I asked a question earlier, and got an excellent response, but, being a newbie to Rails and still getting the basics down, I need someone to show me how to set up some scaffolding for the situation that Hates_ was nice enough to outline for me. I've set up my application and whatnot, but I basically want to have, for example purposes:
A "Stories" table, for a list of stories
A "Pages" table, for a list of pages that can be attached to stories
A "LinkedPages" table, to link one page to multiple other pages
The idea is that users can create Stories. Stories have Pages. Pages link to other Pages in a branching sort of way, and Hates_ suggested using a LinkedPages table to assist the process of determining which pages link to which other pages.
If someone could use the example models Hates_ provided on the link above (or give me better ones if needed), and just show me how to get this started, I'd be extremely grateful. Rails has had the highest initial learning curve of any programming or scripting language I've learned in the past, I'm just starting to understand many of the basics.
Thanks in advance!
Here is an updated fast paced video that quickly presents some of the wicked sweet features in Rails via a somewhat contrived Blog tutorial.
http://media.rubyonrails.org/video/rails_blog_2.mov
The presenter crams a lot of information into a very short time frame and does paste in some prepared code from time to time, but over all he hits on many of the key features.
He explains how to set up scaffolding as well in about probably the last 5 mins or so.
Related
So for cucumber, I have a blank application. I'm thinking about for my first BDD it should be:
Feature: Blog
As an Owner
In order to retain customers
I want to create a blog
Scenario: Add blog posts
Given I am logged in as owner
When I go to the blog
And I create a post
Then it should appear on the blog page
I feel like this isn't right. I feel like the first scenario is the hardest, because after that adding a feature should be easier.
So what should the first scenario/Feature be?
If you think of the blog application in terms of the capabilities it delivers, here's what you're currently addressing:
Logging in
Writing blog posts
Reading blog posts
That's a lot to deliver for just one scenario.
If this is just standard blogging software, then you could always start with the purpose of the software - presumably to attract users to your site. What if you just wrote posts by hacking the database with SQL? What if you didn't have any login? What if all you did was display blog posts?
Now you can start with a very much simpler scenario:
Given my most recent blog post is titled "Unicorns are real"
When Ursula the unicorn collector sees my blog
Then the post should be visible on the first page.
Try to make it specific, rather than generic, as this will help you remember what you've already delivered as well as helping your imagination to come up with other scenarios.
The benefit of starting with this post is that you'll only record the things in the database that are actually needed to display a post (and you may decide to use a filesystem instead of a database, etc.)
After that, publishing posts and then logging in to do it will be much easier still.
If you're intending to display adverts, and link keywords to them, etc., then the purpose of your site is to make money, and I would write a scenario around that before you even worry about users coming to read the posts.
This is the advice I give if there's nothing unusual about your blog. However, if you're doing anything differently to the standard blogging software out there, I recommend focusing on that first, as it's where all the risk will be.
I'm a pretty big RoR novice but I've had a lot of problems with finding out even where to begin.
I'm looking for any tutorials or examples of apps that lets a user fill out a simple form in ruby, takes that information, redirects to another page, and posts the information. The user would be able to share that unique link with others, which shows that information.
I've taken a look at various gems such as Formtastic and Simpleforms but the tutorials on Railscast are outdated and it's difficult to get working. I believe it's because I'm on Rails 3.
I'm pretty lost here and if anything can just prod me in the general direction of where to start / give me general strategy of how I should tackle this, it'd be greatly appreciated. This seems incredibly easy but I'm making it harder for myself than what it is.
I'm actually looking to take an intensive RoR course in a few weeks but I need to get this simple MVP app done (it'll include video by nimbb API) for a deadline... so while I should definitely be putting in the effort to learn rather than cheat and drift, your help this time around would really be great :)
To a large extent this functionally is baked into rails. The simplest way to do this is without any extra gems (besides the default ones):
In your terminal run:
rails g scaffold form name:string message:text
Then the user can go to example.com/forms/new and enter their info. Once they submit the form rails auto redirects them to the view page for that new data. The URL of that page which will be something like /forms/n where n is some integer is the link to share.
