path: root/actionpack/README.rdoc

= Action Pack -- From request to response

Action Pack is a framework for handling and responding to web requests. It
provides mechanisms for *routing* (mapping request URLs to actions), defining
*controllers* that implement actions, and generating responses by rendering
*views*, which are templates of various formats. In short, Action Pack
provides the view and controller layers in the MVC paradigm.

It consists of several modules:

* Action Dispatch, which parses information about the web request, handles
  routing as defined by the user, and does advanced processing related to HTTP
  such as MIME-type negotiation, decoding parameters in POST/PUT bodies,
  handling HTTP caching logic, cookies and sessions.

* Action Controller, which provides a base controller class that can be
  subclassed to implement filters and actions to handle requests. The result
  of an action is typically content generated from views.

* Action View, which handles view template lookup and rendering, and provides
  view helpers that assist when building HTML forms, Atom feeds and more.
  Template formats that Action View handles are ERb (embedded Ruby, typically
  used to inline short Ruby snippets inside HTML), XML Builder and RJS
  (dynamically generated JavaScript from Ruby code).

With the Ruby on Rails framework, users only directly interface with the
Action Controller module. Necessary Action Dispatch functionality is activated
by default and Action View rendering is implicitly triggered by Action
Controller. However, these modules are designed to function on their own and
can be used outside of Rails.

A short rundown of some of the major features:

* Actions grouped in controller as methods instead of separate command objects
  and can therefore share helper methods

    CustomersController < ActionController::Base
      def show
        @customer = find_customer
      end

      def update
        @customer = find_customer
        if @customer.update_attributes(params[:customer])
          redirect_to :action => "show"
        else
          render :action => "edit"
        end
      end

      private
        def find_customer
          Customer.find params[:id]
        end
    end

  {Learn more}[link:classes/ActionController/Base.html]


* ERb templates (static content mixed with dynamic output from ruby)

    <% for post in @posts %>
      Title: <%= post.title %>
    <% end %>

    All post titles: <%= @posts.collect{ |p| p.title }.join(", ") %>

    <% unless @person.is_client? %>
      Not for clients to see...
    <% end %>

  {Learn more}[link:classes/ActionView.html]


* "Builder" templates (great for XML content, like RSS)

    xml.rss("version" => "2.0") do
      xml.channel do
        xml.title(@feed_title)
        xml.link(@url)
        xml.description "Basecamp: Recent items"
        xml.language "en-us"
        xml.ttl "40"

        for item in @recent_items
          xml.item do
            xml.title(item_title(item))
            xml.description(item_description(item))
            xml.pubDate(item_pubDate(item))
            xml.guid(@recent_items.url(item))
            xml.link(@recent_items.url(item))
          end
        end
      end
    end

  {Learn more}[link:classes/ActionView/Base.html]


* Filters for pre- and post-processing of the response

    class WeblogController < ActionController::Base
      # filters as methods
      before_filter :authenticate, :cache, :audit
      
      # filter as a proc
      after_filter { |c| c.response.body = Gzip::compress(c.response.body) }
      
      # class filter
      after_filter LocalizeFilter

      def index
        # Before this action is run, the user will be authenticated, the cache
        # will be examined to see if a valid copy of the results already
        # exists, and the action will be logged for auditing.

        # After this action has run, the output will first be localized then
        # compressed to minimize bandwidth usage
      end

      private
        def authenticate
          # Implement the filter with full access to both request and response
        end
    end

  {Learn more}[link:classes/ActionController/Filters/ClassMethods.html]


* Helpers for forms, dates, action links, and text

    <%= text_field_tag "post", "title", "size" => 30 %>
    <%= link_to "New post", :controller => "post", :action => "new" %>
    <%= truncate(post.title, :length => 25) %>

  {Learn more}[link:classes/ActionView/Helpers.html]


* Layout sharing for template reuse

    class WeblogController < ActionController::Base
      layout "weblog_layout"

      def hello_world
      end
    end

    Layout file (called weblog_layout):
      <html><body><%= yield %></body></html>

    Template for hello_world action:
      <h1>Hello world</h1>

    Result of running hello_world action:
      <html><body><h1>Hello world</h1></body></html>

  {Learn more}[link:classes/ActionController/Layout/ClassMethods.html]


* Routing makes pretty URLs incredibly easy

    match 'clients/:client_name/:project_name/:controller/:action'

    Accessing "/clients/37signals/basecamp/project/index" calls ProjectController#index with
    { "client_name" => "37signals", "project_name" => "basecamp" } in `params`

