The HotDog vendor

In you 'apps' directory, create a new Rails app with the following command:

rails new hotdog

You can create a home page for your site with the following command

rails g controller home index

This command just generates a home_controller.rb and home/index.html.erb file. Just like we created without a generator script in the beginning. As it does not create a model (no data model required) we do not need to do a rake db:migrate yet.

Go to config/routes.rb and find the line that was created by the generator and delete it:

get "home/index"

Find the commented out root line and change it like so:

  # You can have the root of your site routed with "root"
  # root 'welcome#index'

  # You can have the root of your site routed with "root"
  root 'home#index'

Open a new tab from your command line (Command + T) and start your Rails server.

rails s

Go to your browser and open localhost:3000 to check that you see the Home index page you just created. We will leave it like this for the moment.

screenshot_1

Now add the functionality that enables the hotdog vendor to add and list his locations. Go back to your command line:

rails g scaffold Location name address suburb date:date start_time:time finish_time:time

Check the migration file that was just created to make sure everything looks right. db/migrate/2013xxxxx_create_locations.rb

screenshot_2

Run your migration

rake db:migrate

Go to your browser and check that you see the location index page localhost:3000/locations

screenshot_3

Add a location with test data (make up a location)

screenshot_4

Let's show the locations on the home page. Go to app/controllers/home_controller.rb and find the index method. Bring in the location data by adding the following line:

  def index
  	@locations = Location.all
  end

Now go to app/views/home/index.html.erb, delete the code that is already there and create a table that lists the added locations.

<h1>HotDog King</h1>

<h2>Locations</h2>

<table>
	<tr>
		<th>Location</th>
		<th>Where</th>
		<th>When</th>
	</tr>

<% @locations.each do |location| %>
	<tr>
		<td><%= location.name %></td>
		<td><%= location.address %>, <%= location.suburb %></td>
		<td><%= location.date.to_date %><br>
			<%= location.start_time.strftime("%H:%M") %> - <%= location.finish_time.strftime("%H:%M") %></td>
	</tr>
<% end %>

Check your home page and see that your table shows your locations.

Bonus challenges

1. Add bootstrap to add some style to your page.

2. Try setting a default_scope in the locations model so that the locations show in chronological order: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_querying.html#applying-a-default-scope

default_scope order: 'locations.date ASC'

3. Add an image to the home page

4. Put an "Add location" link/button on the home page