- Implement all four CRUD actions in a Sinatra application
- Understand how each CRUD action corresponds to a controller action and POST request
We've had a lot of practice with the ActiveRecord CRUD actions, so now it's time to tie them to controller actions in a Sinatra application. In this lab, you'll be building a basic blog post app, using every CRUD action.
Important: In Sinatra, the order in which you define your routes in a controller matters. Routes are matched in the order they are defined. So, if we were define the get '/posts/:id' route before the get 'posts/new' route, Sinatra would feed all requests for posts/new to the posts/:id route and we should see an error telling us that your app is unable to find a Post instance with an id of "new". The takeaway is that you should define your /new route before your /posts/:id route.
First, you'll need to create the posts table. A blog post should have a name and content.
Next, you'll need to set up the corresponding Post model. Make sure the class inherits from ActiveRecord::Base.
Now that we have the database and model set up, it's time to set up the ability to create a blog post.
First, create a route in your controller, get 'posts/new', that renders the new.erb view.
We need to create an erb file in the views directory, new.erb, with a form that POSTs to a controller action, /posts. The controller action should use the Create CRUD action to create the blog post and save it to the database. Then, renders, with erb, the index view page.
The Read CRUD action corresponds to two different controller actions: show and index. The show action should render the erb view show.erb, which shows an individual post. The index action should render the erb view index.erb, which shows a list of all the posts.
Create the get '/posts' controller action. This action should use Active Record to grab all of the posts and store them in an instance variable, @posts. Then, it should render the index.erb view. That view should use erb to iterate over @posts and render them on the page.
Create the get '/posts/:id' controller action. This action should use Active Record to grab the post with the id that is in the params and set it equal to @post. Then, it should render the show.erb view page. That view should use erb to render the @post's title and content.
The Update CRUD action corresponds to the edit controller action and view.
Create a controller action, get 'posts/:id/edit, that renders the view, edit.erb. This view should contain a form to update a specific blog post and POSTs to a controller action, post '/posts/:id.
The Delete CRUD action corresponds to the delete controller action, post '/posts/:id/delete' However, we won't make a specific "delete" view page, as that isn't really conventional. Instead, we'll just add a "delete button" to the show page. This "button" will actually be a form, disguised as a button (intriguing, I know). The form will send a POST request to the delete controller action, where we will identify the post to delete and delete it. Then, the action should redirect to the get '/posts' route.
In order to make a form that looks like a button, all we need to do it make a form that has no input fields, only a "submit" button with a value of "delete". So, give your form a method of "post" and an action of "/posts/:id/delete', and make sure there are no input fields, only the aforementioned button. Make sure to dynamically set the :id of the form action!