elvniv / w6d3-ahmed-elvin

First Routes & Controllers

In this project you'll start playing with Rails routing.

Learning Goals

• Be able to create routes in config/routes.rb
• Be able to read and understand Rails server error messages
• Know the three places that params come from
• Be able to nest query parameters
• Be able to write controller actions that read from and write to the database
• Know how and when to render errors

Rails Diagram

As you work through the project, revisit this diagram at each phase and discuss with your pair how the code you've written so far fits into the relationships displayed here.

• 

Phase 0: Setup

To start, generate a new, blank Rails project: rails new <project_name> <flags>. Don't forget to add flags to:

1. Set PostgreSQL as the database,
2. Skip setting up the project as a Git repo,
3. Skip setting up the Rails testing framework, and
4. Install a minimal build.

Grab the .gitignore and .gitattributes files from the starter repo at the Download Project button below and copy them into the root directory of your project.

If you prefer to use byebug instead of debug as your debugger, then replace debug with byebug in your Gemfile. Add any other gems you want to install (e.g., annotate, pry-rails, better_errors, and binding_of_caller). If you make any changes to your Gemfile, run bundle install to incorporate them into your project.

Next, set up your Postgres database by running rails db:create.

By default, Rails protects against a type of attack known as Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) by checking that non-GET requests include a valid authenticity token. Don't worry about that for now. For this particular assignment, go to config/application.rb. Right after the config.load_defaults X.X line, add:

config.action_controller.default_protect_from_forgery = false

Adding this line ensures that you won't need to include an authenticity token in your POST request params; you'll learn what that means later. (Once you know how to add authenticity tokens to your requests, you won't need to add this line to your projects.)

Phase I: First routes

You're now ready to generate your first routes! Go to config/routes.rb and add the following line inside the Rails.application.routes.draw block:

resources :users

Remember that this one line actually generates eight routes for you. Run rails routes to see what those routes are.

Woohoo! You've set up your first eight API endpoints. Each route you have is an API endpoint, which encapsulates a single action your app can take.

Look again at the left-most column, which displays the prefix for a route. Rails uses these prefixes to generate the helper methods <prefix>_path and <prefix>_url that you can use in your code to generate a route's path and url, respectively. In addition to making your code more readable, these methods also make it easier to maintain your code: if a route changes, the helper methods will automatically generate the new path/url everywhere they appear. You will learn more about these helper methods and their uses later.

You may notice that some of the routes seem to be missing prefixes. This is because prefixes are based on a route's path, not its verb. All routes with the same path will share the same prefix, meaning that a prefix does not need to be listed more than once for any given path. So, e.g., the index route--a GET request to users/--and the create route--a POST request to users/--will both have the prefix users, even though the prefix only appears next to the index route.

The ease with which Rails converts that one resources line into eight routes might seem like magic, but you can do it too. Try the following:

• Comment out the resources :users line.
• Write out the eight routes using the route 'matching' syntax. For example: get 'users/:id', to: 'users#show', as: 'user'.

Run rails routes again and check that the routes you've written match the routes generated by the resources helper exactly. N.B.: you'll probably see some differences in the prefixes listed for your routes. Again, try to match the resources output exactly. You can add a prefix to a route by using the as option. For example: get 'users/new', to: 'users#new', as: 'new_user'. Remember, too, that you don't need to specify a prefix more than once for any given path.

What do these routes actually do? Starting your Rails server creates an instance of a router. This router holds instances of the routes that are defined in your routes.rb file. When a request comes in, the router tries to match a route based on the HTTP method and the URL path. (It does this with a regular expression, if you know what that is already.) The first matched route then instantiates an instance of the specified controller and calls the specified action on it.

You now have the initial routes and endpoints necessary to manage a User resource. Notice, though, that your routes point to a UsersController, which you don't actually have yet. Nor do you have a User model. You'll add the model later. (Soon!)

Next up: the controller!