a New Article", new_article_path, class: "new_article" %>

Show Action

Add to the controller:

def show
  @article = Article.find(params[:id])
end

Create app/views/articles/show.html.erb:

<h1><%= @article.title %></h1>
<p><%= @article.body %></p>
<%= link_to "<< Back to Articles List", articles_path %>

Styling

Download the CSS file:

cd app/assets/stylesheets/
wget http://tutorials.jumpstartlab.com/assets/blogger/screen.css

Saving to GitHub

Initialize a Git repository:

git init
git add .
git commit -m "first blogger commit"
git remote add origin https://github.com/your_username/your_repo.git
git push -u origin master

Troubleshooting

If you see database errors:

1. Ensure SQLite3 is installed
2. Verify the gem is properly installed