turingschool/curriculum

Turing's main repository of tutorials and projects

Jumpstart Lab Curriculum

Authoring and Editing Content

Setup

The code highlighting used throughout the tutorials is colorized by an external site. The colorized results are stored in Redis locally. So to work with this site effectively, you'll want to have Redis installed. The first time you generate the site it'll be slow as the fragments are being cached, but future generate processes should be quite fast.

View

bundle exec rake preview

Generates the content and then lauches a Sinatra web application.

In your browser visit localhost:4000 or execute open http://localhost:4000 to lauch the browser.

Note: This project contains a lot of content so the initial generation will delay the initial startup of the webservice for a few seconds. Saved changes to the content will cause Jekyll to re-generate all of the content causing a delay before it is displayed in the browser. Ensure any caching is disabled.

Custom Page Attributes

Sidebar - Table of Contents

You can automatically enable a Table of Contents for long pieces of content. This sidebar will place all h2 elements (generated from ## markdown) as linkable references.

An example:

---
layout: page
title: Object Oriented Javascript
sidebar: true
---

Custom Tags

{% terminal %} CODE {% endterminal %}

Generates the text inside of a OSX styled terminal window.

Lines that are commands are prefaced with a $. Lines without are treated as output.

{% terminal %} $ ruby -v ruby 1.9.3p194 (2012-04-20 revision 35410) [x86_64-darwin11.4.0] {% endterminal %}

{% irb %} CODE {% endirb %}

Generates the text inside of a OSX styled IRB window

Lines that are commands are prefaced with a $. Linesk without are treated as output.

{% irb %} $ 1 + 1 2 {% endirb %}

{% page_url filename-of-content %}

The page_url tag allows you to link to content without regard to knowing the relative or absolute path to the content item from the current item that you are editing.

### Great Javascript Tutorials

{% page_url 1-javascript-in-the-page %}
{% page_url 2-javascript-basics.markdown %}
{% page_url 3-dom-basics.html %}

• The resulting link will use the title of the linked document
• The extension of the file is ignored

{% section path/to/content.markdown path/to/image-to-display.png Title of Section %}

This tag will generate a special section layout which will embed the specified markdown content file in the page with an image and a special title.

Online

Visit http://tutorials.jumpstartlab.com

License

Unless otherwise noted, all materials licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 

curriculum's Issues

Facade: class instance variable

@whatever = nil

is actually a class instance variable, not an instance variable

have an error in blogger the name of the file is styles.css.scss not styles.css.sass

Open up a new file in your app/assets/stylesheets directory called styles.css.sass. Let’s write some!

the links to the css in jsblogger and jsmerchant are broken

the links to the css in jsblogger and jsmerchant are broken

Unable to click any link in tutorials homepage

I'm unable to click links on this URL : http://tutorials.jumpstartlab.com/ on MacOS X Lion , Chrome 18 , Safari, Firefox 12

When disabling CSS all links work well.

Rails 3.2.2 and attr_accessible

The awesome changes to 3.2.2 and the requirement of an attr_accessible necessitates revisions to all the Rails tutorials and sample code.

Notes from a user about JSBlogger:

Hi,

I'm working on the JsBlogger tutorial and I'm coming into a problem. I just finished the section on displaying tags but when I try to create a new article with new tags it says: "Can't mass-assign protected attributes: tag" and it says its the result of this code:

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :title, :body, :tag_list
has_many :comments
has_many :taggings
has_many :tags, :through => :taggings

def tag_list
return self.tags.join(", ")
end

def tag_list=(tags_string)
tag_names = tags_string.split(",").collect{|s| s.strip}
tag_names.each do |tag_name|
tag = Tag.find_or_create_by_name(tag_name)
self.taggings.build(:tag => tag)
end
end
end

I added the :tag_list to attr_accessible because it was saying it couldn't mass assign that as well. If you need any more information, let me know.

Can't get to http://tutorials.jumpstartlab.com/projects/jsblogger.html

It says, "Sorry, I cannot find /projects/jsblogger.html"

JSBlogger Instructions

Write a short couple paragraphs about setting up JSBlogger

• Checkout from github
• Create a branch
• Start server
• Start console
• Have command prompt in project directory available
• Instructions for going back for a new example (git checkout master, git checkout -b new_branch)

Proof it, try it, then replace all the tag markers in the source text with a link to the instructions.

