Rails Decal Spring 2018 Lab 1

Routing & Forms

Setup

Dont forget to run bundle install before doing anything!

Boot up rails server and load localhost:3000 in your web browser

Part 1 - Routes and Controller Actions

Notice that the link to "New Post" does not work! (This is a routing error)

Create a route to GET to the path /posts/new

• Run rails routes in your terminal to see information on the route you just created.
• Notice how if you leave out the to: 'controller#method' definition, rails can infer the controller method you want the route to map to. This only works in some cases and it is good practice to be explicit so use with caution.

Now define a new action in the Posts controller and have it do nothing at all. The purpose of this action will be to render the html file with the form in it. (Recall that the controller implicitly finds the html file to render if not told otherwise)

• The link should now load the form to create your own post.

This form will need another route to POST to. Add a new route to /posts and map it to the create action in the Posts controller.

• Take a look at the create method and check out the app/controllers/concerns/post.rb file to see how the Post object is created.
• Run rails routes again to see the route you just created.

Part 2 - Controller to View

Find out what view this create action renders. Hint: look in the app/views folder

Replace the existing html code to correctly render the values of the title and content instance variables of the Post object onto the screen (Remember what the @ symbol does and how to render ruby onto the page).

If you have done this correctly, you should be able to start at the homepage, click the new post link, submit the form, and see the output of your form.

After you create your post, try to refresh the page. You will notice that it just errors out. The information is gone! You have made a useless website! Congrats!

We will be learning about how to save information into the database in the next lecture.