My company (Viget Labs / http://www.viget.com) is hosting a Rails training session with Chad Fowler from Jan 15th - 17th. It would be a great opportunity for those of you who have worked a bit with Rails and are familiar with MVC to go more in-depth with the framework. Though this is geared towards people who have some experience in Rails (we're skipping much of the set-up process), there's still plenty of time over the holidays to ramp up with the latest AWDwR book:
Cost is $750 per-person for all three days and includes lunch. Location still TBD, but it will happen in the DC Metro area. We have room for 15 folks - if you're interested, let me know.
I've nailed down the agenda with Chad, and here's what it's looking like:
Day 1 - Ruby Intro / Rails Quickstart * Working with IRB (interactive Ruby) * Ruby language basics * Everything is an object * Developing classes and modules * Blocks and iterators * Regular expressions and String processing * How Domain Specific Languages are created in Ruby * Introduction to eRB (embedded Ruby) * Rails setup / dev sprint
Day 2 * Unit tests and fixtures * Cleaning your views with Layouts * ActionController filters * ActiveRecord filters and observers * Ajax and Rails * Functional testing in Rails * Advanced Active Record assocations * Sending mail * Active Resource & RESTful development * Ruby SOAP API (as time allows)
Day 3 * Generating XML with Builder * Processing XML with REXML * Working with routes * Integration testing * Acceptance testing w/ Selenium * Receiving and processing mail * Creating plugins * Using gems * Deployment and scaling * Deployment with Capistrano * Rails performance optimization * Managing multiple DB connections