Store the whole thing under /topics

Broken link in Blogger tutorial?

I believe the link to screen.css at the end of Iteration 0 is broken?

Event Manager - Form Letter Error

So I made it through the Event Manager tutorial. It was awesome. Thank you so much for sharing.

I only came across one other minor error: In Iteration 5, Step 1, there is some example code for using the gsub method:

custom_letter = letter.gsub("#first_name","#{line[:first_name]}")
custom_letter = custom_letter.gsub("#last_name", "#{line[:first_name]}")

But I believe on the second line :first_name should actually be :last_name

That's all I found! Thanks again!

~justin

RubyMine -> SublimeText

We should really just kill the RubyMine references, ST is basically better to introduce people to, and what we've been doing for a while.

stuff that can be removed or generalized

I'm working on generalizing the curriculum for ongoing use. What are good candidates for removal?

• refs to http://jumpstartlab.com/chat
• refs to individual participants, such as "Steve will give lightening talk next week"
• refs to milestone dates, such as "Homework for 2/10" or "March 12: Object design, source control, reading group"

Others...?

Typo: "and that a recipe"

"These changes will mean changing the same code in two places, and that a recipe for regression bugs."

Should read: "... and that's a recipe..."

debugger: pry

Adding a note or two about pry would be cool

Ruby in 100 Minutes links to JSAttend broken

On this page: http://tutorials.jumpstartlab.com/paths/ruby_one_day.html there are links to what looks like should be a Rails project called JSAttend. That project doesn't exist in the source.

Seeing as this is a Ruby in 100 minutes, wouldn't it be more appropriate not to do a Rails project and do a Ruby-only based project like EventManager instead? http://tutorials.jumpstartlab.com/projects/eventmanager.html

Add text editors to env setup

Screen Styles

I'd like to shrink the page to be less wide, more long, like http://jumpstartlab.com/resources/rails-jumpstart/jsblogger/

We should probably flip the code snippet styles to use dark-on-light for highest readability. That will need to be done for the print styles anyway, so they might as well be unified.

outdated user note

On the SalesEngine page:

"As this project is very complex, consider the requirements fluid until 11:59PM, Monday, March 26th."

Is this project now considered specced out enough to remove this user note? If not, what's a reasonable date to replace it?

Rename other JS* projects

JSAttend is renamed to EventManager, but I need to rename all the other ones.

Option to hide feedback tab

The feedback tab, while useful, distracts me from reading especially on my iPhone. It also blocks the words a little bit. Create an option to hide the feedback bar or move it to the bottom of the page.

Haml: Filters

Talk about markdown filters and such in the haml lesson

JSAttend Typo

Then, try calling inspect on the line object again:

def print_names
@file.each do |line|
puts inspect
#puts line[2] + " " + line[3]
end
end

Should the "puts inspect" be "puts line.inspect"?

JSBlogger: Validations!

There's no section about validations in the model, handling them in the controller, etc.

Blogger: CSS doesn't handle password fields

Blogger screen.css inaccessible from current link

The screen.css link in the Blogger project is not accessible:

Styling

This is not a CSS project, so to make it a bit more fun we’ve prepared a CSS file you can drop in. It should match up with all the example HTML in the tutorial.

Download the file from http://tutorials.jumpstartlab.com/assets/blogger/screen.css and place it in your app/assets/stylesheets/ folder. It will be automatically picked up by your project.

The link http://tutorials.jumpstartlab.com/assets/jsblogger/screen.css fetches the appropriate css. Perhaps this file wasn't migrated when the project was renamed from jsblogger? The file does exist on the master branch at public/assets/blogger/screen.css.

JRuby Curriculum

Throw down those good ideas you two rattled off. @steveklabnik @mattyoho

use of redirect_to

After Creation

I was unable to use the path given: redirect_to article_path(@comment.article).

Routing Error

No route matches {:action=>"show", :controller=>"articles"}

I was able to successfully complete this step using:

redirect_to articles_path(@comment.article) instead.

Measuring Performance - typo

"It breakdowns the time" -> "it breaks down the time"

jQuery Tutorials

The jQuery tutorials just got dumped in the SOURCE directory in their original textile. They need markup revision to markdown and a ton of technical/English editing.

