File: README — Documentation for rails (1.2.5)

Welcome to Rails

Rails is a web-application and persistence 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-built 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 an 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 files/vendor/rails/activerecord/README.html.

The controller and view are 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 files/vendor/rails/actionpack/README.html.

Getting started

At the command prompt, start a new rails application using the rails command and your application name. Ex: rails myapp (If you’ve downloaded rails in a complete tgz or zip, this step is already done)
Change directory into myapp and start the web server: script/server (run with –help for options)
Go to localhost:3000/ and get “Welcome aboard: You’re riding the Rails!”
Follow the guidelines to start developing your application

Web Servers

By default, Rails will try to use Mongrel and lighttpd if they are installed, otherwise Rails will use the WEBrick, the webserver that ships with Ruby. When you run script/server, Rails will check if Mongrel exists, then lighttpd and finally fall back to WEBrick. This ensures that you can always get up and running quickly.

Mongrel is a Ruby-based webserver with a C-component (which requires compilation) that is suitable for development and deployment of Rails applications. If you have Ruby Gems installed, getting up and running with mongrel is as easy as: gem install mongrel. More info at: mongrel.rubyforge.org

If Mongrel is not installed, Rails will look for lighttpd. It’s considerably faster than Mongrel and WEBrick and also suited for production use, but requires additional installation and currently only works well on OS X/Unix (Windows users are encouraged to start with Mongrel). We recommend version 1.4.11 and higher. You can download it from www.lighttpd.net.

And finally, if neither Mongrel or lighttpd are installed, Rails will use the built-in Ruby web server, WEBrick. WEBrick is a small Ruby web server suitable for development, but not for production.

But of course its also possible to run Rails on any platform that supports FCGI. Apache, LiteSpeed, IIS are just a few. For more information on FCGI, please visit: wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/FastCGI

Debugging Rails

Sometimes your application goes wrong. Fortunately there are a lot of tools that will help you debug it and get it back on the rails.

First area to check is the application log files. Have “tail -f” commands running on the server.log and development.log. 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.

You can also log your own messages directly into the log file from your code using the Ruby logger class from inside your controllers. Example:

class WeblogController < ActionController::Base
  def destroy
    @weblog = Weblog.find(params[:id])
    @weblog.destroy
    logger.info("#{Time.now} Destroyed Weblog ID ##{@weblog.id}!")
  end
end

The result will be a message in your log file along the lines of:

Mon Oct 08 14:22:29 +1000 2007 Destroyed Weblog ID #1

More information on how to use the logger is at www.ruby-doc.org/core/

Also, Ruby documentation can be found at www.ruby-lang.org/ including:

The Learning Ruby (Pickaxe) Book: www.ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/
Learn to Program: pine.fm/LearnToProgram/ (a beginners guide)

These two online (and free) books will bring you up to speed on the Ruby language and also on programming in general.

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
=> "[#<Post:0x14a6be8 @attributes={\"title\"=>nil, \"body\"=>nil, \"id\"=>\"1\"}>,
     #<Post:0x14a6620 @attributes={\"title\"=>\"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
=> #<Post:0x13630c4 @attributes={"title"=>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. Starting the script without arguments will launch it in the development environment. Passing an argument will specify a different environment, like script/console production.

To reload your controllers and models after launching the console run reload!

Description of contents

app

Holds all the code that's specific to this particular application.

app/controllers

Holds controllers that should be named like weblogs_controller.rb for
automated URL mapping. All controllers should descend from ApplicationController
which itself descends from ActionController::Base.

app/models

Holds models that should be named like post.rb.
Most models will descend from ActiveRecord::Base.

app/views

Holds the template files for the view that should be named like
weblogs/index.rhtml for the WeblogsController#index action. All views use eRuby
syntax.

app/views/layouts

Holds the template files for layouts to be used with views. This models the common
header/footer method of wrapping views. In your views, define a layout using the
<tt>layout :default</tt> and create a file named default.rhtml. Inside default.rhtml,
call <% yield %> to render the view using this layout.

app/helpers

Holds view helpers that should be named like weblogs_helper.rb. These are generated
for you automatically when using script/generate for controllers. Helpers can be used to
wrap functionality for your views into methods.

config

Configuration files for the Rails environment, the routing map, the database, and other dependencies.

components

Self-contained mini-applications that can bundle together controllers, models, and views.

Contains the database schema in schema.rb.  db/migrate contains all
the sequence of Migrations for your schema.

doc

This directory is where your application documentation will be stored when generated
using <tt>rake doc:app</tt>

lib

Application specific libraries. Basically, any kind of custom code that doesn't
belong under controllers, models, or helpers. This directory is in the load path.

public

The directory available for the web server. Contains subdirectories for images, stylesheets,
and javascripts. Also contains the dispatchers and the default HTML files. This should be
set as the DOCUMENT_ROOT of your web server.

script

Helper scripts for automation and generation.

test

Unit and functional tests along with fixtures. When using the script/generate scripts, template
test files will be generated for you and placed in this directory.

vendor

External libraries that the application depends on. Also includes the plugins subdirectory.
This directory is in the load path.