book

Ruby on Rails: Up and Running

by Bruce Tate, Curt Hibbs

August 2006

Intermediate to advanced

182 pages

4h 34m

English

O'Reilly Media, Inc.

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A Note Regarding Supplemental Files
Preface
Who Should Read This Book?Conventions Used in This BookUsing Code ExamplesPlatformsSafari® EnabledHow to Contact UsAcknowledgments
1. Zero to Sixty: Introducing Rails
1.1. Rails Strengths1.2. Putting Rails into Action1.3. Organization1.4. The Web Server1.4.1. Choosing a Server1.4.1.1. WEBrick1.4.1.2. Apache1.4.1.3. lighttpd1.4.1.4. Mongrel1.4.1.5. Other web servers1.5. Creating a Controller1.5.1. Running the Controller1.6. Building a View1.7. Tying the Controller to the View1.7.1. Expressions and Scriptlets1.8. Under the Hood1.9. What’s Next?
2. Active Record Basics
2.1. Active Record Basics2.1.1. Wrapping, Not Mapping2.1.2. A Brief Example2.1.3. The Secret Sauce2.2. Introducing Photo Share2.2.1. Defining the Model2.2.2. Configuring Active Record2.3. Schema Migrations2.4. Basic Active Record Classes2.4.1. Wrapping the Table2.4.2. The Rails Console2.5. Attributes2.5.1. Columns2.5.2. Accessors2.5.3. Identifiers2.6. Complex Classes2.6.1. Inheritance2.6.2. Composition2.7. Behavior2.7.1. Finders2.7.2. Validation2.7.3. Transactions2.8. Moving Forward
3. Active Record Relationships
3.1. belongs_to3.2. has_many3.3. has_one3.3.1. has_and_belongs_to_many3.3.1.1. Join models3.3.2. acts_as_list3.3.3. Trees3.4. What You Haven’t Seen3.5. Looking Ahead
4. Scaffolding
4.1. Using the Scaffold Method4.1.1. A List of Photos4.1.2. More Metaprogramming4.2. Replacing Scaffolding4.2.1. Scaffolding Is Dynamic4.2.2. Pros and Cons4.3. Generating Scaffolding Code4.3.1. Inside the Generated Code4.3.2. The Best of Both Worlds4.4. Moving Forward
5. Extending Views
5.1. The Big Picture5.2. Seeing Real Photos5.3. View Templates5.3.1. Layouts5.4. Setting the Default Root5.5. Stylesheets5.6. Hierarchical Categories5.6.1. Assign a Category to a Photo5.7. Styling the Slideshows5.7.1. Creating Your Own Helper Functions5.7.2. Creating the Stylesheet
6. Ajax
6.1. How Rails Implements Ajax6.2. Playing a Slideshow6.3. Using Drag-and-Drop to Reorder Slides6.4. Drag and Drop Everything (Almost Everything)6.5. Filtering by Category
7. Testing
7.1. Background7.2. Ruby’s Test::Unit7.3. Testing in Rails7.3.1. Unit Tests, Functional Tests, and Integration Tests7.3.1.1. Environments7.3.1.2. Fixtures7.3.1.3. Unit tests7.3.1.4. Functional tests7.3.1.5. Integration tests7.3.2. Advanced Testing7.3.2.1. ZenTest7.3.2.2. Selenium7.4. Wrapping Up
A. Installing Rails
1.1. Windows1.1.1. Instant Rails1.1.2. RadRails2.1. OS X2.1.1. TextMate and RadRails3.1. Linux

B. Quick Reference
5.1. General5.1.1. Documentation5.1.2. Supported Web Servers5.1.3. Supported Databases5.1.4. Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)5.1.4.1. Open Source5.1.4.2. Commercial5.1.4.3. Editors5.1.4.4. Debugging5.1.5. Create a New Rails Application5.2. Testing5.2.1. Unit Tests5.2.2. Functional Tests5.2.2.1. Requests5.2.2.2. Redirects5.2.2.3. Rendered with Template5.2.2.4. Variable Assignments5.2.2.5. Rendering of Specific Tags5.2.3. Integration Tests5.2.4. More on Testing5.2.4.1. rake5.2.5. Scripts5.2.6. Generators5.2.7. Plug-ins5.3. RJS (Ruby JavaScript)5.4. Active Record5.4.1. Automated Mapping5.4.2. Associations5.4.3. Association Join Models (Figure B-3)5.4.4. Validations5.4.5. Calculations5.4.6. Finders5.4.6.1. Dynamic attribute-based finders5.4.6.2. Scope5.4.7. Acts5.4.8. Callbacks5.4.9. Observers5.4.10. Migration5.5. Controllers5.5.1. Controller Methods5.5.2. Render5.5.3. Action5.5.4. Partials5.5.5. Templates5.5.6. Files5.5.7. Text5.5.8. Inline Template5.5.9. RJS5.5.10. Change content_type5.5.11. Redirects5.5.12. Nothing5.5.13. URL Routing5.5.14. Filter5.5.15. Session/Flash5.5.15.1. Session management5.5.16. Cookies5.5.16.1. Setting5.5.16.2. Reading5.5.16.3. Deleting5.6. Views5.6.1. View Templates5.6.2. RHTML5.6.3. RXML5.6.4. RJS5.6.5. Helpers5.6.6. Links5.6.7. HTML Forms5.6.7.1. Form5.6.7.2. Text Fields5.6.7.3. Text Area5.6.7.4. Radio Button5.6.7.5. Checkbox5.6.7.6. Options5.6.7.7. Date and Time5.6.7.8. end_form Tag5.6.8. Layouts5.6.9. Partials5.7. Ajax5.7.1. Linking to Remote Action5.7.2. Callbacks5.7.3. Ajax Forms5.7.4. Autocompleting Text Field5.7.5. Observe Field5.7.6. Observe Form5.7.7. periodically_call_remote5.8. Configuring Your Application5.8.1. Session Configuration5.8.2. Caching Configuration
Index
About the Authors
Colophon
Copyright

Content preview from Ruby on Rails: Up and Running

Appendix A. Installing Rails

Ruby on Rails makes developing web applications easier and more productive than ever before. Not surprisingly, getting a Ruby on Rails development environment installed is pretty easy as well.

This appendix will show you how to get a Rails development environment installed. But be forewarned: this is a very short appendix because getting started is pretty darn easy.

Windows

We present two options for a Windows installation of Ruby on Rails: Instant Rails and RadRails alone and Instant Rails plus the Rad Rails IDE.

Instant Rails

The easiest way to get started on Windows is to use Instant Rails. Instant Rails (Figure A-1) is a one-stop Rails runtime solution containing Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL, all preconfigured and ready to run. There is no installer, you simply unzip it into the directory of your choice and run it. It does not modify your system environment.

Figure A-1. Instant Rails

For more details about Instant Rails, go to the Instant Rails home page at http://instantrails.rubyforge.org:

Download and unzip the latest version of the Instant Rails ZIP file from: http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=904.
Make sure that the installation path (to the directory into which you unzip the archive) does not contain any space characters, and then start InstantRails.exe.
Instant Rails will detect that it is being started from a new directory and ask whether you ...

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Ruby on Rails: Up and Running

by Bruce Tate, Curt Hibbs

Appendix A. Installing Rails