If your struggling with rails concepts I would look at the rails guides, especially: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html
I'm still learning rails but want to be sure I'm heading in the right direction. For several of my models I want to let a list of users know that updates have been made when a new record is created for example. I'd like to tie this to an email and in-app notification(doesn't need to be AJAX), next page refresh is fine.
I've been reading up on observers some and I think that's what I want but they seem somewhat controversial based on the blogs I've read. Services like Pusher seem to be overkill for my needs.
Would this be a good solution for this scenario? Also, can anyone point me to some example code that I could emulate?
Thanks!
Check out Rails Cast if you are trying to learn. Best free code base I have seen. Also check out this book another great learning tool. Agile Web Development with Rails (2nd edition).There might be some newer ones out but I have not checked.
(A while back I read this great post: http://aaronlongwell.com/2009/06/the-ruby-on-rails-cms-dilemma.html, discussing the "Rails CMS Dilemma". It describes conceptual approaches to managing content in websites vs web apps. I'm still a beginner with Rails, but had a bit of a PHP background, and I still have trouble wrapping my brain around this.
A lot of what I run into is customers who want a website that is not 100% website, and not 100% web app... That is, perhaps there are several pages of business-to-public facing content, but then there are application elements, and the whole overall look is supposed to be cohesive. This was always fairly simple in PHP, as you just kind of dropped your app code into the PHP "script", etc (though I know there are plenty of cons to this platform and approach).
So I am wondering, what is the best approach in Rails for doing this?
Say you have an application with user authentication and some sort of CRUD stuff going on, where users collaborate on projects or something. Well, what is the optimal approach for managing the text/images of the "How This Site Works" and "Our Company" pages, which people may also want to view? Is it just simply having a pages controller and several text fields, with an admin panel on the back end that lets you edit those fields? Or is it perhaps a common approach to start off with something like Refinery, and then build on top of it for the non-content-driven areas of a site?
Sorry if this is a dumb question. It's just that I've read Hartl's book and others, and they never address this practical low-level stuff for a beginner... Sure, I can build a Twitter feed now, but what Twitter's "About" page (http://twitter.com/about)? I can't just throw text into a view and give that to a client... They want a super easy way to see the site tree, edit content areas, AND administrate/run their Twitter feed or whatever.
Thanks for your help.
I think you're looking for a CMS that runs as a plugin in your Rails application. If that's the case, I'd suggest that you try http://github.com/twg/comfortable-mexican-sofa
I'm just learning Ruby on Rails. I've read a few books, I've watched lots of Railscasts, I've looked at some examples.
However, when working on my first serious project with Rails, I've gotten hung up on how to properly implement some very basic web site features that most tutorials I've seen lack.
For instance: Navigation menus. Lots of tutorials on how to make a static one, but what about dynamic? If I want to make a navigation bar that's different across pages, how would I go about doing that?
I think that the best way to learn things like this is by seeing example code. Are there any good open sourced sites in RoR? Any example code that I can check out?
I guess my question really results to using MVC. The basic idea is really basic, and I understand that. But it seems that most applications have each part completely separate from each other... what if I want to, say, combine data from two models to display on the same page? To take the example I posed, if I have a NavModel and a PageModel, can my PageController access both models? I guess I'd assumed that a PageController can only access a PageModel, and none other. All examples I've seen seem to operate this way...is that a faulty assumption?
Or am I totally missing the point, and is that 'doing it wrong?'
Open Source Rails is a repository of sites implemented in rails.
Which books have you read? I think a better understanding of MVC and Rails would help you more in the long run than sample code, which you may be tempted to copy without understanding.
The problem you're describing isn't really different from finding and displaying any kind of data, which I'm sure you've seen covered in snippets on blogs, etc. (using partials and/or layouts is maybe the only difference).
If you haven't read them already, you should try Agile Web Development with Rails and The Rails Way.
There are also several books that take you through building a sample application that include commentary to make sure you understand what you're doing.
This might help: Dynamic navigation menu using Menuitem model
Your controller can access any of your models, so if PageController needs to access your NavModel that's fine. I think typically the Nav controller or helper would contain the methods necessary to prepare the navigation view, but without knowing the details of your project I can't say for sure - if you think it's part of the Page logic, then put it there.
You may also be interested in this "What goes where" question.
Heres a howto on highlighting the current menu item in the page you are on
http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/2016