Configuring the Flatiron Student Portal

The learn-co Gem

The learn-co gem is a tool that simplifies the process of completing labs and submitting your work in Canvas. Under the hood, this process consists of a number of steps:

1. Fork (create your own copy of) the assignment's repo on GitHub.

2. Clone your copy of the repo down to your local machine.

3. Run a command (npm install for JavaScript labs, bundle install for Ruby labs) to install any necessary dependencies for the repository (...tools others have built to make things easier for us).

4. Run npm test (JavaScript) or rspec (Ruby) to run tests.

5. Use git commands to commit your changes and push them up to your repo on GitHub.

6. Submit a link to your GitHub repo in Canvas to get credit for completing the lab.

The learn-co gem will handle several of these steps for you automatically, substantially simplifying the workflow so you can focus your attention on learning to code. You will learn how to complete and submit assignments using the gem in the next section; for now, let's get it installed and ready to use.

Install the learn-co Gem

To install the gem, open the "Terminal" application (or "Ubuntu" for WSL users) and run this command:

$ gem install learn-co

Before we can use the gem, we'll need to do two things:

• Connect your Flatiron School Portal account to GitHub
• Connect the local gem to your Flatiron School Portal account

Connect Your GitHub Account to your Flatiron School Portal Account

Action Item

1. Open Flatiron School's Base Account Management page (https://base.flatironschool.com/account/manage)
2. Connect your GitHub account to your Flatiron School Portal account

Your Account Management page should now look similar to this:

Configure the learn-co Gem

This step will ask you to do work both in your browser and your terminal.

Action Item

1. Open the "Terminal" application (or "Ubuntu" for WSL users).
2. Type touch ~/.netrc && chmod 0600 ~/.netrc and press <Enter>. (Note: you may be asked to enter your password.)
3. Open Flatiron School's Base Account Management page (https://base.flatironschool.com/account/manage)
4. Click the icon under "OAuth Token" to reveal your GitHub OAuth token.
5. Copy the string of characters under the "OAuth Token" header.
6. Go back to the terminal, type learn whoami and press <Enter>.
7. Paste the string of characters at the prompt and press <Enter>.

Check Your Work

Type learn whoami in the terminal. If you see a message with your name, username, and email, continue to the next lesson, Verify and Troubleshoot Your Environment Setup.