Handling Images, Part 2: Configuring Rails 6 Models, Serializers, and Controllers with Active Storage In Part 1 of my series on handling image uploads, I laid out the steps for creating an Amazon S3 Bucket and connecting it to a Rails API-only backend. However, while that information was (hopefully...

I am currently working on a Rails/React project that allows a user to track their HSA (Health Savings Account) expenses by uploading copies of receipts. It’s been a fun project so far, but one of the tricky things I needed to master was the ability to upload and delete receipt images and have those...

What a learning experience I had in deploying a React/Rails API app! The process was much more difficult than I ever anticipated, and I spent dozens of hours Googling problems. The main issues I encountered involved properly structuring and configuring my project to work with Rails sessions and CSRF...

I recently completed my first Ruby on Rails project, and I had a blast creating it. My project, called Life-Lister, is an app that allows a user to create a life list (a list detailing every species of organism a person has seen) and share it with others. Life lists are mostly used by birders and bu...

I recently deployed my first Rack app to Heroku. The process was far from straightforward, and I ran into many problems/errors along the way. Because Rack isn’t as commonly used as Rails, I had a hard time finding information about deploying Rack apps. I also struggled a bit switching from my devel...

A while back, I built a portfolio website for my photography. I used React for my frontend, and, despite getting everything to work, I didn’t really understand what I was doing. This led to a website that was built in a very “non-React” way. One of the things I used was a custom context menu (the me...

I recently finished my first Flatiron project using JavaScript to fetch data from an API. For this project, I used the iNaturalist API; iNaturalist is a citizen science website that allows anyone to submit observations of any type of organism using their smart phone. My simple website allows you to ...

I have always been a curious person. My parents tell me that, at the age of 2, I was fascinated with insects. On walks outside, I’d find something new every 2 seconds and ask “What’s dis? What’s dat?” I’d pick up wolf spiders and try to bring them into the house to show my mom (who was terrified of...