DBCraigslist

Summary

This is a simple version of Craigslist. This is also my first web application that uses multiple models.

The web app useds a Sinatra framework.

Learning Competencies

• Build a wireframe to model application views
• Use Active Record Associations
• Implement all four parts of CRUD: create, read, update, and delete.
• Use the MVC pattern in web applications with proper allocation of code and responsibilities to each layer

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Summary

We're going to build a simple version of Craigslist. This will be your first web application that uses multiple models.

Keep in mind that this is not substantially different than a command-line version. Instead of reading in command-line arguments, we read in URL parameters. Instead of printing to the console, we print HTML and CSS.

We'll only have two models in a one-to-many relationship; no different than your command-line TODO app.

The challenge repo includes a Sinatra skeleton as usual.

Releases

Release 0: Wireframe With Your Pair

Never heard of a web wireframe? Check out what Wikipedia has to say. TL;DR -- figure out what pages your app needs, then sketch-out the basic layout of each and the connections between them.

The application will have two core models: Article and Category. An Article belongs to a Category and a Category has many Articles.

A Category is something like "Apartment Rentals" or "Auto Parts."

Sit down and work out with your pair what pages you're going to be building. At a minimum, you'll need:

1. A page that lists all the categories
2. A page that lists all the articles in a given category
3. A page that lets someone create a new article in a given category
4. A page that lets someone who has created a page return to edit/update the page

If you're never used Craigslist, it doesn't have any kind of user authentication. Instead, when someone creates an article they're given a special "secret" URL that grants them powers to edit that article that looks like

http://craigslist.com/articles/123/edit?key=kjansd812

The key is randomly generated. The person is given their "edit URL" after they successfully create a article. Anyone with this URL can edit the article

Think about this like a real web application you might want someone to use. What fields should an Article have?

A price, probably. What should the column type of a money-related column be?

An email, so the author of the article could be contacted. Title, description, etc.

Spend time enumerating the pages, deciding what should be displayed on each one.

Release 1: Implement Controller Structure

Our controller structure will be more complicated. We'll want URLs that look like /categories/123 and /articles/456. We'll be using both get and post methods.

To create a new Article, for example, we'd want to submit an HTML form using the POST http method to the /articles URL, like so:

<form action="/articles" method="post">
  <!-- other form elements here -->
</form>

and to update an existing record (say with id 1234) we'd want to post to /articles/1234.

Controllers should either redirect to another URL or render a page. Typically, a page loaded via HTTP POST will redirect to an appropriate URL if a request succeeds and render an error page, otherwise.

Organization

Keeping your code organized is an important part of any software project. Most important is following a convention, this way a new member of your team won't spend days trying to get their bearings.

Developers might disagree on which convention to follow, but they'll all agree any convention is better than none.

In this app you'll have both Article and Category models. The ActiveRecord convention is for those to be described in different files:

app
| - models
  | - article.rb
  | - category.rb

Why not do the same for your controllers? You could have one controller per model! Each controller would handle all the requests (CRUD) for each that model. E.g.:

app
| - controllers
  | - article.rb
  | - category.rb
  | - index.rb

You might keep index.rb around for requests that aren't for a Category or Article. Your / landing page would be a good fit for index.rb

The same organizational technique can be applied to your erb views. Instead of filling up your app/views directory with a half dozen erb templates:

app
| - views
  | - category_index.erb
  | - category_show.erb
  | - edit_article.erb
  | - new_article.erb
  | - article_show.erb
  | - articles_index.erb

Why not create an articles and a categories sub-directory?

app
| - views
  | - articles
    | - edit.erb
    | - new.erb
    | - show.erb
    | - index.erb
  | - categories
    | - index.erb
    | - show.erb

Now with the sub-directories articles and categories our erb template names follow a convention. Neat! One tip, you'll need to use some (ahem) interesting syntax to render a template inside a sub-directory. Here's an example:

get "/articles" do
  @articles = Article.all

  erb :"articles/index"
end

Ship it!

Make sure the core features work. We should be able to download your app, run it, and do the following:

1. Choose a category to browse
2. View all articles in a particular category
3. View a particular article
4. Create my own article
5. Edit my articles by using the "secret key" that I get after creating my articles

When we say "download your app" we mean "check it out from source, run the migrations, and start up the server." Imagine you're showing this great idea off to your boss or a colleage who will help you if they can get it up and running. How might you make sure that they are effective with only a basic knowledge of the DBCstarter kit? A good developer makes it easy to get up and running because not wasting others' time is a virtue.

Release 3: Add One Final Feature

One last feature to add: the "this is awesome" feature. What does awesome mean? It can mean anything. The code is awesome, there are new awesome features, the design is awesome.

This isn't a race; there's no finish line, only a deadline (tomorrow, duh!). Take the time to make this application something you're proud of. It doesn't have to be flashy — it could be a difficult technical hurdle you overcame.

Bring 100% of your best self to this feature. Make something meaningful; make something great.

Resources

• Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD)
• Wikipedia: Wireframe