Wish I had found this a couple of months ago, it would have moved me along a lot. I still learned a good deal from it though.
Check it out at:
Rails Envy
-Ralph
Showing posts with label tutorial. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tutorial. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Found a nice ActiveRecord Tutorial
Rails Envy
-Ralph
Friday, March 21, 2008
Tutorial: Beginning AJAX with Rails 2.0
Today, I'm going to go over a quick tutorial of some basic AJAX functions. Rails has a great implementation with AJAX right out of the box, with the Prototype library. It also includes the Scriptaculous library with some special effects. We are just going to do some basic writing text into the site without page reloading. Lets get started.
Set up the application:
rails ajaxtest -d mysql
cd ajaxtest
./script/generate model Foobar foo:string bar:string
./script/generate Controller Foobars
This is our first project that doesn't use scaffolding - I decided against it because scaffolding would have generated all kinds of views we aren't going to need for this. Notice that when you created the model, it automatically generated your DB migration file. Now, lets open up app/controllers/foobars_controller.rb and do this:
class FoobarsController < ApplicationController
def index
@foobars = Foobar.find(:all)
respond_to do |format|
format.html # index.html.erb
end
end
end
Next, create app/views/foobars/index.html.erb:
<h3>Foobars!</h3>
<table>
<tr><th>Foo</th><th>Bar</th></tr>
<% for foobar in @foobars do %>
<tr>
<td><%= foobar.foo %></td>
<td><%= foobar.bar %></td>
</tr>
<% end %>
</table>
Now lets add our routing. In config/routes.rb add:
map.resources :foobars
In your console, lets get our db created and foobars table setup:
rake db:create
rake db:migrate
And one last thing. We need to populate our table with a few foobars. This is a good time to show you the rails interactive console:
./script/console
From here, we can give commands directly to our project. Lets try one:
Foobar.find(:all)
>> Foobar.find(:all)
=> []
So it returned an empty array. The interactive console is great for playing around with bits of code to see what they do or even testing out bits of code. Lets try another command:
>> myfoobar = Foobar.new
=> #<Foobar id: nil, foo: nil, bar: nil, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil>
>>
Creates a new foobar object...
>> myfoobar.foo = "This is a test."
=> "This is a test."
>> myfoobar.bar = "This is only a test."
=> "This is only a test."
>>
We can set the values of foo and bar for our new foobar, and...
>> myfoobar.save
=> true
>>
We can save it to the database. Lets try looking it up with find...
>> Foobar.find(:all)
=> [#<Foobar id: 1, foo: "This is a test.", bar: "This is only a test.", created_at: "2008-03-21 18:24:46", updated_at: "2008-03-21 18:24:46">]
>>
Great - so far so good. Now lets create a few more foobars:
myfoobar = Foobar.new
myfoobar.foo = "Foo of foobar #2"
myfoobar.bar = "Bar of foobar #2"
myfoobar.save
myfoobar = Foobar.new
myfoobar.foo = "Foo of foobar #3"
myfoobar.bar = "Bar of foobar #3"
myfoobar.save
myfoobar = Foobar.new
myfoobar.foo = "Foo of foobar #4"
myfoobar.bar = "Bar of foobar #4"
myfoobar.save
And done. You can type exit to leave the interactive console. Start the server, browse to localhost:PORT/foobars
Tablespoon of AJAX
First thing, I'm going to tell you that if you don't have Firebug yet, go ahead and get it. It is a plugin for Firefox(you are using firefox, right? nothing against you Safari/Opera lovers..if you are using IE you have no excuses, get Firefox and get Firebug...now). Firebug is a great tool for design as well as for AJAX. The inspect mode will highlight divs under your mouse and show the corresponding html/css code in the panel below. You can also take a look at Javascript AJAX responses and more quickly debug your code. Lets create app/views/layouts/application.html.erb:
<html>
<head>
<%= javascript_include_tag :defaults %>
</head>
<body>
<%= yield :layout %>
</body>
</html>
The include tag will include (among other things) the prototype library that you need to make the AJAX calls. Now, lets head back to app/views/foobars/index.html.erb and set it up for our AJAX. Change it to this:
<h3>Foobars!</h3>
<table>
<tr>
<th>Foo</th>
<th>Bar</th>
<th>Which?</th>
<th>Links</th>
</tr>
<% for foobar in @foobars do %>
<% idstring = "foobar-" + foobar.id.to_s %>
<tr>
<td><%= foobar.foo %></td>
<td><%= foobar.bar %></td>
<td id="<%= idstring %>"></td>
<td>
<%= link_to_remote "Foo", :url =>{ :action => :set, :updatewith => foobar.foo },
:update => idstring %>
<%= link_to_remote "Bar", :url =>{ :action => :set, :updatewith => foobar.bar },
:update => idstring %>
</td>
</tr>
<% end %>
</table>
