Last week we started Rails and I immediately picked up an old project idea I had started last summer while working through the Hartl Tutorial. I scrapped that repository and started from scratch. It seemed like a simple little project, but quickly proved to loaded with lots of small challenges.
Features
The beta version includes only the basic ability to create a bucket list. No bells and whistles (yet!). The site includes a simple data model with only two models and one controller.
Railscasts are awesome and were a huge help during this project. Ryan Bates has covered hundreds of topics in clear concise little screencasts accompanied by succinct code. These little bite-size rails bits make the building of our a few different features of this site much easier, including the nested form, the mailer, and the soon to be deployed authentication system.
This was my first try at nested forms. I decided to implement the new user and new bucket list form in the same view. I also got a bit of practice with jQuery to dynamically render a new bucket list item partial.
With the help of Victoria Friedman, another Flatiron alum who visited the school last Saturday, I was able to work with Active Mailer to set-up a confirmation e-mail.
Lessons Learned
This was also my first try at using a downloaded bootstrap theme for the front end styling. I, of course, chose a crazy Wrap Bootstrap theme completed jazzed out with paralax. It probably would have worked fine if I hadn’t wanted to customize it. As soon as I started chopping up the index page, it broke. Surprise surprise. So this means I also got an intimate look at the workings of a complex CSS/JS template. It was a learning experience indeed.
