Learning Ember.js before developing on Discourse

[Fabrizio_Bertoglio]

Hello,

sorry, I don’t really know which is the relevant section for this question. I develop with Ruby on Rails since 4 months and I just launched my app Bartering Apps, I would like to build a QandA forum for my second app, but I have no knowledge of EmberJs, I have done some codecademy AngularJs courses, have some Javascript/Jquery knowledge. Also I would prefer focusing on the back end development with Ruby on Rails. I think it is kind of hard for a developer to do both back and front end development with Ruby on Rails, Ember.js, HTML, CSS … Also because at this point Ruby on Rails would be only used as API.

for this reason I am asking some advice, maybe Ember.js is not that hard to learn and as the Discourse is a very well established app, the time invested in learning Ember will be saved on development?..

Thanks
Fabrizio

[erlend_sh]

This tutorial has a great overview of good Ember guides for new Discourse developers:

How to start building stuff for Discourse if you're newbie (like myself)

There are a few ‘how to start’ guides for working with Discourse already and a wealth of useful info on meta, but I thought it might help to give an insight to the mental processes of starting from little, if any, prior coding experience to building substantial Discourse plugins. Discourse is written by experienced developers and has a large codebase. This can feel intimidating. This intimidation factor can be a significant barrier for novice developers. This is a kind of ‘psychological primer’…

[Fabrizio_Bertoglio]

Thanks a lot, yes I gave a quick look at the tutorial and this is the reason I am concerned, as in that tutorial it says that there is not much to know about rails, but mostly about Ember.js…

While I am focused on Rails and do also some Frontend development…
I also says that the app is mostly Ember.js

Thanks a lot

[Mittineague]

My admittedly over-simplified and subject to criticism explanation would be:

Ruby files do the database stuff and render JSON
Ember uses the JSON to create output and handles routing

[Fabrizio_Bertoglio]

Thanks a lot for your answer. Yes, I am a little bit sorry of leaving the Ruby on Rails framework. I will keep reading about Ember.js and I will learn about it. Thanks Fabrizio

[angus]

I would like to build a QandA forum for my second app

My advice would be to focus on learning what is required for you want to achieve and ignore the rest for now. If you have a specific goal you’ll both learn quicker and get more satisfaction out of it. So rather than think about in the terms of “I have to learn Ember.js”, think about it in the terms of “I have to learn whatever it takes to build what I want to build”.

For example, you could start by adapting my QnA plugin for your purposes. Would be happy to give you committing privileges and some tips along the way.

Question Answer Plugin

This is a Question Answer plugin that allows you to create topics in a similar QA style used by Stack Overflow. There are two ways to turn a topic into a QA topic: Via QA tag set in Admin > Settings > Plugins > qa tags By making all topics in a category QA style topics: Category Settings > Settings > Enable QA style for topics in this category. Features: Up-votes, but no down-votes (yet) The first post of the topic cannot be voted on (yet). Adding this would raise some overlap with Disc…

[Fabrizio_Bertoglio]

Thanks a lot Angus for your help. I though long time about it and for sure I will learn Ember.js and I will do this project (the Q&A forum), but as for the timing, right now I need to complete my Ruby on Rails education so maybe I will do another Ruby on Rails App without forking any other project so that I get some better understanding of rails and then I will come back to this project…

Unlucky I am overwhelmed with staff to learn and I am no Rails expert so for professional reasons I need to keep insisting just on Rails and keeping the front end just some basic HTML/CSS/Bootstrap with some simple Jquery/Javascript effect.

For this reason, I will probably postpone this project and start another one where I can build my App from scratch, without loosing this big opportunity, as contributing to Discourse would assure that I actually succeed even if my App fails.

So I’ll come back in one or two months…

Thanks a lot
Fabrizio

[Jordan_Smith]

I thought rails handles a route, too. Does what that route do have something to do with the route you mentioned here by Ember?

[Mittineague]

I could be totally off base, but I think it’s Ruby for filesystem paths (resources), and Ember for HTTP paths. What I meant by routing is HTTP paths.

Introduction - Routing - Ember Guides

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/v3.2.9/routing.html