EvilScaffold

This gem provides the acts_as_evil method for Rails 4.0 controllers. It may work with later railses, patches welcome if not.

acts_as_evil generates action methods in your controller, and makes a bunch of assumptions about how you want your actions to behave.

It is evil, because according to some people, you should be able to see all the code in your application.

Differences between traditional Rails scaffolds, and acts_as_evil :

acts_as_evil

• Generates code at runtime, so you never see the generated code (unless you debug it)
• Makes a bunch of assumptions about how your actions should behave
• Has a ton of undocumented configuration options
• Requires either a lot of trust, or an inspection of the generated code

Rails scaffolds

• Generate controller class files that you then manipulate at will and check into your code repository
• Generate very simple methods that are easy to understand and use
• Are better documented

People will readily agree that traditional Rails scaffolds are better in almost all cases. Here are two strong justifications for using evil_scaffold :

• Either you are the author of the gem and understand its features intimately, remaining blissfully unaware of its defects, or
• You have an overwhelming, chronic obsession with minimizing your LOC count and will sacrifice all readability to this end.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'evil_scaffold'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install evil_scaffold

Usage

Read the code and figure it out. Here are some examples:

Generate a #new action and a #create action

acts_as_evil Post, :new, :create

Both actions will instantiate a variable called @post. new will instantiate a new Post and render the new template. create will instantiate a new Post, call save on it, and then redirect_to params[:return_to]

Here is a more complete example:

acts_as_evil Contact, :index, :index_json, :new, :create, :show, :edit, :update, :delete, :destroy, :finder

The variable this time is called @contact. index_json is called from the index action when the requested content-type is json. finder is not an action but rather a one-line before_filter (or before_action)

def find_contact
  @contact = Contact.find params[:id]
end

find_contact is installed as a before_filter for all "member" actions (show, edit, delete)

You can install your finder as a before_filter for other actions in the configuration block:

acts_as_evil Comment, :edit, :update, :delete, :destroy, :finder, find_for: %i{ approve }

This does not create the approve action, but includes it in the line

before_filter :find_comment, only: %i{ edit update delete approve }

evil_scaffold doesn't make any assumptions about the order of items in your index action ; it will assign items using the backing store's native ordering. You can control this by telling acts_as_evil to call a particular scope definition on your model:

acts_as_evil Invoice, :index, order: :order_by_date_desc

This will insert somewhere inside your index action

@invoices = @invoices.order_by_date_desc

Finally, if you have a really awkward long model class name, you can avoid embarassment using model_name:

class Cms::Posts::CommentsController
  acts_as_evil Cms::Post::Comment, :index, :new, :create, :show, :delete, :destroy, :finder, as: :comment
end

This will create a variable called @comment instead of @cms_post_comment, thus avoiding the risk of inviting snickering from your colleagues.

If you want to see the generated code, use the #evil class attribute:

> puts Cms::Posts::CommentsController.evil.code

This will spit out all the code that EvilScaffold has generated for you.

Contributing

1. Fork it ( https://github.com/[my-github-username]/evil_scaffold/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request