Rails Guide
Hey, thanks a lot for picking up this guide!
I created this guide as a quick reference for when you are working on your
projects, so you can quickly find what you need & keep going.
Hope it helps you!
MVC Architecture
Full
Letter Description
Name
M Model Everything database related.
The front-end / HTML / CSS, what the user of your
V View
app sees.
C Controller Glues the Model & the View.
Migrations
System to update your database schema.
Example 1:
rails generate migration AddPartNumberToProducts part_number:string
Example 2:
rails generate migration AddColumnToPosts user:references
Example 3:
rails generate migration CreateUsers name:string email:string
Types of values:
string (less then 255 characters)
text
datetime
timestamp
float
decimal
integer
boolean
references
Run migrations:
rake db:migrate
Migration Formats:
CreateXXX -> create_table
AddXXXToYYY -> add_column
RemoveXXXFromYYY -> remove_column
Routes
Is the part of Rails that knows how to handle URLs & match them to a
controller.
Set the main page for your website:
root "pages#index"
Create new routes:
get "/users", to: "users#index", as: "users"
get "/users/:id", to: "users#show", as: "show_user"
post "/users/create", to:"users#create", as: "create_user"
Create a set of related routes:
resources :users # Has index route, plural
resource :post # No index route, singular
Listing Routes:
rake routes
Scaffolding
Create MVC files, migrations & testing templates.
Example:
rails generate scaffold Post votes:integer link:text
ERB
Embbeded Ruby. Allows you to have Ruby code inside HTML.
How to embbed Ruby code:
<% 123 %> # Doesn't show output on page
<%= 123 %> # Shows output on page
Loop:
<% @posts.each do |post| %>
<p><%= post.votes %></p>
<p><%= post.link %></p>
<% end %>
Links:
<%= link_to 'Upvote', upvote_post_path(post), method: 'post' %>
<%= link_to 'Edit', edit_post_path(post) %>
<%= link_to 'Show', post %>
Validations
Allow you do define what data is valid & what is not valid.
Example:
validates :votes, presence: true
validates :link, uniqueness: true
Format:
validates :legacy_code,
format: { with: /\A[a-zA-Z]+\z/, message: "only allows letters" }
Inclusion:
validates :size, inclusion: { in: %w(small medium large),
message: "%{value} is not a valid size" }
Length:
validates :name, length: { minimum: 2 }
validates :bio, length: { maximum: 500 }
validates :registration_number, length: { is: 6 }
Numericality:
validates :points, numericality: true
validates :age, numericality: { greater_than: 21 }
validates :votes, numericality: { less_than: 10 }
Custom Validation
With validation class:
class EmailValidator < ActiveModel::EachValidator
def validate_each(record, attribute, value)
unless value =~ /\A([^@\s]+)@((?:[-a-z0-9]+\.)+[a-z]{2,})\z/i
record.errors[attribute] << (options[:message] || "is not an email")
end
end
end
class Person < ApplicationRecord
validates :email, presence: true, email: true
end
With validation method:
validate :expiration_date_cannot_be_in_the_past
def expiration_date_cannot_be_in_the_past
if expiration_date.present? && expiration_date < Date.today
errors.add(:expiration_date, "can't be in the past")
end
end
Conditional Validation
class Order < ApplicationRecord
validates :card_number, presence: true, if: :paid_with_card?
def paid_with_card?
payment_type == "card"
end
end
ActiveRecord
Query the database, update & delete data.
Query:
User.all
User.first
User.find_by(email: "test@example.com")
User.where("id > ?", params[:min_id])
Updating:
# Find one user
@user = User.first
# Update attributes
@user.name = "John"
# Save changes
@user.save
Rails Naming Conventions
Model - Singular
Database table - Plural + snake_case
Controller - Plural
Views Folder - Plural
Example:
Model - User
Table - user
Controller - UsersController
Views Folder - users
Heroku Deploy
When you are ready to deploy your application to heroku you will need to
make sure you have created an account & installed the heroku CLI as per the
instructions.
Then you will need to login & create a new app.
Login:
heroku login
Create new app:
heroku create
Push changes:
git push heroku master
Read logs:
heroku logs
Run migrations:
heroku exec rake db:migrate
Also make sure that you have the pg gem on your Gemfile & that
config/database.yml is setup to use postgres in production.
You also want to use postgres locally if possible to avoid any incompatible
changes.
Controller Actions
Share data with views via instance variables.
Example:
def index
@users = Users.all
end
Redirect to another action:
def upvote
redirect_to action: 'index'
end
Layouts
If you want to create a menu or have some elements that show on all of the
pages of your site then you need to use layouts.
By default your main layout file is under app/views/layouts/application.html.erb .
It's just a regular view file that you can edit & customize to your needs.
Associations
3 types:
One-to-One
One-to-Many
Many-to-Many
Example:
class User < ApplicationRecord
has_many :posts
end
class Post < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :user
end
Make sure that Post has a user_id column:
rails generate migration AddColumnToPosts user:references
Then:
rake db:migrate
To get all the posts for a user:
u = User.first
u.posts
Thanks for reading this guide!
- Jesus Castello (www.rubyguides.com)
