The South Lake Union Bog - Intro to Rails

Researchers at your local biology lab are exploring and documenting the history of the South Lake Union bog, and the creatures of interest. Our job is to encourage people in the community to explore SLU and submit their findings using our web application.

We'll be creating a single model app to demonstrate editing resources. Its important to get comfortable with the process of starting a new Rails app since you'll be doing this for quite awhile

##Components

Bog Model

• A creature model that stores name and description

Bog Controller

• A controller for your home page
• A controller that manages bog creature

Bog Routes / Views

| route | description | controller | action/view | |-------|-----|----|-----|------| | GET / | Your home page | home | index | | GET /creatures | list all creatures | creatures | index | | GET /creatures/new | show add creature form | creatures | new | | POST /creatures | create creature | creatures | create (no view) | | GET /creatures/1 | list creature (id=1) | creatures | show | | GET /creatures/2/edit | show edit creature form (id=2) | creatures | edit | | PUT /creatures/3 | update an existing creature (id=3) | creatures | update | | DELETE /creatures/3 | delete an existing creature (id=3) | creatures | destroy (no view) |

Remember: you can list all routes by running rake routes at the command line.

##Recommended Process

###Create basic app

• Fork and clone this repo
• cd into the directory
• Create app rails new ./ -d postgresql
• Create database rake db:create
• Test app
  • Run server rails s
  • Goto: localhost:3000

NOTE: To submit your homework, make sure to commit all files and make a pull request.

###Build specific functionality

• Create model rails g model ... (you write the rest of this command)
• Migrate rake db:migrate
• Test models
  • run console rails c
  • Try some stuff...
    • Creature.all
    • Creature.create
    • Createre.new
    • Creature.find
    • ...etc ...etc
• Close console run rails s
• Create routes...
  • Add route to routes.rb
  • Add controller / action
  • Add view
  • Test (go to url in browser)
  • Repeat for each view
• Add HTML to each view
  • Use bootstrap
  • Make it pretty... oh so pretty!!!
• Add code to make the app functional

Styling

• Add a pretty home page. Maybe add in a carousel or something
• Make a navigation bar. Everyone loves nav bars.
• Use Bootstrap form helper. Makes Bootstrap forms easily

Edit/Delete

• Make an edit form to edit an existing Creature
• Make a delete button for each Creature

Note about PATCH/PUT/DELETE

For delete and edit we will use the DELETE and PATCH or PUT verbs (see RESTful routes). Rails has a solution called method override to allow us to use these verbs without AJAX. This works by creating a post form and creating hidden form field named "_method" which rails uses to override the method. This can also be done automatically by the form helper.

More details here: Using method override in rails

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Licensing

1. All content is licensed under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
2. All software code is licensed under GNU GPLv3. For commercial use or alternative licensing, please contact legal@ga.co.