Riding the Rails

What? Why? Huh?

Rails is...

...a Platform for creating dynamics websites,

using the Ruby programming language.

Rails allows us to utilize Ruby in the Back-End and Front-End

MVC Framework

Start a New Project

$ rails new my_awesome_project

...

$ cd my_awesome_project

Some Ground Rules:

1. Appropriately Name

   * what does the project

        do as a whole?

2. Starts with a letter

3. All Lowercase

3. Underscores for Spaces

Creating a Controller

$ rails g controller Welcome index about contact

g = generate

Welcome = the name of the controller

(but it you can call it whatever you like; capitalized, camelcase)

index about contact = views (or, html pages) that you want associated with this controller (lowercase, with underscores)

Routes and Roots

When you generate a Controller, Rails provides the routes.

The Root path is your landing (or, home) page.

Call it by it's associated controller action!

# [railsprojectname]/config/routes.rb

Rails.application.routes.draw do
  get 'welcome/index'

  get 'welcome/about'

  get 'welcome/contact'
end

Rails.application.routes.draw do
  get 'welcome/index'
  get 'welcome/about'
  get 'welcome/contact'

  root 'welcome#index'
end

Customize Your Routes

No one wants a long URL!

Rails.application.routes.draw do

  get 'homepage' => 'welcome#index'

  get 'thisisus' => 'welcome#about'

  get 'drop_us_a_line' => 'welcome#contact'

  root 'welcome#index'

end

Format:

'custom URL extension' => 'controller#action'

Let's Scaffold for a Second

$ rails g scaffold Pet name:string breed:string age:integer

Remember when you created an Object 'class' in Ruby?

Doesn't this seem awfully similar to that?!

A Database is Born!

$ rails g scaffold

The Rails command to create a new database

$ rails g scaffold Pet

'Pet' (notice it's capitalized, and singular), will be the name of our database

$ rails g scaffold Pet name:string 
breed:string age:integer

'name', 'breed' and 'age' will be the attributes of your 'Pet'; each is assigned a data type

Amazing Attributes

Think of your Database as a table...

...and your Attributes as the columns.

Each time you create a new instance of the Resource, you create a new row in the table

Buy Any One Column,

Get Three More Free!

Rails is a generous framework, and it gives three extra columns, just for stopping by...

You get...

id - an id # of 1 thru ...

created_at - datetime when row was created

updated_at - datetime when the row was updated