If you dream about becoming a professional web developer the Coursera specialization ‘Ruby on Rails Web Development’ is especially for you. You will learn to develop sophisticated web applications using Ruby on Rails, SQL and NoSQL databases. It is suitable for intermediates with previous experience in programming.
Methodology
The Ruby on Rails specialization was designed by Johns Hopkins University. It is presented by Jim Staffor, Kiran Chittargi, Yaakov Chaikin and Kalman Hazins, all from this august educational institution.
The series is presented in six courses and the approach is very much hands-on. As the courses progress you will complete practical and challenging assignments.
Key Features
- All the resources necessary are included in the fees, e.g. video lectures, practical assignments and practice quizzes.
- After successful completion of the series, a certificate is issued.
- You will be able to study at your own pace. The courses are presented regularly (approximately once a month) and it is possible to complete the entire series within six months. If you are unable to complete a specific course you are allowed to transfer to the next session of that course without losing any credits.
- Support is available at all times from the instructional team.
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Become a Rails Developer, Specialization – Topics
The six courses in the Ruby on Rails Web Development Specialization series each takes one month to complete. This is what you will learn during those six months:
Course 1: Ruby on Rails
An Introduction. In this first week of the first course you will learn how to create web applications by using Ruby on Rails. You will learn all about rapid prototyping and start to build applications much faster than you thought possible.
Week 1: Setting up the Development Environment. After nine video lectures, two readings and two quizzes you will be able to install the software required to build Ruby on Rails applications and you will know how to deploy Ruby on Rails applications to PaaS.
Week 2: Introduction to Ruby. This week you will explore the various parts of the Ruby programming language. Advanced topics such as arrays and hashes will also be covered. There are 18 short lectures, a practical assignment and a few quizzes.
Week 3: Introduction to Ruby on Rails. You will learn about the core concepts of Ruby on Rails, such as Convention Over Configuration and Model-View-Controller. At the end of the week, you will deploy an application to Heroku and write a test. 14 Lectures and three readings will help you achieve the objectives.
Course 2: Rails With Active Record And Action Pack
In this course, you will learn to build applications fast by using the Ruby language and the Active Record ORM framework. You will also interact with relational databases and learn more about data security.
Week 1: Introduction to Active Record. This week you explore the database-interaction part of Rails. There are 12 video lectures, two quizzes and three readings. You will also complete a practical assignment.
Week 2: Deep Dive Into Active Record. Eleven lectures, two quizzes and two readings will prepare you for the practical assignment. You will learn ways in which to code advanced queries and more about the relationships between entities.
Week 3: Introduction to Action Pack. You will learn about the combination of Action Controller and Action View during ten lectures, two readings and two quizzes. As usual, there is a practical assignment at the end of the week.
Week 4: Security & Nested Resources in Action Pack. It is now time to learn how to secure your application with a user name and a password. Pagination and deployment to Heraku is also covered. There are ten video lectures and two readings to help you master the objectives.
Course 3: Ruby On Rails Web Services & Integration, MongoDB
In this course, you will integrate both MongoDB and Web Services concepts with Ruby on Rails. An in-depth look is taken at the installation of CRUD operation, aggregation, indexing and GridFS.
Week 1: Introduction to MongoDB, MongoDB-Ruby API, CRUD. Once you completed the 20 lectures and the three readings, you will understand the rationale between NoSQL databases and their relationship with RDBMS. All the basics of MongoDB are also covered.
Week 2: Aggregation Framework, Performance, Advanced MongoDB. In this module, you will be exploring the basics of the Aggregation Framework in MongoDB. 19 Lectures and three interesting readings will ensure that you achieve these goals.
Week 3: Mongoid. This week you will find out what an Object-Document-Mapper (ODM) is. You will do practical work on a variety of queries using Mongoid API. There are 17 lectures, three readings and a practical assignment at the end of the week.
Week 4: Web Services. This week you will focus on caching and security. This vital subject is covered by 22 lectures, a quiz and two readings.
Course 4: HTML, CSS and Javascript for Web Developers
This course is all about coding web pages. All the tools necessary for professional web coding is covered during the next five weeks.
Week 1: Introduction to HTML5. This week covers all the basics of HTML and you will learn how to set up your working environment. There are 18 lectures and no less than 12 quizzes to help you master the objectives.
Week 2: Introduction to SCC3. After 27 lectures and a few interesting quizzes, you will advance from the basics of CSS3 to advanced topics such as conflict resolution.
Week 3: Coding the Static Restaurant Site. This week you will be developing a real site for a real client. You will interact with the client and determine her needs. There are 24 video lectures and a peer review of your practical work at the end of the week.
Week 4: Introduction to Javascript. Learn just how powerful a tool Javascript is. The 24 lectures cover just about everything related to Javascript.
Week 5: Using Javascript to Build Web Applications. During this module, you will learn how to use your Javascript skills within the context of web pages. There are 17 lectures, two readings and two quizzes to complete this course.
Course 5: Single Page Web Applications with AngularJS
This course is all about building very powerful and stable front end applications much faster and with much less code. You will be using AngularJS, the most popular framework today.
Week 1: Introduction to AngularJS. This week the focus is on the concepts that back AngularJS. The 21 lectures, four readings and eight quizzes will give you a thorough understanding of the capabilities of AngularJS.
Week 2: Filters, Digest Cycle, Controller Inheritance, Custom Services. You will learn how to create your own filters in order to manipulate data. You will also learn about prototypal inheritance, one of the most crucial concepts in AngularJS. You should be able to complete the 25 lectures within four to six hours.
Week 3: Promises, Ajax and Custom Directives. Directives and the Promise API is essential components of AngularJS and you will learn all about their purpose and how to create custom views and behaviors. There are 19 lectures and a few practical quizzes that cover this subject comprehensively.
Week 4: Components, Events, Modules and Routing. 22 Lectures fully cover the concept of component-based architecture. After this week you will be ready to upgrade to Angular version 2. The 22 lectures will take you through routing between different views.
Week 5: Form Validation, Testing and Restaurant Site Development. During this final week of the course, you will learn how to validate forms with Angular. You will also set up various tests and enhance your application with additional features. This is all covered during no less than 32 video lectures.
Course 6: Capstone: Photo Tourist Web Application
During this final course in the series, you will create and implement a web application. Your application will use both a relational database an NoSQL for the back end. You will work with many different types of data and data scenarios. By the end of the course, you will deploy the entire application to the cloud.
Week 1. Technical Architecture and AI Development Setup. There are 21 comprehensive video lectures that cover all the technical architecture and the software requirements for the application that you will be developing.
Week 2: SPA Development Setup. During this week you will be developing an application with the aim of managing a resource hosted by a Rails server. 29 Lectures will take you through the objectives for this week step by step.
Week 3: Testing. You will learn how to use RSpec, DatabaseCleaner, FactoryGirl and Faker to build specs. There are 32 lectures to cover this vital topic in depth.
Week 4: Security and the Photo Tourist Domain Model. It is now time to implement your authenticated interfaces. You will also implement the core resources for the application. There are 49 lectures to cover the many important topics discussed in this final week.
Prerequisites
You will need a fundamental background in programming before enrolling for this series of courses.
Ruby On Rails Web Development, Coursera Specialization – Conclusion, Coupon
With the Coursera Ruby on Rails Web Development Specialization, the John Hopkins University has outdone itself. Successful completion of this training will most certainly lead to a career in the development of web applications. It is comprehensive and professionally presented. Highly recommended!