Project 6 - Ruby on Rails Web Database

Introduction

In this project, you will practice with server-side scripting using a mixture of markup (HTML, XML) and scripting (eRuby) languages.

Updates

• When implementing project 6, don't relying on more properties of the @messages data structure than the public/release tests can handle.
• Assume that the only thing you can do with @messages is to iterate through individual messages with "for" or @messages.each { ... }.
• Assume for each message you can only find the name & comment using message.name and message.comment.
• You can use "&#" followed by 60 and 62 to generate the < and > characters in your xml output. A longer list of html character codes is here.
• Your eRuby code needs to produce html code, but the output is not to stdout. Instead it needs to be expanded to the actual html. I.e., instead of <% puts message.name %> the appropriate eRuby code is <%=h message.name %> which will basically replace message.name with the string for message.name.
• For sorting the default sort method for Strings is fine.

Getting Started

• Download the archive file p6.zip and extract its contents.

• For Windows:
  • Download Instant Rails 2.0 as InstantRails-2.0-win.zip. Extract its contents by double-clicking on the icon, preferably to C:\InstantRails-2.0-win\.

• For non-Windows:
  • You can still install Rails, but it will be more difficult
    • Install Rails 2.0 by typing "gem install rails --include-dependencies" (directions here).
    • You should be able to execute Rails directly to generate the appropriate scripts.
  • If not already installed, you will need to install a web server (e.g., Apache) and a database server (e.g., MySQL) in order to actually run the web database.
  • My recommendation is to just borrow a friend's Window's machine for a day or so and use InstantRails.
  • You can also directly edit & submit index.html.erb. You just won't be able to actually test it on a web database.

Along with files used to make direct submissions to the submit server (submit.jar, .submit , submit.rb), you will find the following project files:

• index.html.erb - Your eRuby file (you'll need to download & edit it, since your browser won't display it properly)

Project Description

Part 1: Set Up Instant Rails

1. Double click on C:\InstantRails-2.0-win\InstantRails.exe to bring up the Instant Rails console.

   

2. In the console, click on the "I" (to the left of the "Apache" button) to bring up a menu (or alternatively, right-click on the "I" icon on the bottom right of the screen). Select "Rails Applications" -> "Manage Rails Applications" to bring up the Rails Applications console.

   

3. In the Rails Applications console, click on "Create New Rails App..." button to bring up a command shell in the directory C:\...\rails_apps.
4. In the command shell, type "rails guests". This will set up a number of scripts in a "guests" subdirectory.
5. In the command shell, type "cd guests"
6. In the command shell, type "ruby script\generate scaffold Message name:string comment:text". This will generate the basic code for the web database. The database model name will be message, and it will have two columns (name & comment). A view & a controller called messages will also be generated.
7. In the command shell, type "rake db:migrate". This will create the table for Message in the SQL database. The InstantRails database uses sqlite3 (so you don't actually use MySQL).
8. In the Rails Applications console, click on "Refresh List" button. "guests" should now appear in the list of Rails Applications.
9. In the Rails Applications console, click on the checkbox next to "guests".
10. In the Rails Applications console, click on "Start with Mongrel". This will start a Ruby-based web server called Mongrel that listens to port 3000 on your computer (so you don't actually use Apache). If not using InstantRails, you can start Mongrel by typing "script\server" from the "guests" directory.
11. Now bring up your web browser and type in the URL http://localhost:3000/messages. If everything worked properly, this should bring you to the default web interface for the guest comment database:

    Listing messages Name Comment New message

12. Play around with adding guest messages (names & comments) to your database. Note how you can add/edit/delete messages from the database, and the web page is dynamically updated to reflect the content of the database.
13. The actual file (index.html.erb) used to generate the web page is in "C:\...\rail_apps\guests\app\views\messages\". It should be identical to the file you received with your project.

Part 2: Add Features

1. Display guest comments in alphabetical order (by guest name). The default order is the order comments were inserted in the database. You may use standard Ruby Hashes, Arrays, and library functions such as sort!.
2. Provide all guest comments in XML format at the bottom of the web page. Use the XML tags <guests>, <guest>, <name>, and <mesg>. The guest elements should be sorted by guest name. Any reasonable formatting (spaces, linebreaks) is fine. You may find using the HTML document character set useful for displaying characters that may otherwise be processed by your browser.

For simplicity, you may assume that every guest name is unique, and guests only leave a single comment.

Example

• Input: Use the web interface the add the following guest messages (in order):

  Name	Comment
  Hillary	Hillary for president
  Barack	Change we can believe in
  McCain	Courageous service

• Original Output: Should resemble the following:

  Listing messages Name Comment Hillary Hillary for president Show Edit Destroy Barack Change we can believe in Show Edit Destroy McCain Courageous service Show Edit Destroy New message

• Desired Output: Should resemble the following:

  Listing messages Name Comment Barack Change we can believe in Show Edit Destroy Hillary Hillary for president Show Edit Destroy McCain Courageous service Show Edit Destroy New message XML <guests>   <guest>     <name>Barack</name>     <mesg>Change we can believe in</mesg>   </guest>   <guest>     <name>Hillary</name>     <mesg>Hillary for president</mesg>   </guest>   <guest>     <name>McCain</name>     <mesg>Courageous service</mesg>   </guest> </guests>

Submission

• Submit your file index.html.erb directly to the submit server by clicking on the submit link in the column "web submission".

  

  Next, use the submit dialog to submit your index.html.erb file.

  

  Select your file using the "Browse" button, then press the "Submit project!" button.

• Submit directly by executing a Java program on a computer with Java and network access. Use the submit.jar file from the archive p6.zip. To submit, go to the directory containing your project, then either execute submit.rb or type the following command directly:
  java -jar submit.jar

  You will be asked to enter your class account and password, then all files in the directory (and its subdirectories) will be put in a jar file and submitted to the submit server. If your submission is successful you will see the message:

  Successful submission # received for project 6

Academic Integrity

The Campus Senate has adopted a policy asking students to include the following statement on each assignment in every course: "I pledge on my honor that I have not given or received any unauthorized assistance on this assignment." Consequently your program is requested to contain this pledge in a comment near the top.

Please carefully read the academic honesty section of the course syllabus. Any evidence of impermissible cooperation on projects, use of disallowed materials or resources, or unauthorized use of computer accounts, will be submitted to the Student Honor Council, which could result in an XF for the course, or suspension or expulsion from the University. Be sure you understand what you are and what you are not permitted to do in regards to academic integrity when it comes to project assignments. These policies apply to all students, and the Student Honor Council does not consider lack of knowledge of the policies to be a defense for violating them. Full information is found in the course syllabus---please review it at this time.