Question

As I am reading the rails 3 way I wanted to make a small app that will help me learn along with the book. I am thinking of making a simple timesheet application in rails, however, I can’t figure out where to start as far as calendar functionality goes. This is what I have so far.

User has_many Timesheets

Timesheet belongs_to user

Timesheet will have date:datetime, hours:datetime and comments:string attributes.

how can I map a whole month to the timesheet?

For example.

if the user wants to fill timesheet for 06/01/2011 - 06/07/2011 will he have seven rows in the Timesheet table?

I would like someone to explain a brief architecture of ActiveRecord for this.

Answer 1

I would at least start out with something like this:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :timesheets
end

class Timesheet < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
  has_many :work_days
end

class WorkDay < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :timesheet
end

Timesheet will have a user_id:integer attribute.

WorkDay will have day:date, hours:integer, comment:text, and timesheet_id:integer attributes.

Then you can create timesheets with any collection of individual workdays you wish.

The form for a WorkDay could look something like this:

<%= form_for @work_day do |f| %>
  <%= f.label(:timesheet, 'Timesheet') %>:
  <%= f.collection_select(:timesheet_id, Timesheet.all, :id, :name) %><br />
  <%= f.label :day, 'Date' %>:
  <%= f.date_select :day %><br />
  <%= f.label :hours, 'Hours worked' %>:
  <%= f.text_field :hours %><br />
  <%= f.label :comment, 'Comments' %>:
  <%= f.text_area :comment %><br />
<% end %>

This will allow you to create a new WorkDay with all of its attributes and attach it to any existing Timesheet.

Note: This will look for a name method in Timesheet, which you could implement like this, for example:

def name
  "Timesheet ##{self.id}"
end