We have 2 more columns in our table now - Which? will be updated by AJAX with either the foo or the bar of our current Foobar depending on the link clicked from the Links column. In the Links column, we have 2 link_to_remote 's. link_to_remote generates all the javascript calls to send an AJAX request back to our controller on the server. The first argument is what will be displayed for the link. In :url, we define the action to send the request to (:set), as well as the string we want to pass into the function (:updatewith). Last, :update will be the name of the div we will be updating. You can also add another parameter, :position. For example, :position => :before would insert whatever you are sending before the td tag, :after would be after it, :top would insert it inside the td, above anything else, and :bottom inserts it inside the td, at the bottom. If you do not specify a position(like we are doing), it will simply over-write what is inside the div. One more thing to do; lets open up app/controllers/foobars_controller.rb and add in our :set action:
def set
render :text => params[:updatewith]
end
Go back to the page and try clicking the links
Update: I found this link to be very helpful with different ways of using render with AJAX.
And we are done! Thanks for visiting, and see you next time.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Rails Forum Tutorial for Beginners (Part 1 of 3)
This is my first tutorial, so bear with me. I am writing it as if trying to teach someone brand new to rails what is going on. We are going to be creating a forum site in Ruby on Rails(2.0). I plan on this to be a several-part series, so keep coming back and checking for updates.
So here we go!
This will create the project folder 'myforum' and force the database used to mysql(the newest version of rails default to sqlite3). All kinds of files and folders are created, but don't let them overwhelm you. Rails is an application framework, so by creating all this stuff it will force you to keep everything organized according to Rails' conventions.
Now, the general layout I decided on for the forums is this: The site will have multiple forums, each forums is going to have multiple topics, and each topic will have multiple replies. To get this going, lets try this:
More files and directories are created, setting up migration files for the database, a model, a controller, and views for the Forum class. Lets analyze the command we just gave:
ruby script/generate - on a mac or on linux, it would be script/generate(I'm on windows). You will be using script/generate for a lot of things in rails, so get used to typing that one.
scaffold Forum - This tells rails that you want to generate a scaffold for the class 'Forum
name:string description:text - in the forums table that will be created, it will have 2 columns: name, and description. the :string and :text are the type of data, with string being a small 1 liner used for naming, and text being something that can be much longer. Moving on....
rake db:create will create your mySQL database for you (called myforum_development). rake db:migrate will create the table for the forum class.
Now lets fire up the server and see what we've got!
And point your web browser(and you better not be using IE!) to http://localhost:3000
So the server is working fine, now go to http://localhost:3000/forums
If you click on New forum, it will give you a form with fields for Name and Description.
And then click back:
Thats right! With only 4 lines of code, rails was able to generate all of this! The scaffolding will create everything you need to Create, Read, Update, and Delete(CRUD).
Moving on, lets set things up so that rails will show the list of forums page by just going to http://localhost:3000, and get rid of that rails info page. Delete the file public/index.html, and then in config/routes.rb do this:
So this is our first editing of a rails file. routes.rb is very important to the whole rails applications. They take a request for a URL and turn it into a request from a controller and an action. In this case, the line we added will take a request for the root(http://localhost:3000) and give us back the index action of the forums controller(which will list all the forums). Save, and again, point the browser to http://localhost:3000:
Great! Now, lets go ahead and generate scaffolding for our other 2 classes: Topics and Replies:
We have something new here. forum:references means that a topic will contain a foreign key to the forum it belongs to. It will also contain a foreign key for the user the posts it. Additionally, a reply will belong to a certain topic. And again, rake db:migrate will create the additional tables in the database. Don't worry about the User class yet, that part will be in a later tutorial when we add authentication.
