We have posted a draft of the first 2 sections of the Getting Started With Ruby and Rails tutorial. If you can take some time to look it over and give us feedback, please do.

For those of you who are new to using the NetBeans Ruby support, we would like to know:

• How is it so far for getting you started with using the product?
• Were the steps clear and complete? Did you stumble or have to try a step more than once to get it to work?
• Is it too much for introductory material? If so, what to remove. If not enough, what to include.
• Looking at the proposed table of contents, does it appear it will be complete? Too much?

For those of you who are experienced with Ruby, can you look for incorrect terminology or misinformation? Are the code examples ok?

To provide feedback on this tutorial, please send corrections, suggestions, and comments to the NetBeans Ruby Developers mailing list at dev@ruby.netbeans.org. Put "Getting Started Draft Feedback" in the subject line.

In this blog, we would like to acknowledge two NetBeans Ruby community-contributed tutorials:

• Swing with JRuby: Developing a Desktop Application with the JRuby and Java Swing APIs by Teera Kanokkanjanarat
• Ruby Development on Netbeans 6 by Amit Kumar Saha

Thanks to Teera and Amit, we have a richer documentation set, which you can view in its entirety on the NetBeans Ruby Tutorials and Screencasts page.

If you are interested in contributing documentation to the NetBeans Community, consider joining the dev@userguide.netbeans.org email alias. This alias is for community members who want to not only contribute documentation but also provide input and feedback regarding existing NetBeans documentation. You can sign up for the alias as follows:

1. Go to the NetBeans Mailing Lists Page
2. Log on with your user name. If you don't have a user name, click Login and then register for a login name.
3. Scroll to the dev@usersguide.netbeans.org mailing list.
4. Click subscribe to send a subscription request.

Next week (October 22 - 26) you will have the opportunity to submit written questions about all things NetBeans to a team of NetBeans evangelists, including Ruby technology evangelist Brian Leonard.. You can submit a question any time during that week, and the evangelists will try to answer as many questions as possible. They will also post a selected set of questions and answers. To learn more, visit the Ask the Experts events page.

I have written both an installation and configuration article and an accessing databases FAQ for projects built using NetBeans Ruby support. However, because there are lots of different configuration paths, and each path requires some in-depth information, neither of these documents make it easy to quickly figure out what you must do to set up your Rails project to access your database server. I created this chart to hopefully make the steps simpler, and more clear. If you need more details, then consult the two documents that I mention above.

Our NetBeans Ruby tutorials show how to use the Rails Generator dialog box to add models to a Ruby on Rails web application. We show one step that uses the Rails Generator wizard to create the following:

• Model File: This file contains the model's unique methods and business rules.
• Initial Migration Files: Migration file for creating the database table. You run the migration files to create and modify the database table, and to back out changes
• Unit Text Files: Files for testing your development.

In the subsequent step we have you edit the migration file to specify the column names and types. Did you know that you can can create the model and edit the migration file in one step by passing arguments in the Rails Generator? For example, let's say that I wanted a categories database table. I can right-click the project's node and choose Generate. In the Rails Generator wizard, I choose model from the Generate drop-down list. Then, I enter the following text in the Argument text box, and click OK to create the files:

Category name:string description:text level:integer created:timestamp icon:binary

The arguments list begins with the model name and is followed by column-name:type parameters. The type can be one of :string, :text, :integer, :float, :decimal, :datetime, :timestamp, :time, :date, :binary, :boolean. To learn more about model arguments, see the TableDefinition API.

After the IDE finishes creating the files, I can click on the create db/migrate/002_create_categories.rb link in the Rails Generator tab in the Output window to open the file in the editor. The contents looks like this:

class CreateCategories < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :categories do |t|
      t.column :name, :string
      t.column :description, :text
      t.column :level, :integer
      t.column :created, :timestamp
      t.column :icon, :binary
    end
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table :categories
  end
end

Once you have a migration file set up, you can move your application to another machine and have the IDE create the tables automatically. The same is true for database changes. With the up and down methods, you can quickly add or back out changes. Migrations also make it easier to switch to a different database server, say from JavaDB to MySQL.

Note: If you have an existing database, and you want to quickly create migration files, right-click the project node and choose Run Rake Task > db > schema > dump. The IDE writes the schema for your database to Database Migration > schema.rb. You can copy the create statements from the schema dump into migration files.