    From that action, you can write the redirect in a number of ways:

    redirect_to(:action => "edit") =>
      /clients/37signals/basecamp/project/edit

    redirect_to(:client_name => "nextangle", :project_name => "rails") =>
      /clients/nextangle/rails/project/index

  {Learn more}[link:classes/ActionDispatch/Routing.html]


* Easy testing of both controller and rendered template through ActionController::TestCase

    class LoginControllerTest < ActionController::TestCase
      def test_failing_authenticate
        process :authenticate, :user_name => "nop", :password => ""
        assert flash.has_key?(:alert)
        assert_redirected_to :action => "index"
      end
    end

  {Learn more}[link:classes/ActionController/TestCase.html]


* Automated benchmarking and integrated logging

    Started GET "/weblog" for 127.0.0.1 at Fri May 28 00:41:55
      Processing by WeblogController#index as HTML
    Rendered weblog/index.html.erb within layouts/application (25.7ms)
    Completed 200 OK in 29.3ms

    If Active Record is used as the model, you'll have the database debugging
    as well:

    Started POST "/posts" for 127.0.0.1 at Sat Jun 19 14:04:23
      Processing by PostsController#create as HTML
      Parameters: {"post"=>{"title"=>"this is good"}}
    SQL (0.6ms) INSERT INTO posts (title) VALUES('this is good')
    Redirected to http://example.com/posts/5
    Completed 302 Found in 221ms (Views: 215ms | ActiveRecord: 0.6ms)

    You specify a logger through a class method, such as:

    ActionController::Base.logger = Logger.new("Application Log")
    ActionController::Base.logger = Log4r::Logger.new("Application Log")


* Caching at three levels of granularity (page, action, fragment)

    class WeblogController < ActionController::Base
      caches_page :show
      caches_action :account

      def show
        # the output of the method will be cached as
        # ActionController::Base.page_cache_directory + "/weblog/show/n.html"
        # and the web server will pick it up without even hitting Rails
      end

      def account
        # the output of the method will be cached in the fragment store
        # but Rails is hit to retrieve it, so filters are run
      end

      def update
        List.update(params[:list][:id], params[:list])
        expire_page   :action => "show", :id => params[:list][:id]
        expire_action :action => "account"
        redirect_to   :action => "show", :id => params[:list][:id]
      end
    end

  {Learn more}[link:classes/ActionController/Caching.html]


* Powerful debugging mechanism for local requests

    All exceptions raised on actions performed on the request of a local user
    will be presented with a tailored debugging screen that includes exception
    message, stack trace, request parameters, session contents, and the
    half-finished response.

  {Learn more}[link:classes/ActionController/Rescue.html]


== Simple example (from outside of Rails)

This example will implement a simple weblog system using inline templates and
an Active Record model. So let's build that WeblogController with just a few
methods:

  require 'action_controller'
  require 'post'

  class WeblogController < ActionController::Base
    layout "weblog/layout"

    def index
      @posts = Post.find(:all)
    end

    def show
      @post = Post.find(params[:id])
    end

    def new
      @post = Post.new
    end

    def create
      @post = Post.create(params[:post])
      redirect_to :action => "show", :id => @post.id
    end
  end

  WeblogController::Base.view_paths = [ File.dirname(__FILE__) ]
  WeblogController.process_cgi if $0 == __FILE__

The last two lines are responsible for telling ActionController where the
template files are located and actually running the controller on a new
request from the web-server (like to be Apache).

And the templates look like this:

  weblog/layout.html.erb:
    <html><body>
    <%= yield %>
    </body></html>

  weblog/index.html.erb:
    <% for post in @posts %>
      <p><%= link_to(post.title, :action => "show", :id => post.id) %></p>
    <% end %>

  weblog/show.html.erb:
    <p>
      <b><%= @post.title %></b><br/>
      <b><%= @post.content %></b>
    </p>

  weblog/new.html.erb:
    <%= form "post" %>

This simple setup will list all the posts in the system on the index page,
which is called by accessing /weblog/. It uses the form builder for the Active
Record model to make the new screen, which in turn hands everything over to
the create action (that's the default target for the form builder when given a
new model). After creating the post, it'll redirect to the show page using
an URL such as /weblog/5 (where 5 is the id of the post).


== Download and installation

The latest version of Action Pack can be installed with Rubygems:

  % [sudo] gem install actionpack

Source code can be downloaded as part of the Rails project on GitHub

* http://github.com/rails/rails/tree/master/actionpack/


== License

Action Pack is released under the MIT license.


== Support

API documentation is at

* http://api.rubyonrails.com

Bug reports and feature requests can be filed with the rest for the Ruby on Rails project here:

* https://rails.lighthouseapp.com/projects/8994-ruby-on-rails/tickets