Question

Hey all,(im a beginner in rails)

i’ve created a controller that look like that:

class HomeController < ApplicationController

  def homepage
  end

  def showmsg
  @postword = params[:p]
  end

end

the showmsg view looks like that:

<%= @postword %>

and my homepage view looks like that:

  <%= form_tag( {:controller => 'home', :action => 'showmsg'}, :method => "post") do %>
  <%= text_field_tag(:p,@postword) %>
  <%= submit_tag("post") %>
  <% end %>

now i have a form that i can write something in it and it will show on the showmsg view.
i created a model with the param :posts with a :description “text” field too.
MY QUESTION is how do i implement the model in the code so any thing i write will be in a list with the things i wrote before, because now (obviously) anything if i write something its deleting the one i wrote before.

thank you all!

Answer 1

I would argue that you’re approach is not very rail’s like… so if you’re learning rails… you’re learning it wrong.

Make a Model. Call it “Message”:

rails generate model Message content:string

remember to migrate (hopefully you have your databases setup properly):

rake db:migrate

Then in your controller, when you post, you can create message like this:

def create #instead of showmsg... 'create' is the standard name for this
  Message.create(params[:message])
  @messages = Message.all
end

This will create the message in the database, and then it will get all the messages out of the database and put them into @messages.

You need to edit your form so that it uses form_for. You need to pass it @message, which is an instance of Message.new that your first controller action created. You should call this new

In your create.erb.html file, you show all the messages like this:

<ul>
  <% @messages.each do |message| %>
    <li><%= message.content %></li>
  <% end %>
</ul>

I actually wouldn’t recommend showing all the messages in the create action – it should really happen in the index action and you should redirect… but we need to keep this simple. Just google this or watch some of Ryan’s screencasts and you’ll get it.

And you’re done. This is the “Rails Way” to do things. It’s best to learn it the way they want you to learn it.

I would also commend that you format your code properly by indenting, and start naming your methods to be real english. For example, showmsg is bad and show_message is a lot better.

If all of this is totally confusing, then just create a new project, and then type:

rails generate scaffold message content:string

It will basically build the application you want and a lot more. You can just read the code and see how they did it.

Hope it helps.