If you go to http://localhost:3000/topics and http://localhost:3000/topics, you will see similar pages to the forum page that was created earlier.
Now that we have our scaffolding up, its time to take a look at some of the code that was generated and put it where we want it. First, lets go to /config/routes.rb and do a few things:
This sets up routing so that to view a specific post, you would go to a URL like: /forums/1/posts/3, and to see a reply /posts/1/replies/3.
Moving on, lets edit the files in /app/models/
All of that should make sense to you, just fleshing out some of the stuff we've already talked about.
Next, lets check out /app/controllers/topics_controller.rb. Add these lines to it:
before_filter :load_forum will cause the load_forum method to be called anytime the topics controller is accessed.
Now, in the index function, change:
to
Now change every instance of:
to
and in the new function:
to
Change the create function from:
to
In update, change the line:
to
and finally, in destroy, change the line:
to
Alright, lets take a look at all that we just did. With the code that was generated by the scaffold, Rails did not take into account the fact that we need to retrieve our topic classes by a foreign key(forum_id). The majority of the changes were in setting that up correctly. The other changes were in the redirect_to function calls. Whenever I create, update, or destroy a topic, I want it to redirect back to the forum I was on instead of going back to the topic page automatically assigned.
Now, when we go to look at a specific forum, we want it to list out not just the forum title and description, but all the topics associated with that forum. Open up /app/views/forums/show.html.erb
Since this is our first look at a view, let go over it a bit.
The <% tags work kind of like <?php tags. They switch out of normal HTML markup to ruby code. Inside these tags are where the magic happens. So a tag with just <% will not display anything, they are useful for doing things like loops. A tag with <%= will output the result into the HTML markup. So the line <%=h @forum.name %> will display the name of the forum. The lowercase 'h' is there escape HTML characters in output.
Change the file to this:
Now one more thing; I want to have a 'Create New Topic' form at the bottom of the page. First, lets take a look at /app/views/topics/new.html.erb and /app/views/topics/edit.html.erb. These 2 files are nearly identical. This is a good time to use the DRY(Don't Repeat Yourself) that Rails is big on. Lets create a new file called _topic.html.erb in the /app/views/topics/ folder and put the following code into it:
And then change edit.html.erb and new.html.erb to look like this:
That cleaned up a good bit of code. Since the only real difference in the 2 forms for those pages was the button name, we created what is called a partial in the file _topic.html.erb, and then rendered the partial in new.html.erb and edit.html.erb, passing in the value of the button name. And now, we can also re-use the partial in /app/views/forums/show.html.erb
Change the file to look like this:
One more thing, open up /app/views/topics/show.html.erb and remove this part:
Since we haven't implemented the authentication yet.
And change the line:
to
And then change:
to
Save everything, fire up the server, and head back to http://localhost:3000
Click Show
And there we go! You can add a new post, and then click on it to show it.
So far in the tutorial, we have generated scaffolding for 3 classes(forum, topic, reply), set up the nested routing for topics to be inside forums, and replies to be inside topics, and modified the controllers and view for forum and topic to work like we need it to.
I've decided this will be a 3-part tutorial. The next part will be to get the Replies working(it will be very similar to what we did with nesting topics inside forums) by modifying the views for topics, and the views and controllers for replies. The third part will be to set up Authentication and Admin priveleges.
Let me know what you think, or if you have any questions. And tell your friends.
See you next time!
So here we go!
rails myforum -d mysql
This will create the project folder 'myforum' and force the database used to mysql(the newest version of rails default to sqlite3). All kinds of files and folders are created, but don't let them overwhelm you. Rails is an application framework, so by creating all this stuff it will force you to keep everything organized according to Rails' conventions.
Now, the general layout I decided on for the forums is this: The site will have multiple forums, each forums is going to have multiple topics, and each topic will have multiple replies. To get this going, lets try this:
cd myforum
ruby script/generate scaffold Forum name:string description:text
More files and directories are created, setting up migration files for the database, a model, a controller, and views for the Forum class. Lets analyze the command we just gave:
ruby script/generate - on a mac or on linux, it would be script/generate(I'm on windows). You will be using script/generate for a lot of things in rails, so get used to typing that one.
scaffold Forum - This tells rails that you want to generate a scaffold for the class 'Forum
name:string description:text - in the forums table that will be created, it will have 2 columns: name, and description. the :string and :text are the type of data, with string being a small 1 liner used for naming, and text being something that can be much longer. Moving on....
rake db:create
rake db:migrate
rake db:create will create your mySQL database for you (called myforum_development). rake db:migrate will create the table for the forum class.
