Rails Generating & Scaffolding

Rails' use of strict naming conventions means a lot of core code SHOULD be in the same format whoever writes it? It could be written by a friend, colleague or a computer... it shouldn't matter because the same Rails rules apply to everyone.

This means that Rails can actually do some tasks for you! It can actually build things and write code on your behalf...

Coming from another language like PHP, this can seem like magic.

Quick reference:

rails g scaffold Post name:string title:string content:text
rails g controller Comments
rails g model Comment commenter:string body:text article:references

##Rails generator The rails generate command uses templates designed-by-convention to create a whole lot of useful things. Running rails generate by itself gives a list of available generators:

rails generate

or for super-hackers:

rails g

There are a lot of generators:

Rails:

assets
controller
generator
helper
integration_test
mailer
migration
model
observer
performance_test
resource
scaffold
scaffold_controller
session_migration
task

Coffee:

coffee:assets

Jquery:

jquery:install

Js:

js:assets

##Scaffolding in Rails

Rails' scaffolding tool is a quick way to generate some of the major pieces of code in an application. This saves a lot of time when you want to get up-and-running quickly! (It is super cool!)

Depending on what you want to create, scaffolding can auto-generate all or a combination of:

migrations
models
views
controllers
unit_tests 
helpers
stylesheets
javascript

There might be a few more files that it makes... I'm not sure if that's a complete list!

##Scaffolding a whole resource

You are scaffolding things associated with an object (singular)

If you want to scaffold an application, you need to scaffold each resource within that application. If you wanted to make a blogging application for example - you could scaffold the whole Post resource:

rails g scaffold Post

The resource name Post needs to be:

UpperCamelCase
SINGULAR

This name is going to be the name of the model, e.g. Post. It is also going to be the name of the controller class (but pluralized), e.g. PostsController AND the name of the table (but pluralized) e.g. posts

After the class name, you can add table columns and their datatypes.

rails g scaffold Post name:string title:string content:text

These table columns names should be:

lower_snake_case
SINGULAR

This is because each Post item is meant to have one value stored in each column.

If you ran this scaffold, it would create these all files:

db/migrate/20100207214725_create_posts.rb
app/models/post.rb
test/unit/post_test.rb
test/fixtures/posts.yml
config/routes.rb
app/controllers/posts_controller.rb
app/views/posts/index.html.erb
app/views/posts/edit.html.erb
app/views/posts/show.html.erb
app/views/posts/new.html.erb
app/views/posts/_form.html.erb
test/functional/posts_controller_test.rb
app/helpers/posts_helper.rb
test/unit/helpers/posts_helper_test.rb
app/assets/javascripts/posts.js.coffee
app/assets/stylesheets/posts.css.scss
app/assets/stylesheets/scaffolds.css.scss

Within the PostController, all of the RESTful methods will be created and they will all have their corresponding view files.

After creating the migration file, in order to make the change to the database remember to run:

rake db:migrate

##Generating just a controller

It controls lots of objects (so it is plural)

Sometimes, you want to generate just a controller.

rails g controller Comments

The controller name needs to be:

UpperCamelCase
PLURALIZED

This is because a controller deals with lots of examples of an object, so it should be plural.

This will make these files:

app/controllers/comments_controller.rb
app/views/comments/
test/controllers/comments_controller_test.rb
app/helpers/comments_helper.rb
test/helpers/comments_helper_test.rb
app/assets/javascripts/comment.js.coffee
app/assets/stylesheets/comment.css.scss

This will NOT create a migration file or a model file.

##Generating just a model

You are generating the outline of an object (singular)

If you just want to create a model, you can do:

rails g model Comment

UpperCamelCase
SINGULAR

You can also add the column names to this if you want:

rails g model Comment commenter:string body:text article:references

These table column names should be:

lower_snake_case
SINGULAR

Generating a model will create these files:

db/migrate/20140120201010_create_comments.rb
app/models/comment.rb
test/models/comment_test.rb
test/fixtures/comments.yml