My One Month Rails "Pinteresting" App is finished! Woot!

Over the weekend, I didn't do much coding.  I did make it to the Railsgirl meetup and learned some stuff on JS (specifically Coffeescript) and Associations.

So far this current week, I've been busy working away at my Pinteresting app in One Month Rails.  I've done a ton in the past two days to get it finished!

• Utilized the jQuery Masonry gem so that images move around (with transitions) to fit the page width.  Oh... did I mention that since I built it with bootstrap, it will look great on tablets and mobile devices? ;-)
• Updated styling for displaying single pins on a page.
• Added Edit, Delete, and Back icon using bootstrap's Glyphicons.
• Changed up the root route so that all pins are displayed on homepage.
• Updated pins controller to change how the pins are ordered.
• Added pagination using will_paginate gem and limited number of pins displayed on a page to 8.
• Added user names and subsequent validations.
• Yay!

I started it less than 2 weeks ago and I can't believe that I've finished it.  I've learned a lot and can't wait to start the next RoR project (Hartl's Rails Tutorial)! Edit:  I've decided to do Daniel Kehoe's Learn Ruby on Rails first.  In that I will make a web app suitable for a small business, which will be great, since I want to do this for my dad's biz!  I want to redo my dad's business's website.  It's in terrible shape and needs help, and then I can also add it to my portfolio.

Of course, the Pinteresting app didn't always go smoothly and I used google and stack overflow to troubleshoot and fix problems.  My last issue was relating to a precompiling issue in my production environment.  After I finished the build today, I went back and jazzed up the css styling.  I added a background image to the jumbotron on the main page.  It was looking fine in development on my local host, but in production on heroku, it wasn't showing up and was giving a 404 not found error for the image.  I looked on stack overflow and found that others have had this issue too!  I followed some advice and it works now!

So freaking proud of myself!

Snazzy.

Thursday and Friday's progress!

I really immersed myself in the One Month Rails course for the past 2 days.  In the course, I am making a pinterest style app.  Here's what I've accomplished during the last 2 days:

• I got through setting up users with the devise gem and migrating everything successfully to Heroku.
• I styled the new user sign up and log in pages using Bootstrap 3.
• I then worked on generating the pin scaffold and connecting pins to users.
• I set up user authorizations so pins couldn't be deleted or changed by anyone other than the user that set them up.  And pins can only be seen by logged in users.
• I installed the Paperclip gem and added the ability to upload and edit images on the pins.
• Whew.

I'm on Day 25 of the curriculum, ~72% through the course.  Feeling really good with my progress.  I'm not just trying to blast through the videos and mindlessly do the actions.  I am taking thorough notes and really trying to understand everything.  I am a little shaky on understanding the migrations (how do we know what to type into those exactly to get the desired elements added to our database correctly?) and the methods in the controllers, but I know the more I do it, the more I'll understand.

Here's how it is shaping up...

Editing a pin - Can add an image and description.  Clean formatting thanks to Bootstrap 3.

Here's a saved pin with image and description!

Not sure how much I will work on it this weekend.  I am anxious to continue, but also like to spend time with my partner.  I may be away most of tomorrow on a trip and Sunday is the RailsGirls meetup.

Progress update: 10.12.14... I am loving One Month Rails so far!

Things are going a little slow, but well!

I've been continuing with my One Month Rails project.  I really like it so far.  I have been working on adding Bootstrap elements and customizing the look of my app so far.

I added a NavBar and fixed up the layout and colors to look nicer.

Looking good!

And the big achievement today.... I got my app online with Heroku! It's live!  I have a few issues I need to fix/understand.  Heroku warned me to specify my Ruby version as best practices but there are 2 issues with doing this.  First, I have built the app using Ruby 2.1.4 but it says to specify 2.0.0 in the gemfile.  If I do this, it messes up RVM and ability to run rails server (doesn't show the rails gem at all).  I'm confused and I've reached out to the teachers at OMR for a little guidance.  In the meantime, I removed the ruby version specification so I don't have any issues running locally for now.  Updated:  I fixed it!  I needed to do a bundle install and I cleared it up and the gemfile is now specified for Ruby 2.1.4.  If in doubt, always bundle install. :-]

I also had an issue with my google font not working on Heroku, but a quick search on stackoverflow and I fixed that issue and pushed the update to heroku.

Also... I got the files setup on my computer for the next RailsGirls meetup on Sunday and took a look at the this Git/Github tutorial, although it is very similar to the one in the One Month Rails videos, so it was  review, but I'm getting more comfortable with using Git and use it often.

I couldn't stay away.... and I worked on it some more tonight and got the Devise gem installed and I am ready to start generating users to my site tomorrow!  Wheee!

I feel like today, I accomplished a lot.  :-]

Monday's progress

I continued and got through the day 9 material (I'm on day 3) of my One Month Rails pinteresting project.

I made this progress today:

1. Created a new page.
• Added new action for the new page in the controller folder
• Created the new page's HTML in the view folder
• Added the new page's route to the config/routes.rb file
2. Learned a little more about embedded ruby.
3. Created navigation links in my layout.
4. Installed the Bootstrap-sass gem, updated the gemlist, and added a SCSS file to utilize it.  Whee!  I love bootstrap.
5. And.... did the Git "dance" (stage/commit/push) several times all through all these updates to my project.

Progress Update for last friday and the weekend....

Last Friday:

• Worked through Day 2 - 6 of One Month Rails tutorial.  I created my new project folder in rails, created a new home page, & setup the new root path in routes.rb file.  
• I did get bogged down a bit with section on Git.  The tutorial was spot on, no problems with it, but I decided to go back into a project that I had already added to github but hadn't tracked in git locally and made a mess of it!  After tooling around for an 1.5 hr I finally got it sorted.  And, in the process, I went through a couple of git tutorials and lots of searching on stackoverflow.
• Also, in browsing twitter feed, I found out about Meteor and started looking into it.  It seems really cool and I want to check it out further.  I dl'd it and started going through their intro tutorial before I got too tired to concentrate anymore for the night.  Will look at it again soon.

The Weekend:

• No progress made.  I took the weekend off.  I spent time with my partner.  On Sunday, we took the train down to Brussels, Belgium to go to the big Christmas market there.

Brussels!

Getting into a weekly routine.

Lately, I'm trying to establish a good weekday routine.  I like working at home, but feel less productive here and more distracted with the dogs around.

These two can be very distracting to have around.

So, I've been biking down to the main library.  I like it there.  Usually pretty peaceful.  I can get a solid block of time of studying in every day.  Only thing that I dislike is that bathroom isn't free to use!  But, still cheaper than going to coffee shop.  I make my own coffee and bring it with me.

Today, I finished up RubyMonk as best as I could.  I got through all the lessons/exercises and finished all the problems except for 3 of the 16.  I'm like 96% done.  I'm just stuck on a couple and staring at them does not help me understand them better.  I'm not giving up on them or Pine's Learn to Program book, just taking a little break from them and will come back to them when I get a little more experience under my belt.

I'm very itchy to do something more tangible with my coding than these CS brain teaser coding challenges I've been doing... I want to really build my first application!  So, I went ahead and signed up for One Month Rails.  I found a discount code and it was only $74 instead of $99.  Very,  very excited about this!  I went through the day 1 lessons tonight and will soldier on with this tomorrow.  If anyone is interested, here is a link to the discounted price.

I can't believe I've been coding for 3 weeks.  I'm looking forward to see what my progress brings in the rest of this month.