Now lets fire up the server and see what we've got!
ruby script/server
And point your web browser(and you better not be using IE!) to http://localhost:3000
So the server is working fine, now go to http://localhost:3000/forums
If you click on New forum, it will give you a form with fields for Name and Description.
And then click back:
Thats right! With only 4 lines of code, rails was able to generate all of this! The scaffolding will create everything you need to Create, Read, Update, and Delete(CRUD).
Moving on, lets set things up so that rails will show the list of forums page by just going to http://localhost:3000, and get rid of that rails info page. Delete the file public/index.html, and then in config/routes.rb do this:
#In config/routes.rb
ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map|
map.resources :forums
map.root :controller => 'forums', :action => 'index' # <-------add this line
..........
..........
end
So this is our first editing of a rails file. routes.rb is very important to the whole rails applications. They take a request for a URL and turn it into a request from a controller and an action. In this case, the line we added will take a request for the root(http://localhost:3000) and give us back the index action of the forums controller(which will list all the forums). Save, and again, point the browser to http://localhost:3000:
Great! Now, lets go ahead and generate scaffolding for our other 2 classes: Topics and Replies:
ruby script/generate scaffold Topic forum:references user:references subject:string body:text
ruby script/generate scaffold Reply topic:references user:references subject:string body:text
rake db:migrate
We have something new here. forum:references means that a topic will contain a foreign key to the forum it belongs to. It will also contain a foreign key for the user the posts it. Additionally, a reply will belong to a certain topic. And again, rake db:migrate will create the additional tables in the database. Don't worry about the User class yet, that part will be in a later tutorial when we add authentication.
If you go to http://localhost:3000/topics and http://localhost:3000/topics, you will see similar pages to the forum page that was created earlier.
Now that we have our scaffolding up, its time to take a look at some of the code that was generated and put it where we want it. First, lets go to /config/routes.rb and do a few things:
BEFORE:
#In config/routes.rb
ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map|
map.resources :replies
map.resources :topics
map.resources :forums
map.root :controller => 'forums', :action => 'index'
...............
...............
end
AFTER:
#In config/routes.rb
ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map|
map.resources :forums, :has_many => :topics
map.resources :topics, :has_many => :replies
map.resources :replies
map.root :controller => 'forums', :action => 'index'
...............
................
end
This sets up routing so that to view a specific post, you would go to a URL like: /forums/1/posts/3, and to see a reply /posts/1/replies/3.
Moving on, lets edit the files in /app/models/
#forum.rb
class Forum < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :topics
has_many :replies, :through => :topics
end
------------------------------
#topic.rb
class Topic < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :forum
belongs_to :user
has_many :replies
end
-------------------------------
#reply.rb
class Reply < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :topic
belongs_to :user
end
All of that should make sense to you, just fleshing out some of the stuff we've already talked about.
Next, lets check out /app/controllers/topics_controller.rb. Add these lines to it:
before_filter :load_forum
def load_forum
@forum = Forum.find(params[:forum_id])
end
before_filter :load_forum will cause the load_forum method to be called anytime the topics controller is accessed.
Now, in the index function, change:
@topics = Topic.find(:all)
to
@topics = @forum.topics
Now change every instance of:
@topic = Topic.find(params[:id])
to
@topic = @forum.topics.find(params[:id])
and in the new function:
@topic = Topic.new
to
@topic = @forum.topics.build
Change the create function from:
def create
@topic = Topic.new(params[:topic])
respond_to do |format|
if @topic.save
flash[:notice] = 'Topic was successfully created.'
format.html { redirect_to(@topic) }
format.xml { render :xml => @topic, :status => :created, :location => @topic }
else
format.html { render :action => "new" }
format.xml { render :xml => @topic.errors, :status => :unprocessable_entity }
end
end
end
to
def create
@topic = @forum.topics.build(params[:topic])
respond_to do |format|
if @topic.save
flash[:notice] = 'Topic was successfully created.'