Formatting of .opinion and .note blocks

Currently the source text has .note and .opinion DIVs. The markdown engine is not processing the text inside the DIV, meaning it gets no P tags and no italics, PRE, etc.

Print Styles

It has to look good printing.

I was generally happy with the old tutorial styles: http://jumpstartlab.com/resources/rails-jumpstart/jsblogger/

The sections are short enough that they probably don't need page breaks, but the body text has to be plenty large for old people to read :)

have an error in blogger the name of the file is styles.css.scss not styles.css.sass

Open up a new file in your app/assets/stylesheets directory called styles.css.sass. Let’s write some!

Screen Styles

If you have a UL inside a UL, then the interior UL get's a large bottom margin. For example, search for "Do they map convenience" on: /routes/router.html

debugger

add a note about finish returning to the caller frame

JSBLogger: Add HAML to generators

We should add haml to the default generators so that later views are generated with haml and not erb.

JSAttend Data File

Fix link(s) in JSAttend to point to http://tutorials.jumpstartlab.com/assets/jsattend/event_attendees.csv

Background Jobs

initializer.

I don't remember what this means.

Sass deprecation issues

When deploying, I get this:

 DEPRECATION WARNING on line 107 of /tmp/build_st1qztm6vxt4/sass/base/_layout.scss:
       Using @extend within directives (e.g. @media) is deprecated.
       It will be an error in Sass 3.2.
       This will only work once @extend is supported natively in the browser.

Also on lines

 DEPRECATION WARNING on line 124 of /tmp/build_st1qztm6vxt4/sass/base/_layout.scss:
       DEPRECATION WARNING on line 155 of /tmp/build_st1qztm6vxt4/sass/base/_layout.scss:
       DEPRECATION WARNING on line 57 of /tmp/build_st1qztm6vxt4/sass/partials/_navigation.scss:

SASS -> SCSS

Most people use SCSS because it's also valid CSS3... @jcasimir unless you have serious objections, I think we should switch over.

JSattend confusing pseudocode

Iteration 3: Outputting Cleaned Data, Step 1:
I'm really confused by the pseudocode in the comment:

def output_data
 output = CSV.open("event_attendees_clean.csv", "w")
 @file.each do |line|
   # if this is the first line
   #   output the headers
   output << line
 end
end

I think it's not worth it checking in each iteration if that's the first line over and over again.
The easiest way to add the header is to configure that in the option hash:

@file = CSV.open(filename, {:headers => true, :return_headers => true, :header_converters => :symbol})

Should I rework that in form of a Pull Request?
Greetings!

Turn on Autolinking

The markdown engine should be configured to auto-link URLs

tag_list need updated

In the Tagging > An Interface for Tagging section the code for tag_list return object references instead of strings. When you edit an article it lists the object id's in the tags field.

def tag_list
    return self.tags.join(", ")
 end

This is probably not the best way to do this, but I ended up with:

def tag_list
    #return self.tags.join(", ")
    new_tags = []
        self.tags.each do |tag|
            new_tags << tag.name
        end
    return new_tags.join(", ")
 end

CSS is off in application.html.haml [was: JSBlogger notes from Jim]

@jimweirich is working with JSBlogger this week and had these revision suggestions:

• Migration methods are now up/down, not self.up/self.down
• Routing table shown using older format
• No need for h() method anymore (in general)
• @article.comments.new attaches the new comment to the in-memory version of the article, goofing up the display. I changed it to Comment.new(:article_id => @article.id)
• In the tagging section, @ruby, technology@ didn't render correctly (actually, there were a lot of mis-renders involving markdown)
• Because the TagsController was generated with method names, the error is missing template, not undefined action.
• Paperclip migration: change AND self.down?, should be change or up/down, (2) and drop the self.
• Sass information is out of date: (1) don't need to install, comes with rails, (2) don't put in public/stylesheet/styles.sass, put in app/assets/stylesheets/styles.css.sass, (3) sass example uses deprecated syntax (e.g. ! and = for variables)
• application.html.haml seems a bit off, doesn't work well with the provided CSS; particularly the #container/#content stuff.
• Comment: Seems strange that our first introduction to validations is the password confirmation. (see email from Jeff)
• When adding an admin user, the url should be /bloggers/new, not /users/new
• Typo: BloggerSessios => BloggerSessions
• Blogger.all.size should be Blogger.count

spelling error

"We’ve come full circle: now it’s ignorant of the background work and caching going on behind the seens. "

Should be 'scenes'

Measuring performance

times should be an html entity, it's showing up as x.

