Course Updates for Rails 5
June 06, 2016
Rails 5 is coming and we’ve got you covered with FREE course updates!
Course Updates
We’ve made the following updates to both our Rails Level I and Rails Level II courses for the upcoming release of Rails 5:
-
The videos now have callouts where there are (minor) syntax changes.
-
The exercises have been updated with explanations of these changes so you can confidently build your apps using either Rails 4 or 5.
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All the code in the code bundle has been upgraded to Rails 5.
-
The cheat sheets have been revised to reflect both Rails 4 and 5 syntax.
How Does This Impact Me?
If you’re currently working through the Rails course, simply carry on! Continue with the course using Rails 4 and the code bundle you’ve already downloaded.
If you’ve already completed the course (or once you complete the course, if you’re partway through), check out the “Rails 5 Changes” in the Rails course “Extras” section.
Rails 5 Changes
As it pertains to the topics we teach in our Rails courses, the changes for Rails 5 are fairly inconsequential. Most of what’s new in Rails revolves around more advanced features that are outside the scope of our courses. At a high-level, there are three primary changes:
-
All models now inherit from a new
ApplicationRecord
class which in turn inherits fromActiveRecord::Base
. In cases where you want to configure application-wide model behavior, you can now do so in a single spot. -
The days of typing
rails
for some commands andrake
for others are over. Now, wherever you used to typerake
, you can now typerails
on the command line instead. For example,rake db:migrate
is nowrails db:migrate
. -
The file extension for stylesheets has been shorted from
.css.scss
to.scss
.
For a complete list and explanation of all the changes, see “Rails 5 Changes” in the course “Extras” section. All the changes are fairly minor and we think you’ll find the transition to be very smooth.