format.html { redirect_to(@forum) }
format.xml { render :xml => @topic, :status => :created, :location => @topic }
else
format.html { render :action => "new" }
format.xml { render :xml => @topic.errors, :status => :unprocessable_entity }
end
end
end
In update, change the line:
format.html { redirect_to(@topic) }
to
format.html { redirect_to(@forum) }
and finally, in destroy, change the line:
format.html { redirect_to(topics_url) }
to
format.html { redirect_to(forum_topics_url(@forum)) }
Alright, lets take a look at all that we just did. With the code that was generated by the scaffold, Rails did not take into account the fact that we need to retrieve our topic classes by a foreign key(forum_id). The majority of the changes were in setting that up correctly. The other changes were in the redirect_to function calls. Whenever I create, update, or destroy a topic, I want it to redirect back to the forum I was on instead of going back to the topic page automatically assigned.
Now, when we go to look at a specific forum, we want it to list out not just the forum title and description, but all the topics associated with that forum. Open up /app/views/forums/show.html.erb
<p>
<b>Name:</b>
<%=h @forum.name %>;
</p>
<p>
<b>Description:</b>
<%=h @forum.description %>
</p>
<%= link_to 'Edit', edit_forum_path(@forum) %> |
<%= link_to 'Back', forums_path %>
Since this is our first look at a view, let go over it a bit.
The <% tags work kind of like <?php tags. They switch out of normal HTML markup to ruby code. Inside these tags are where the magic happens. So a tag with just <% will not display anything, they are useful for doing things like loops. A tag with <%= will output the result into the HTML markup. So the line <%=h @forum.name %> will display the name of the forum. The lowercase 'h' is there escape HTML characters in output.
Change the file to this:
<p>
<b>Forum:</b>
<%=h @forum.name %> - <%=h @forum.description %>
</p>
<% unless @forum.topics.empty? %>
<h2>Topics</h2>
<% @forum.topics.each do |topic| %>
<b><%= link_to topic.subject, [@forum, topic] %></b><br />
<% end %>
<% end %>
<%= link_to 'Edit', edit_forum_path(@forum) %> |
<%= link_to 'Back', forums_path %>
Now one more thing; I want to have a 'Create New Topic' form at the bottom of the page. First, lets take a look at /app/views/topics/new.html.erb and /app/views/topics/edit.html.erb. These 2 files are nearly identical. This is a good time to use the DRY(Don't Repeat Yourself) that Rails is big on. Lets create a new file called _topic.html.erb in the /app/views/topics/ folder and put the following code into it:
<% form_for([@forum, @topic]) do |f| %>
<p>
<b>Subject</b><br />
<%= f.text_field :subject %>
</p>
<p>
<b>Body</b><br />
<%= f.text_area :body %>
</p>
<p>
<%= f.submit button_name %>
</p>
<% end %>
And then change edit.html.erb and new.html.erb to look like this:
#edit.html.erb
<h1>Editing topic</h1>
<%= error_messages_for :topic %>
<%= render :partial => @topic, :locals => { :button_name => "Submit" } %>
<%= link_to 'Show', [@forum, @topic] %> |
<%= link_to 'Back', topics_path %>
----------------------------
#new.html.erb
<h1>New topic</h1>
<%= error_messages_for :topic %>
<%= render :partial => @topic, :locals => { :button_name => "Create" } %>
<%= link_to 'Back', topics_path %>
That cleaned up a good bit of code. Since the only real difference in the 2 forms for those pages was the button name, we created what is called a partial in the file _topic.html.erb, and then rendered the partial in new.html.erb and edit.html.erb, passing in the value of the button name. And now, we can also re-use the partial in /app/views/forums/show.html.erb
Change the file to look like this:
<p>
<b>Forum:</b>
<%=h @forum.name %> - <%=h @forum.description %>
</p>
<% unless @forum.topics.empty? %>
<h2>Topics</h2>
<% @forum.topics.each do |topic| %>
<b><%= link_to topic.subject, [@forum, topic] %></b><br />
<% end %>
<% end %>
<h2>New Post</h2>
<%= render :partial => @topic = Topic.new, :locals => { :button_name => 'Create' } %>
<%= link_to 'Edit', edit_forum_path(@forum) %> |
<%= link_to 'Back', forums_path %>
One more thing, open up /app/views/topics/show.html.erb and remove this part:
<p>
<b>User:</b>
<%=h @topic.user %>
</p>
Since we haven't implemented the authentication yet.
