This Specialization covers the fundamentals of web development with Ruby on Rails. You’ll learn everything you need to develop your own web application using Ruby on Rails, SQL and NoSQL databases, and HTML/CSS, and Javascript. We will also touch on advanced topics such as security, services using HTTP/RESTful access patterns, and user access and user experience from multiple device platforms. In the final Capstone Project, you’ll apply your skills to develop a web application that hosts uploaded photos and displays them using a map.
Created by: JOHN HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
Taught by:
- Jim Stafford – Adjunct Professor, Graduate Computer Science
- Kiran Chittargi -Adjunct Professor, Graduate Computer Science
- Yaakov Chaikin – Adjunct Professor, Graduate Computer Science
- Kalman Hazins – Adjunct Professor, Graduate Computer Science
What You will Learn?
- Course 1: Ruby on Rails – An Introduction
- Course 2: Rails with Active Record and Action Pack
- Course 3: Ruby on Rails Web Services and Integration with MongoDB
- Course 4: HTML, CSS, and Javascript for Web Developers
- Course 5: Single Page Web Applications with AngularJS
- Course 6: Capstone: Photo Tourist Web Application
Online Courses Description:
Course 1:
In this course, we will explore how to build web applications with the Ruby on Rails web application framework, which is geared towards rapid prototyping. Yes, that means building quickly! At the conclusion of this course, you will be able to build a meaningful web application and deploy it to the “cloud” using a Heroku PaaS (Platform as a Service). Best of all, it will almost feel effortless… Really!
Course 2:
In Rails with Active Record and Action Pack, we will explore how to interact with relational databases by using Active Record, a Ruby gem, which Rails uses by default for database access. We will then take a look at what role Active Record plays in the overall request-response cycle, when a client (the browser) requests data from the server, as well as how to submit the data to the server. Of course, when accessing data, security is of paramount importance! We will talk about vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, as well as how to secure access to data by authenticating and authorizing users accessing the data. Take this course to build a Ruby on Rails application with Active Record to automate the detailed SQL interactions with our database.
Course 3:
In this course, we will explore MongoDB, a very popular NoSQL database and Web Services concepts and integrate them both with Ruby on Rails. MongoDB is a used to handle documents with a pre-defined schema which will give the developers an ability to store, process and use data using it’s rich API. The modules will go in-depth from installation to CRUD operations, aggregation, indexing, GridFS and various other topics where we continuously integrate MongoDB with RailsRuby. We will be covering the interface to MongoDB using the Mongo Ruby API and the Mongoid ORM framework (the MongoDB access counterpart to RDBMS/ActiveRecord within Rails). The last portion of the course will focus on Web Services with emphasis on REST, its architectural style and integration of Web Services with Rails. Core concepts of Web Services like request/response, filters, data representation (XML/JSON), web linking and best practices will covered in depth.
Course 4:
In this course, we will learn the basic tools that every web page coder needs to know. We will start from the ground up by learning how to implement modern web pages with HTML and CSS. We will then advance to learning how to code our pages such that its components rearrange and resize themselves automatically based on the size of the user’s screen. You’ll be able to code up a web page that will be just as useful on a mobile phone as on a desktop computer. No “pinch and zoom” required! Last but certainly not least, we will get a thorough introduction to the most ubiquitous, popular, and incredibly powerful language of the web: Javascript. Using Javascript, you will be able to build a fully functional web application that utilizes Ajax to expose server-side functionality and data to the end user.
Course 5:
In this course, we will explore the core design of AngularJS 1.x (latest version of AngularJS 1), its components and code organization techniques. We will enhance the functionality of our web app by utilizing dependency injection to reuse existing services as well as write our own. We will create reusable HTML components that take advantage of AngularJS data binding as well as extend HTML syntax with a very powerful feature of AngularJS called directives. We’ll set up routing so our SPA can have multiple views. We will also learn how to unit test our functionality. At the end of this course, you will build a fully functional, well organized and tested web application using AngularJS and deploy it to the cloud.
Course 6:
In developing the Photo Tourist web application, you will get to work with different data types and data access scenarios (e.g., fielded data display and update, image upload/download, text search, access controlled information) to provide your users the ability to show off their photos and information from trips they have taken and to seek out photos and information from trips taken by others. Using the application you develop, your users will be able to:
- Create an account
- Upload and download photos to the site and make them accessible to others
- Provide descriptions of trips and photos that others can read
- Organize photos by location and trip,
- Find photos based on location
- Find photos based on text searches of descriptions
- Locate the place where the photo was taken on a map
