Project 3: Demo Rails App

In this project you will learn how to setup a basic Ruby on Rails app. The app will be a small twitter-like app with the list of users who can create new posts and comment on the existing posts. One user will have many posts, and one post can have many comments. Each comment belongs to the user and the post.

Learning Outcomes

• Student was able to create a functional RoR app

• Optional (Student was able to use React for the front end in combination with RoR backend)

• Student used MVC pattern to create three interconnected resources

• Student has implemented CRUD operations

• Student demonstrated the app and its functionality in a 3min video

Project Submission

• Team message

• Submission

List of supported endpoints

• Navigating to /login will provide you with a simple form where you can enter your username. No password is required. When you submit the login form a new user should be created if no user matches the username or an exiting user should be logged in if the username exists. Either way, you should be re-directed to the root of the application /. This should initialized a user session and store the identity of the user in the session.

• Navigating to /logout should remove the user information from the session

• Navigating to any page other than /login without a user session should result in a re-direct to /login

• Navigating to the root of the application / when you are logged in will show a list of all the posts from all users in chrolological order with the most recently created post at the top. Each post should include:
  • The content of the post
  • The username of the user who created the post
  • The number of comments on a post (linkable to /posts/:id described below)
  • The time the post was last updated
  • (Not Required) - Consider adding a search filter form input that allows you to filter the list of posts to just those for the specified username
• Navigating to the /posts/:id will show the page with the information about the post with the given id including
  • The content of the post
  • The author of the post
  • The list of comments for the post

  • A form to add a new comment to a post. Submitting this form should show keep the browser on the same page but show the newly posted comment

  • Returns 404 if the id was not found.

• From the browser, you can create a post

• From the browser, you can update a post but only if you are the author

• From the browser, you can delete a post but only if you are the author

• From the browser, you can comment on any post

• There should be a validation error for posts or comments that are attempting to influence the election. Have fun with this. A simple example might be a validation error for posts that include the words “Trump” or “Harris”

React Considerations

Using React is optional.

If you plan to do a React front end for your application, you may want to create an API implementation for your controller actions. See Rails API-only application guide. The main difference would be that your RoR controller actions would likely take JSON as input and return JSON as output. All or at least some of applications UI would be implemented in javascript using React rather than using Rails views.

Resources

Ruby on Rails Guides

The Ruby On Rails Tutorial
Complete 3rd edition available online

MVC

CRUD