And change the line:
<%=h @topic.forum %>
to
<%=h @forum.name %>
And then change:
<%= link_to 'Back', topics_path %>
to
<%= link_to 'Back', forum_path(@forum) %>
Save everything, fire up the server, and head back to http://localhost:3000
ruby script/server
Click Show
And there we go! You can add a new post, and then click on it to show it.
So far in the tutorial, we have generated scaffolding for 3 classes(forum, topic, reply), set up the nested routing for topics to be inside forums, and replies to be inside topics, and modified the controllers and view for forum and topic to work like we need it to.
I've decided this will be a 3-part tutorial. The next part will be to get the Replies working(it will be very similar to what we did with nesting topics inside forums) by modifying the views for topics, and the views and controllers for replies. The third part will be to set up Authentication and Admin priveleges.
Let me know what you think, or if you have any questions. And tell your friends.
See you next time!
Thursday, February 14, 2008
New Resource for Beginner 2.0 Tutorials
Just found a site with some great video tutorials for beginners. Its RubyPlus.org. You have to create a free account to access the download.
When I first went to learn Ruby, the book unanimously suggested to me was Agile Web Development with Rails. After a quick search I had found out that the tutorials, of course, didn't work with 2.0. A little more searching and I came across RubyPlus. He has the depot app from the book adapted to Rails 2.0, and video tutorials on it. You will need some of the source that came with the book, which can be downloaded here.
After you create your account at RubyPlus, click Archives to see the tutorials. The AWDR depot ones are 19, 22, 27, 28, 29. It looks like there is a lot of good material on this site besides depot tutorials, I plan to spend a lot of time watching Bala's screencasts.
Also, you can find his blog here.
On to the tutorial:
I've finished the first 2 screencasts without too much trouble. He moves pretty fast, and copies/pastes a lot of code when he creates new files, so be ready to pause so you can type everything out.
In the first screencast, we set up the project, created scaffolding, and played around with the view a little. In the second, we created an admin namespace, and then nested a product route under it, changing the controllers and views so that only an admin could add, edit, and destroy books. So far, much like the blog app from the AkitaOnRails site.
There was a point where you needed some images and css files from the AWDR book (link above), and despite what he says on his page, you don't need to buy the book to download it(although I had the book already). There is also a segment in the first screencast where he is creating a bootstrap.rake file to set up automatic population of the database, and the screen cuts off some of the code he pastes into the file, the full contents of the file are:
See you next time!
When I first went to learn Ruby, the book unanimously suggested to me was Agile Web Development with Rails. After a quick search I had found out that the tutorials, of course, didn't work with 2.0. A little more searching and I came across RubyPlus. He has the depot app from the book adapted to Rails 2.0, and video tutorials on it. You will need some of the source that came with the book, which can be downloaded here.
After you create your account at RubyPlus, click Archives to see the tutorials. The AWDR depot ones are 19, 22, 27, 28, 29. It looks like there is a lot of good material on this site besides depot tutorials, I plan to spend a lot of time watching Bala's screencasts.
Also, you can find his blog here.
On to the tutorial:
I've finished the first 2 screencasts without too much trouble. He moves pretty fast, and copies/pastes a lot of code when he creates new files, so be ready to pause so you can type everything out.
In the first screencast, we set up the project, created scaffolding, and played around with the view a little. In the second, we created an admin namespace, and then nested a product route under it, changing the controllers and views so that only an admin could add, edit, and destroy books. So far, much like the blog app from the AkitaOnRails site.
There was a point where you needed some images and css files from the AWDR book (link above), and despite what he says on his page, you don't need to buy the book to download it(although I had the book already). There is also a segment in the first screencast where he is creating a bootstrap.rake file to set up automatic population of the database, and the screen cuts off some of the code he pastes into the file, the full contents of the file are:
SITE_DIR = File.join(RAILS_ROOT, 'themes/site-' + (ENV['SITE_ID'] || '1'))
namespace :db do
namespace :bootstrap do
desc "Load initial database fixtures (in db/bootstrap/*.yml) into the current environment's database.
