Rails Project: Some reference points

Rails added some excitement and dynamic features to the developer learning process. It was also a long 4 weeks worth of work. So for this blog about this post I’m going to make a sheet of references for frequently forgotten or frequently used code snippets, terminal commands and any other relevant items of interest; I will explain their importance where applicable.

Generating a new skeleton of a Rails app, still frequently forgotten for now:

rails new <filename-here>

• Why it’s important: creates nearly all the file structure necessary within the rails app, includes most needed gems and dependencies, and allows easy inclusion for reference to images and css sheets, among others.

Git local directory vs. rails command to build a new application:

It was tricky to get my local environment file structure on the same page after git cloning my repository down but also initiating a new rails app, tried restarting the process several times to consistently end up with a project folder within a project folder.

My solution, instead of re-starting a new directory and new rails app:

1. Moved the files in the file explorer up one directory
2. git Commit command

   git commit - m “message here”

3. Error message: untracked files
4. Git track files/add files command

   git add <filename>/ (In this case I added all the files listed as untracked, individually)

5. All the files were in the same directory now, in both local and remote environments. One last push:

   git push -u origin master

   • Push all the changes to the master branch that have been tracked/staged/commited/etc

Frequently used, and finally not too frequently forgotten

rake db:migrate

• run migrations on all the migrate files recently created

rake routes

• find all avaliable routes as are currently defined in config/routes.rb

Links and redirects within rails

redirect_to <some_named_path>(optional variable depending)

• If the path has an :id, then a variable will need to be placed as a parameter

<%= link_to “What you want the link to say”, <some_named_path>(variable depending) %>

Variation If the link needs to say what’s stored in a variable:

<%= link_to post.title, <some_named_path>(variable depending) %>

Various Migrations

Basic table creations: with a variety of types Within -class CreateTableName < ActiveRecord::Migration[5.2]

def change
   create_table :table_name do |t|
   t.string :name
   t.string :password_digest
   t.date :today 
	 t.boolean :yes-or-no 
	 t.integer :quantity 
	 t.belongs_to :user, index: true, foreign_key: true
   t.references :favorited, polymorphic: true, index: true
 end
end

Table additions, subractions and changes, within def change:

Drop table:

drop_table :table_name

Add column:

add_column :table_name, :column_name, :column_type

Delete column:

remove_column :table_name, :column_name

Change column type:

change_column :table_name, :column_name, :new_type

Explanation of Associations, as it applies to my project, * The Amateur Wine Reviewer *

4 models were needed to ensure I was covering all the requirements, or so I thought, as I went along checking them off. The models are wine, review, user and liked_review. liked_review was added last in case review to user to wine was not sufficient enough for 2 of the requirements for the project I adapted this example from the following resource on stackoverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13240109/implement-add-to-favorites-in-rails-3-4

in: class User
   has_many :reviews    
   has_many :wines, through: :reviews  
   has_many :liked_reviews
   has_many :likes, through: :liked_reviews, source: :review

in: class LikedReview
   belongs_to :user
   belongs_to :review

in: class Review
   belongs_to :user
   belongs_to :wine 
   has_many :liked_reviews
   has_many :liked_by, through: :liked_reviews, source: :user

in: class Wine
   has_many :reviews  
   has_many :users, through: :reviews

I knew I had enough nearly enough assoication requirements met between User, Wine and Review, however, I wasn’t sure about user submittable attributes so I added in the dynamic source based associations with LikedReview, this allowed to change the tense of the has_many through the liked_reviews to allow a differentiation in chaining agains users vs. reviews themselves, all via the opposite source.

This requried a couple other modifications Instead of a LikedReviews controller, #like was added to the ReviewsController as its own method:

def like
       @review = Review.find(params[:id])
       type = params[:type]
       if type == "like"
          
          current_user.likes << @review
          redirect_to like_review_path(current_user)
 
       elsif type == "unlike"
           current_user.likes.delete(@review)          
       end
   end

**Additionally a new nested path was built specifying additional routes: **

 resources :reviews do
    put :like, on: :member
    get :like, on: :member
  end

• This added 2 routes necessary:

like_review PUT    /reviews/:id/like(.:format)   reviews#like 

            GET    /reviews/:id/like(.:format)   reviews#like

• PUT was used in /reviews/show.html.erb: To add the “like” or “unlike” functions that were sent back to reviews#like And essntially become the user submittable attribute upon a review created
• GET was used in /reviews/like.html.erb To visit the current users liked reviews with the url /reviews/:id/like Can of course do much more with it, however I was ready to turn the project in

Places OmniAuth must appear:

And also noteworthy this is my quick summary, but I didn’t remember or discover all this on my own, I was referred to the following resource, describing most of these steps in greater detail at: https://medium.com/@rachel.hawa/google-authentication-strategy-for-rails-5-application-cd37947d2b1b

In this case google based login:

1. Setting this up with google at, approximately https://console.developers.google.com

2. Generally speaking create a new app and work with the omniauth tabs, there’s more to it than that, but that’s the gist

3. Gemfile - needs three things added:

   Gem ‘omniauth’

   gem 'dotenv-rails'

   Gem 'omniauth-google-oauth2'

4. Create a .env file in the root of the app to add the google client_id and client_secret, found while setting new app within google developers console

So within the new .env file:

GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=<generated number from google here>`

GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET=<generated number from google here>`

5) add .env to .gitignore file, just type in

.env

• add to the list of items ignored by github

6) Create a omniauth.rb in /config/initializers, add all of this:

	Rails.application.config.middleware.use OmniAuth::Builder do
       provider :google_oauth2, ENV["GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID"],ENV["GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET"], skip_jwt: true
  end

7) In routes.rb add:

get '/auth/:provider/callback' => 'sessions#omniauth'

8) In user.rb

def self.from_omniauth(auth)
       where(email: auth.info.email).first_or_initialize do |user|
         user.username = auth.info.name
         user.email = auth.info.email
         user.password = SecureRandom.hex
       end
     end

9) In SessionsController

def omniauth
       @user = User.from_omniauth(auth)
       @user.save
       session[:user_id] = @user.id
       redirect_to user_path(@user)
     end

as well as:

private
 
     def auth
       request.env['omniauth.auth']
     end

9) Basic link to use this to make a login/signup with google, placed wherever necessary:

<%= link_to "Log In with Google", '/auth/google_oauth2' %>

10) Optional: I found the branding icons at

https://developers.google.com/identity/branding-guidelines

• With a set of downloads of differnt types of google images and instructions for use

Speaking of logging, in don’t forget about in user.rb

has_secure_password

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