Event Manager - CSV.open method call

I am a complete noobie to Ruby (and GitHub for that matter). So if this comment is of no value, or if this issue is solely the result of my ignorance, please forgive me.

I just began working through Event Manager tutorial, and am at the "Iteration: 0" section. I found that running the following code:

# Dependencies
require "csv"

# Class Definition
class EventManager
    def initialize
        puts "EventManager Initialized."
        filename = "event_attendees.csv"
        @file = CSV.open(filename)
    end
end

# Script
manager = EventManager.new

Gives me the following error:

 /home/justin/Documents/Code/event_manager/event_manager.rb:9:in `open': wrong number of arguments (1 for 2) (ArgumentError)
     from /home/justin/Documents/Code/event_manager/event_manager.rb:9:in `initialize'
     from /home/justin/Documents/Code/event_manager/event_manager.rb:14:in `new'
     from /home/justin/Documents/Code/event_manager/event_manager.rb:14
 EventManager Initialized.
 [Finished]

But when I add the optional argument mode = 'rb' to CSV.open(filename) like this:

# Dependencies
require "csv"

# Class Definition
class EventManager
    def initialize
        puts "EventManager Initialized."
        filename = "event_attendees.csv"
        @file = CSV.open(filename, mode = 'rb')
    end
end

# Script
manager = EventManager.new

Then I get no errors:

 EventManager Initialized.
 [Finished]

I had to stare for awhile at the CSV.open method specification and tried the mode argument on a whim (I have the vague sense it has something to do with encoding). Would it be useful to include mode = 'rb' in the example code?

Best,
jb

ps - is this an overkill description?

EventManager line 283

The code example, which we are instructed to paste into our existing code, uses a variable "number" which had not been initialized at that point in the tutorial.

Blogger - error in Iteration 0?

Hello, I started working though the Blogger tutorial and have stumbled a bit in the Creating the Template portion of Iteration 0. Essentially, when I create index.html.erb in app/views/articles with the example code:

<h1>All Articles</h1>

<ul>
  <% @articles.each do |article| %>
    <li>
      <%= article.title %>
    </li>
  <% end %>
</ul>

I get the following error in my browser:

ExecJS::RuntimeError in Articles#index

Showing C:/Users/General/My Documents/Code/blogger/app/views/layouts/application.html.erb where line #6 raised:


  (in C:/Users/General/My Documents/Code/blogger/app/assets/javascripts/articles.js.coffee)
Extracted source (around line #6):

3: <head>
4:   <title>Blogger</title>
5:   <%= stylesheet_link_tag    "application", :media => "all" %>
6:   <%= javascript_include_tag "application" %>
7:   <%= csrf_meta_tags %>
8: </head>
9: <body>
Rails.root: C:/Users/General/My Documents/Code/blogger

Application Trace | Framework Trace | Full Trace
app/views/layouts/application.html.erb:6:in `_app_views_layouts_application_html_erb__710993880_42455376'
Request

Parameters:

None
Show session dump

Show env dump

Response

Headers:

None

Everything has gone smoothly up until this point. Hopefully I'm not overlooking something?

Best,
Justin

Turn a String into a Ruby Date

The code in the third bullet under "Step 2: Requirements Always Change" reads
date = Date.strptime("11/12/08", "%m/%d/%Y")
I believe it should read
date=Date.striptime("11/28/08","%m/%d/%y")
Without the correct year, the day of the week will also not be correct.
Cheers

Use of html_safe

In the tutorial there is a section creating a tag helper.

def tag_links(tags)
links = tags.collect{|tag| link_to tag.name, tag_path(tag)}
return links.join(", ")
end

Since I'm new I didn't understand why my html was being escaped in the view. I needed to use .html_safe. I'm not entirely sure why, but it seems to work. Maybe a note should be added about this?

def tag_links(tags)
links = tags.collect{|tag| link_to tag.name, tag_path(tag)}
return links.join(", ").html_safe
end

Get out the small topics from the "Advanced Ruby" repo

Like Graylog2 logging