Workshop 1: Challenge problems

1. Make a list of all programming languages and Web development tools used by you in prior experiences. Describe what you know about Web application frameworks before we begin. Computing/Programming languages The only web development that I have is that involved in meeting the requirements for the Microsoft Industry subjects webforms and distributed applications for .net 2.0 (ITI532 and ITI533). In that light the only web development tool I have used is Visual Studio 2008. 2. Ruby is “an interpreted scripting language” for quick and easy object-oriented programming”. Find out about the Ruby language and discover what this means. The code is interpreted at runtime and not compiled at design time. Ruby is interpreted scripting language:

•ability to make operating system calls directly •powerful string operations and regular expressions •immediate feedback during development

quick and easy:

•variable declarations are unnecessary •variables are not typed •syntax is simple and consistent •memory management is automatic

object oriented programming:

•everything is an object •classes, methods, inheritance, etc. •singleton methods •"mixin" functionality by module •iterators and closures

also:

•multiple precision integers •convenient exception processing •dynamic loading •threading support

3. What is Rails and how does it work with Ruby? Ruby on Rails is a powerful, open-source toolkit that enables you to build sophisticated web applications quickly. Built in Ruby (a dynamic, object-oriented language), Ruby on Rails is a framework that provides a broad set of capabilities upon which you can build your web application: It handles all the communication with the database, so you can deal with software objects and let the framework generate SQL. It provides a template system for handling layouts and page sections, plus extensive facilities for form processing and Ajax updates. There’s a wide range of plug-ins to quickly implement many features. Ruby on Rails was designed to make the best use of your time, eliminate drudgery, and let you create great solutions with an agile, iterative approach. There’s a tremendous demand for Ruby on Rails developers, so learning to build sites with Rails is a valuable step in your web development career, whether you’re building your skills as a freelancer or planning your next job move. 4. What is meant by “convention over configuration” in regards to the use of Rails in Web application development? Convention over configuration is a very important principle behind Rails. It goes hand-in-hand with another attribute of Rails, that it is “opinionated software”. The Rails design embodies lots of opinions about how you should structure your code, name your classes and files, and organize your database tables. There are methods to override most of these conventions, but if you go with the flow and follow the conventions, then you can avoid almost all configuration code. That’s convention over configuration — and the payoff is huge 5. When did Model-View-Controller begin and where is it used? History as defined by wikipedia MVC was first described in 1979[1] by Trygve Reenskaug, then working on Smalltalk at Xerox PARC. The original implementation is described in depth in the influential paper Applications Programming in Smalltalk-80: How to use Model–View–Controller.[2] There have been several derivatives of MVC; one of the most known (due to its use by Microsoft) is the Model View Presenter pattern which appeared in the early 1990s and was designed to be an evolution of MVC. However Model–View–Controller still remains very widely used. In November 2002 the W3C voted to make MVC structures part of their XForms architecture for all future web applications [3]. These specifications will now be integrated directly into the XHTML 2.0 specifications. There are now over 20 vendors that support XForms frameworks with MVC integrated into the application stack. 6. Describe the steps involved with the MVC design approach. I will get back to this later