Workshop 5: Admiring the secenery Forms, AJAX screen layout and and mobile interfraces: Part A Viewing the action:

1. Create the Rails application framework in the projects folder: C:\InstantRails\...\projects\>rails animals

I create the application framework into the folder named Sites in my Mac:


2. Running the application on localhost:3000 using the WeBrick ruby server (or Mongrel as alternative) and access via Web browser at http://localhost:3000/

I go into the folder that created in the above, then run the command "ruby script/server" to start the Web server.


The Web browser at http://locathost:3000/


3. Create the controller to make the application do an action. This is under the controller-action/model-view structure.

Stop the WEBrick server each time you edit Ruby classes and then re-start or refresh the views you are testing. Use the Ruby command below:

>ruby script/generate controller Mammal

Result in my computer:


The mammal_controller.rb contains just a bare class description:
class MammalController < ApplicationController
end

Result in my computer:


and the ApplicationController class inherits from ActionController::Base class in the ActionController module under Rails.

Result in my computer:



4. Test the controller by starting the WEBrick server and navaigatibng the browser to http://localhost:3000/mammal Note how the controller name is appended to the end of the URL and that no action resulted because there are no controller methods.

Result in my computer:


5. Create an action by editing and saving the mammal_controller.rb class in projects\animals\app\controllers using your text editor to add the method below:

class MammalController < ApplicationController
def breathe
end
end

The mammal_controller.rb in my computer:


6. Start the WEBrick server and browse at http://localhost:3000/mammals/breathe where you will get a “missing template” message since it is missing a view for the breathe method. Rails is trying to connect the breathe method action of the mammal controller to a view, by using the action’s name – breathe. This view template is created as breathe.rhtml and stored in the \projects\animals\views\mammal directory.

Result in my computer:


7. Create and save a view in that directory by using a text editor to create a view called breathe.rhtml

Result in my computer:


8. Try Ruby code and HTML in the action view by using the <%....%> wrapper around the inserted Ruby code. Here are some snippets to try from workshop 4:

I modify the breathe.rhtml:


Result in my computer: