== Welcome to Rails Rails is a web-application and persistance framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web-applications according to the Model-View-Control pattern of separation. This pattern splits the view (also called the presentation) into "dumb" templates that are primarily responsible for inserting pre-build data in between HTML tags. The model contains the "smart" domain objects (such as Account, Product, Person, Post) that holds all the business logic and knows how to persist themselves to a database. The controller handles the incoming requests (such as Save New Account, Update Product, Show Post) by manipulating the model and directing data to the view. In Rails, the model is handled by what's called a object-relational mapping layer entitled Active Record. This layer allows you to present the data from database rows as objects and embellish these data objects with business logic methods. You can read more about Active Record in link:files/vendor/rails/activerecord/README.html. The controller and view is handled by the Action Pack, which handles both layers by its two parts: Action View and Action Controller. These two layers are bundled in a single package due to their heavy interdependence. This is unlike the relationship between the Active Record and Action Pack that is much more separate. Each of these packages can be used independently outside of Rails. You can read more about Action Pack in link:files/vendor/rails/actionpack/README.html. == Getting started 1. Run the WEBrick servlet: ruby script/server (run with --help for options) ...or if you have lighttpd installed: ruby script/lighttpd (it's faster) 2. Go to http://localhost:3000/ and get "Congratulations, you've put Ruby on Rails!" 3. Follow the guidelines on the "Congratulations, you've put Ruby on Rails!" screen == Example for Apache conf ServerName rails DocumentRoot /path/application/public/ ErrorLog /path/application/log/server.log Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks AllowOverride all Allow from all Order allow,deny NOTE: Be sure that CGIs can be executed in that directory as well. So ExecCGI should be on and ".cgi" should respond. All requests from 127.0.0.1 goes through CGI, so no Apache restart is necessary for changes. All other requests goes through FCGI (or mod_ruby) that requires restart to show changes. == Debugging Rails Have "tail -f" commands running on both the server.log, production.log, and test.log files. Rails will automatically display debugging and runtime information to these files. Debugging info will also be shown in the browser on requests from 127.0.0.1. == Breakpoints Breakpoint support is available through the script/breakpointer client. This means that you can break out of execution at any point in the code, investigate and change the model, AND then resume execution! Example: class WeblogController < ActionController::Base def index @posts = Post.find_all breakpoint "Breaking out from the list" end end So the controller will accept the action, run the first line, then present you with a IRB prompt in the breakpointer window. Here you can do things like: Executing breakpoint "Breaking out from the list" at .../webrick_server.rb:16 in 'breakpoint' >> @posts.inspect => "[#nil, \"body\"=>nil, \"id\"=>\"1\"}>, #\"Rails you know!\", \"body\"=>\"Only ten..\", \"id\"=>\"2\"}>]" >> @posts.first.title = "hello from a breakpoint" => "hello from a breakpoint" ...and even better is that you can examine how your runtime objects actually work: >> f = @posts.first => #nil, "body"=>nil, "id"=>"1"}> >> f. Display all 152 possibilities? (y or n) Finally, when you're ready to resume execution, you press CTRL-D == Console You can interact with the domain model by starting the console through script/console. Here you'll have all parts of the application configured, just like it is when the application is running. You can inspect domain models, change values, and save to the database. Start the script without arguments will launch it in the development environment. Passing an argument will specify a different environment, like console production. == Description of contents app Holds all the code that's specific to this particular application. app/controllers Holds controllers that should be named like weblog_controller.rb for automated URL mapping. All controllers should descend from ActionController::Base. app/models Holds models that should be named like post.rb. Most models will descent from ActiveRecord::Base. app/views Holds the template files for the view that should be named like weblog/index.rhtml for the WeblogController#index action. All views uses eRuby syntax. This directory can also be used to keep stylesheets, images, and so on that can be symlinked to public. app/helpers Holds view helpers that should be named like weblog_helper.rb. config Configuration files for the Rails environment, the routing map, the database, and other dependencies. components Self-contained mini-applications that can bundle controllers, models, and views together. lib Application specific libraries. Basically, any kind of custom code that doesn't belong controllers, models, or helpers. This directory is in the load path. public The directory available for the web server. Contains sub-directories for images, stylesheets, and javascripts. Also contains the dispatchers and the default HTML files. script Helper scripts for automation and generation. test Unit and functional tests along with fixtures. vendor External libraries that the application depend on. This directory is in the load path.