The week
In week four we learnt how our browser requests information from our server written using Sinatra and how the server takes information from a database in order to respond to this GET request. We learnt how to work with PostgreSQL, an open source object-relational database system. During the weekend challenge we implemented a signup flow, by saving the user name, email and hashed password into a database. We used bcrypt to hash the user’s password.
What I learnt
I learned a lot about DataMapper, an object-relational mapper written in Ruby, and Database Cleaner, a set of strategies for cleaning our database during tests. It was a bit hard finding the right information from these resources though. When we finished our app we pushed it to Heroku, a service that enables developers to deploy an app to the cloud just by doing a git push.
Struggles
Databases week has been the hardest since we started the course back in September. I struggled a lot trying to grasp where the information that we store in the databases is saved in the computer and how to access it. After a lot of diagramming and reading I have a slightly better understanding of it, but I still need to dig deeper. Now I know a bit more how all the different actors interact with each other but practice makes perfect. The weekend challenge was also quite hard, but exciting. Since I didn’t have time during the week to cover users signing up and signing in, I was pretty scared of having to deal with this tricky part of web app development on my own… I started the challenge facing some setup difficulties but I ended up managing to create a basic version of the app.
I’m looking forward to starting week 5 and learning JavaScript, the front-end language that can also be used on the server side. Exciting!