Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="David Heinemeier Hansson, post: 4437003"] It's with great pleasure that I present to you the first public release of Action Pack. I've been working on the framework for close to a year now, so it's a great relief to finally feel ready to share with the world. Alongside Active Record, this almost completes the release of the technology used to build Basecamp[1] -- a highly succesful and acclaimed web-application from the design masters at 37signals. Action Pack is a control-flow and template package for developing MVC-style web-applications. With Action Pack, you have the answer for the Controler and the View and is free to pick anything for the Model. If you were to pick Active Record, though, you'll enjoy a number of benefits from Action Pack, such as tailored view helpers and benchmarking integration. Download and learn more at: [URL]http://actionpack.rubyonrails.org[/URL] (website, wiki) [URL]http://actionpack.rubyonrails.org[/URL] (api, detailed documentation) P.S.: Tomorrow I'll release the first complete Rails package, which in addition to Action Pack and Active Record includes a ton of wiring to make it extremely easy to get started and follow best practices from day one. [1] [URL]http://www.basecamphq.com/[/URL] / David Heinemeier Hansson How does Action Pack work? ========================== Action Pack splits the response to a web request into a controller part (performing the logic) and a view part (rendering a template). This two-step approach is known as an action, which will normally create, read, update, or delete (CRUD for short) some sort of model part (often backed by a database) before choosing either to render a template or redirecting to another action. Action Pack implements these actions as public methods on Action Controllers and uses Action Views to implement the template rendering. Action Controllers are then responsible for handling all the actions relating to a certain part of an application. This grouping usually consists of actions for lists and for CRUDs revolving around a single (or a few) model objects. So ContactController would be responsible for listing contacts, creating, deleting, and updating contacts. A WeblogController could be responsible for both posts and comments. Action View templates are written using embedded Ruby in tags mingled in with the HTML. To avoid cluttering the templates with code, a bunch of helper classes provide common behavior for forms, dates, and strings. And it's easy to add specific helpers to keep the separation as the application evolves. Note: Some of the features, such as scaffolding and form building, are tied to ActiveRecord[[URL]http://activerecord.rubyonrails.org[/URL]] (an object-relational mapping package), but that doesn't mean that Action Pack depends on Active Record. Action Pack is an independent package that can be used with any sort of backend (Instiki[[URL]http://www.instiki.org[/URL]], which is based on an older version of Action Pack, uses Madeleine for example). Read more about the role Action Pack can play when used together with Active Record on [URL]http://www.rubyonrails.org[/URL]. A short rundown of the major features ===================================== * Actions grouped in controller as methods instead of separate command objects and can therefore helper share methods. BlogController < ActionController::Base def display @customer = find_customer end def update @customer = find_customer @customer.attributes = @params["customer"] @customer.save ? redirect_to(:action => "display") : render("customer/edit") end private def find_customer() Customer.find(@params["id"]) end end Learn more in link:classes/ActionController/Base.html * Embedded Ruby for templates (no new "easy" template language) <% for post in @posts %> Title: <%= post.title %> <% end %> All post titles: <%= @post.collect{ |p| p.title }.join ", " %> <% unless @person.is_client? %> Not for clients to see... <% end %> Learn more in link:classes/ActionView.html * Filters for pre and post processing of the response (as methods, procs, and classes) class WeblogController < ActionController::Base before_filter :authenticate, :cache, :audit after_filter proc{|c| c.response.body = GZip::compress(c.response.body)} after_filter LocalizeFilter def list # Before this action is run, the user will be authenticated, the cache # will be examined to see if a valid copy of the results already # exist, and the action will be logged for auditing. # After this action has run, the output will first be localized then # compressed to minimize bandwith usage end private def authenticate # Implement the filter will full access to both request and response end end Learn more in link:classes/ActionController/Filters/ClassMethods.html * Helpers for forms, dates, action links, and text <%= text_field "post", "title", "size" => 30 %> <%= html_date_select(Date.today) %> <%= link_to "New post", :controller => "post", :action => "new" %> <%= truncate(post.title, 25) %> Learn more in link:classes/ActionView/Helpers.html * Layout sharing for template reuse (think simple version of Struts Tiles[[URL]http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/userGuide/dev_tiles.html[/URL]]) class WeblogController < ActionController::Base layout "weblog_layout" def hello_world end end Layout file (called weblog_layout): <html><body><%= @content_for_layout %></body></html> Template for hello_world action: <h1>Hello world</h1> Result of running hello_world action: <html><body><h1>Hello world</h1></body></html> Learn more in link:classes/ActionController/Layout.html * Advanced redirection that makes pretty urls easy RewriteRule ^/library/books/([A-Z]+)([0-9]+)/([-_a-zA-Z0-9]+)$ \ /books_controller.cgi?action=$3&type=$1&code=$2 [QSA] [L] Accessing /library/books/ISBN/0743536703/show calls BooksController#show From that URL, you can rewrite the redirect in a number of ways: redirect_to(:action => "edit") => /library/books/ISBN/0743536703/edit redirect_to(:path_params => { "type" => "XTC", "code" => "12354345" }) => /library/books/XTC/12354345/show redirect_to(:controller_prefix => "admin", :controller => "accounts") => /admin/accounts/ Learn more in link:classes/ActionController/Base.html * Easy testing of both controller and template result through TestRequest/Response class LoginControllerTest < Test::Unit::TestCase def setup @request = ActionController::TestRequest.new @request.host = "[URL]http://somewhere[/URL]" end def test_succesful_authentication @request.action = "authenticate" @request.request_parameters["user_name"] = "david" @request.request_parameters["password"] = "secret" response = LoginController.process_test(@request) assert_equal( "[URL]http://somewhere/clients/[/URL]", response.headers["location"]) assert_equal Person.find(1), response.session["person"] assert(response.body.split("\n").include?( "<h1>You've been logged in!</h1>")) end end Learn more in link:classes/ActionController/TestRequest.html * Automated benchmarking and integrated logging Processing WeblogController#index (for 127.0.0.1 at Fri May 28 00:41:55) Parameters: {"action"=>"index", "controller"=>"weblog"} Rendering weblog/index (200 OK) Completed in 0.029281 (34 reqs/sec) If Active Record is used as the model, you'll have the database debugging as well: Processing WeblogController#create (for 127.0.0.1 at Sat Jun 19 14:04:23) Params: {"controller"=>"weblog", "action"=>"create", "post"=>{"title"=>"this is good"} } SQL (0.000627) INSERT INTO posts (title) VALUES('this is good') Redirected to [URL]http://test/weblog/display/5[/URL] Completed in 0.221764 (4 reqs/sec) | DB: 0.059920 (27%) You specify a logger through a class method, such as: ActionController::Base.logger = Logger.new("Application Log") ActionController::Base.logger = Log4r::Logger.new("Application Log") * Powerful debugging mechanism for local requests All exceptions raised on actions performed on the request of a local user will be presented with a tailored debugging screen that includes exception message, stack trace, request parameters, session contents, and the half-finished response. Learn more in link:classes/ActionController/Rescue.html * Scaffolding for Action Record model objects require 'account' # must be an Active Record class class AccountController < AccountController::Base scaffolding :account end The AccountController now has the full CRUD range of actions and default templates: list, show, destroy, new, create, edit, update Learn more in link:classes/ActionController/Scaffolding/ClassMethods.html * Form building for Active Record model objects The post object has a title (varchar), content (text), and written_on (date) <%= form "post" %> ...will generate something like (the selects will have more options of course): <form action="create" method="POST"> <p> <b>Title:</b><br/> <input type="text" name="post[title]" value="<%= @post.title %>" /> </p> <p> <b>Content:</b><br/> <textarea name="post[content]"><%= @post.title %></textarea> </p> <p> <b>Written on:</b><br/> <select name='post[written_on(3i)]'><option>18</option></select> <select name='post[written_on(2i)]'><option value='7'>July</option></select> <select name='post[written_on(1i)]'><option>2004</option></select> </p> <input type="submit" value="Create"> </form> This form generates a @params["post"] array that can be used directly in a save action: class WeblogController < ActionController::Base def save post = Post.create(@params["post"]) redirect_to :action => "display", :path_params => { "id" => post.id } end end Learn more in link:classes/ActionView/Helpers/ActiveRecordHelper.html * Automated mapping of URLs to controller/action pairs through Apache's mod_rewrite Requesting /blog/display/5 will call BlogController#display and make 5 available as an instance variable through @params["id"] * Runs on top of CGI, FCGI, and mod_ruby See the address_book_controller example for all three forms [/QUOTE]

Verification