“What I’ve learned through Ladies Learning Code is that there is a huge group of people in our society who are ready to become creators —not just consumers —of technology and the Web. They want to build web sites, they want to prototype app ideas, they want to design and print things in 3D, they want to understand how computers and the Web work, and they want to be able to better use technology to improve their personal and professional lives. Not all of these people are comfortable venturing into the space on their own, though. It’s intimidating, and when you start, you don’t know what you don’t know. If we can get this group of people to the point where they have the knowledge and confidence to begin exploring the world of making—well, it would be a big deal.”
Category: coding
Taxonomy rails app to-do list
Now that I’m familiar enough with Ruby on Rails to tweak various things, it’s time to get down to business and actually code the part that will make this thing useful. My goal is to be able to dump in a bunch of taxonomy data and spit out a tidy overview of the total hits in each category, with summaries for the top-level categories.
Sample input:
HH-0500.0500 HH-0500.2500-250 HH-0500.2500-250 HH-0500.8000-150 HH-0500.2500-250 HH-0500.8000-150 HH-0500.8000-150 HH-0500.0500 ND-6500.9800 FT-3000.1700 HH-0500.2500-250 HH-4500 HH-4500 HH-4500.0500 HH-0500.2500-250 ND-3500.3600 HH-4500.0500 HH-0500.2500-250 HH-0500.8000-150 HH-0500.2500-270 HH-0500.8000-150 HH-0500.8000-150 HH-0500.2500-250 YF-4500 HH-0500.0500 HH-4500 HH-0500.2500-270 HH-4500 HH-0500.2500-250 BD-1800.2000 HH-0500.0500 HH-0500.2500-250 HH-0500.2500-250 HH-0500.2500-250 HH-0500.2500-250 LV-1600 BM-6000.1500 HH-0500.2500-250 HH-4500 HH-0500.2500-250 HH-0500.2500-250 HH-0500.2500-250 HH-0500.2500-250 HH-0500.2500-250 HH-0500.2500-250 HH-0500.2500-270 HH-0500.2500-250 HH-0500.0500 HH-4500 HH-0500.2500-250 BD-1800.2000 HH-0500.0500 HH-0500.2500-250 HH-0500.2500-250 HD-6000.6200 HH-4500 BM-3000.2000 TI-1800.3000-200 HH-0500.2500-250 HD-6000.6200 HH-0500.8000-150 HH-0500.2500-250
Sample output (based on the taxonomy category names that correspond to the codes – this is the AIRS/211 Taxonomy of Human Services):
So far this is what I have:
The model is backed by a super basic database with fields for titling the raw data or taxonomy to be parsed, dumping the raw data in there, and capturing a timestamp for when it was uploaded. I added a field for where the pretty parsed data can live, but I have to figure out how to
1. actually pass the raw data off and chomp it
2. write methods that can reliably handle any code in the taxonomy and based on the first letter of the code, generate a total for a top-level category
2. write methods that can match any code in the taxonomy to its category name and display that name and its total
3. pass all of this chomped data back to the database and update the appropriate database record with the parsed data
This blog once again has a purpose
I’m going to take the advice of someone(s) at the Pittsburgh Ruby meetup who told me that blogging about my learning of Ruby would help me learn. So here we go. This week my goal was to complete the Rails Girls app, and as of Monday I was getting an error message I couldn’t figure out. So I went back to the basics:
Then, somehow, when I went to the Girl Develop IT Code & Coffee meetup tonight at Cats & Dogs Coffee, I open up my Rails Girls app and the mysterious error is gone! So I proceeded to beautify and learn. In one week, I went from Hello World to this:
Woo-hoo! Onward!