Models, Validation and Resources

We are going to create a Cat model to held information about a single cat. Use the model generator to create a simple model:

rails g model cat name:string description:text

You will see we have made a nice cat class in the models directory, and also a migration in the db/migrations directory.

Run the migration using:

rake db:migrate

This has updated your database schema.

Test using the console

Drop into the rails console by typing:

rails c

Now you can play with your Cat.

Try out the following commands in the console:

c = Cat.create name: "Markey"
Cat.all
c.name = "Dave"
c.save
Cat.first
Cat.first.name
Cat.find(1)

What do they all do? You can do all this in your controller.

Now create 10 more cats, and try out the following.

Cat.order(:name)
Cat.order(:name).limit(5)
Cat.where(name: "Dave")
Cat.where("created_at > ?", Time.now - 1.minute)
Cat.count

Now create a controller and route. The route should point to a method called show in the controller. It should be possible to visit:

In the controller retrieve the cat based on the id in the params hash.

Now make a view to display your cat. Output all the fields nicely.

Create a route of the form:

This should point to the index method in the cat_controller. This method should retrieve all of the cats with Cat.all.

Make a view which loops over the cats, displaying them all. To loop over a collection, you can do something like this:

<% @cats.each do |cat| %>
  <%= cat.name %>
<% end %>