Load specific fixtures using FIXTURES=x,y"
task :load => :environment do
require 'active_record/fixtures'
ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(RAILS_ENV.to_sym)
(ENV['FIXTURES'] ? ENV['FIXTURES'].split(/,/) : Dir.glob(File.join(RAILS_ROOT, 'db', 'bootstrap',
'*.{yml,csv}'))).each do |fixture_file|
Fixtures.create_fixtures('db/bootstrap', File.basename(fixture_file, '.*'))
end
end
end
end
See you next time!
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Akita on Rails Tutorial
Before I start, I will note that I tried to do a couple of tutorials before I created this blog and because of them being written for pre-2.0 it didn't work out so well, but I got a little bit of an introduction to Rails with them anyway, so I am not completely vanilla when it comes to Rails, just mostly so.
For my first tutorial, I decided to try Rolling with Rails 2.0 - The First Tutorial at AkitaonRails.com.
Now this tutorial assumes that you have used Rails before 2.0, but it seems to break everything down enough for me to know whats going on. I've made it to the section on Namespaced Routes, where I plan to pick back up tomorrow. So far I've not had any trouble besides a couple of typos I had to go back and fix.
A couple of notes:
The newest version of rails defaults to sqlite3 as the database, to force it to use mysql, when you create the project, use:
rails blog -d mysql
instead of:
rails blog
Also, since I'm on Windows(not by my choice, my computer at home runs Ubuntu), on lines where the tutorial runs something from the script folder:
./script/generate
./script/server
I had to use:
ruby script/generate
ruby script/server
Easy enough. I'll be updating this post tomorrow with the rest of part one of this tutorial.
EDIT: Tomorrow
Just finished up part one, adding in admin functionality using Namespaced Routes. Basically we set up all the routing for admin, and copied the views of what was already created, so that for admin rights, you would go to /admin/posts as opposed to /posts. Then we went to the views for the regular posts and stripped out the ability to add/delete/edit posts, and to delete/edit comments.
Alright now for my opinion of the tutorial:
While this was aimed for people with a little experience at Rails, Akita did a great job of not assuming we knew too much, making it easy to follow and understand what was going on.
The amount of effort that it takes to make a small web app such as this is amazing. This is as complicated as some projects that have taken me weeks to program in PHP (I never did learn CakePHP or any of the like). If I had known, I would have been using Rails a while ago. I would have moved on to the 2nd part of the tutorial, but the link seems to be down right now, so I guess it will wait until the next post.
For my first tutorial, I decided to try Rolling with Rails 2.0 - The First Tutorial at AkitaonRails.com.
Now this tutorial assumes that you have used Rails before 2.0, but it seems to break everything down enough for me to know whats going on. I've made it to the section on Namespaced Routes, where I plan to pick back up tomorrow. So far I've not had any trouble besides a couple of typos I had to go back and fix.
A couple of notes:
The newest version of rails defaults to sqlite3 as the database, to force it to use mysql, when you create the project, use:
rails blog -d mysql
instead of:
rails blog
Also, since I'm on Windows(not by my choice, my computer at home runs Ubuntu), on lines where the tutorial runs something from the script folder:
./script/generate
./script/server
I had to use:
ruby script/generate
ruby script/server
Easy enough. I'll be updating this post tomorrow with the rest of part one of this tutorial.
EDIT: Tomorrow
Just finished up part one, adding in admin functionality using Namespaced Routes. Basically we set up all the routing for admin, and copied the views of what was already created, so that for admin rights, you would go to /admin/posts as opposed to /posts. Then we went to the views for the regular posts and stripped out the ability to add/delete/edit posts, and to delete/edit comments.
Alright now for my opinion of the tutorial:
While this was aimed for people with a little experience at Rails, Akita did a great job of not assuming we knew too much, making it easy to follow and understand what was going on.
The amount of effort that it takes to make a small web app such as this is amazing. This is as complicated as some projects that have taken me weeks to program in PHP (I never did learn CakePHP or any of the like). If I had known, I would have been using Rails a while ago. I would have moved on to the 2nd part of the tutorial, but the link seems to be down right now, so I guess it will wait until the next post.
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