Today I reached a big milestone - completion of my Sinatra project (Silhouette)!
Of course - there are more features I want to add someday. But, for now, it’s ready for feedback.
Looking back, I want to remember lessons learned about the following three topics:
PLANNING
My most critical tools at the beginning? A blank .txt file, and a white sheet of paper.
On the white sheet of paper, I drew out a process map of how I wanted the models to interact, what columns they would need, and how the models would interact with each other.
On the blank .txt file, I described the purpose, functionality, goals, app color scheme, and class attributes I desired.
Because the information was still fresh to me, and I had other projects to model from, it was easy for me to set up the required files. But this website was super helpful in double checking my work.
MACROS
ActiveRecord, Sinatra, and Rake are my friends. After spending so much time struggling to create my own methods in previous labs, I was amazed at how much I could do with so little code.
Halfway through this project, I decided that I wanted to add new functionality: a facts class that could take in a string of data, create new fact instances for me, and assign it/display it with my contact. I was blown away by how quickly this could be implemented with ActiveRecord and Sinatra. And now my app is versatile enough that I would actually use it.
I definitely want to remember ActiveRecord associations, bcrypt’s has_secure_password macro, Class.where(“sql statement”).first_or_create, and ActiveRecord’s valid? method. These were so critical in validating my CRUD functions concisely and securely.
GITHUB COMMITS
Ouch - this one hurt towards the end. I would get too excited with troubleshooting, and forget to commit. This is a lesson learned for next time.
It’s improving, but I need to learn how to use branches and commits to better troubleshoot while protecting my master code. This is critical as I move forward into more complicated applications.
Ready for submit!