Basic CRUD Actions

Overview

Basic CRUD Actions adds your standard Create, Read, Update, and Destroy functions with a single line of code in your controller. Just add acts_as_crud at the top of your controller definition, and you will have standard instance variables, doing the standard things you expect of them for each action.

Compatibility

Rails 3.2.x+
Ruby 1.9.3+

What The Actions Do

Instance variables (except for index) provided are named after the controller's model in snake case form. E.g MyModel creates an instance variable named @my_model.

Create

it expects you to define 'create_params' in your model. This should be a standard strong-params private function in Rails 4.0+, or simply a function that returns the subset of the params hash you need, e.g.:

def create_params params[:my_model_name] end
it creates a new instance of the model, then calls .save on it.
it provides an instance variable of your new model
it sets a success or error hash, based on whether .save succeeds.

Destroy

it expects params[:id] to have the id of the model
it destroys the model
it redirects to the index page for the model

Edit

it expects params[:id] to have the id of the model
it provides the requested instance of the model as an instance variable

Index

it provides the entire collection for your model; the instance variable is pluralized

New

it provides a new, blank instance of the model

Update

it expects params[:id] to have the id of the model
it expects you to define 'update_params' in your model. This works just like create_params above, and if your allowed parameters for Update are the same as create, you can simply write

def update_params create_params end¹
it calls .update_attributes on the model
it provides an instance variable of your updated model
it sets a success or error hash, based on whether .update succeeds.
it redirects to the edit page for the updated model instance, regardless of success or failure.

Options

You can customize Basic CRUD Actions' behavior using the following hash keys, passed as an argument to acts_as_crud

model: sets a custom model for flashes, instance variables, etc. Pass in the class itself, not an instant or string of the name
'model-name:' sets a custom name
only: takes an array of symbols for which CRUD actions you want added to this controller options are :create, :update, :new, :index, :edit, :destroy. Ex: acts_as_crud only: [:create, :update]
except: takes an array of symbols for which CRUD actions you do not want to add to this controller. All other actions will be added. Options are :create, :update, :new, :index, :edit, :destroy. Ex: acts_as_crud except: [:destroy, :update]

Customization

Basic CRUD Actions is modular, meaning you can pick and choose the components to use versus override. You can override any of the controller actions underneath the acts_as_crud declaration, and invoke the standard acts_as_crud behavior by invoking super. Other overridable functions include

`find_model`

Normally calls model_source with params[:id}

`instance_variable_name`

This usually returns "@#{class_name.underscore}", but by overriding it you can set the name of your instance variables to whatever you want.

`model_source`

Normally returns the method #find for the model. This should return a callable method, but other than that feel free to do whatever ordering, filtering, etc. you want.

`models_source`

Normally returns the method #all for the model. This should return a callable method, but other than that feel free to do whatever ordering, filtering, etc. you want.

`new_model_source`

Normally returns the method #new for the model.

Filtering

acts_as_crud also adds a .filter method to ActiveRecord::Relation: this takes either a block or a hash of arguments. If you supply a hash, it will filter by where(key => val) for each key in the hash. You can filter using whatever methods you want if you supply a block.

Shared Examples

There are shared examples for each of the basic_crud actions, plus for flashes if you just want to test those are being properly set. The shared examples are automatically added and ready to go in the gem, here's the list:

basic_crud success flashes
basic_crud failure flashes
basic_crud create
basic_crud destroy
basic_crud edit
basic_crud index
basic_crud new
basic_crud update
find_model

In order to use the examples you need to create a subject block containing a standard example of the controller call, e.g, subject { get :index } and for the .update action only, a let(:model) statement with its block a the sample model you want to work with.

Or alias create_params, your call. ↩

STCTbone/basic_crud_actions