learn-co-curriculum/rails-restful-index-action-lab

RESTful Index Action Lab

Objectives

1. Draw a get route
2. Map a route to a controller action
3. Define a controller action
4. Load instances from ActiveRecord into a controller instance variable
5. Render a template
6. Use an instance variable from a controller action in a template
7. Iterate over an ActiveRecord collection in ERB
8. Build a classical index action/view

RESTful Routes

In this lab you will walk through how to build each element required to render a list of students out in the browser. The RSpec/Capybara tests for this lab can be found in spec/features. Both tests should be passing to complete the lab.

Note If you run into an ActiveRecord::PendingMigration error when you run the tests, try rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=test in the terminal then run the tests again.

Instructions

• Run bundle install from your terminal

• Create a controller for students and have it inherit from ApplicationController

• Create a route for the path /students that maps to a StudentsController index action.

• Add a controller action to the StudentsController named index

• Have the new index action pull in a list of all of the students with Student.all and store it in an instance variable

• Create an index.html.erb view file and render it from your Students#index action. The index.html.erb file should be placed within a views/students folder.

• In your view, iterate over the list of students returned from the index action in the controller and display the appropriate information.

Resources

• Rails Routing from the Outside In

rails-restful-index-action-lab's Issues

Viewing the index page raises an error

When attempting to view the index page It's showing undefined method '+' for nil:NilClass. Looks like the db comes with a record that contains several attributes set to nil.

For #to_s (Student class), instead of self.first_name + " " + self.last_name, changing it to
"#{self.first_name} #{self.last_name}" prevents the error.

Student Version 404 & learn error

Despite the message above, no fork was made (that I can see).

At the time of writing the 'View on Github' gives 404:
https://github.com/learn-co-students/rails-restful-index-action-lab-v-000

'Raise an issue' links here, to the curriculum version.

Lab being referenced:
https://learn.co/tracks/full-stack-web-development/rails/intro-to-rest/restful-action-index-lab

Instructions are off

I second Wendy's comment in Issue #14 and have added a PR (#15) for incorrect instructions.

Lab order

It feels like this lab should come after https://learn.co/tracks/full-stack-web-development-v7/rails/intro-to-rest/rails-dynamic-request , in the current learning order we're asked to create a dynamic routes before a lab example is done.

issue passing student_index_spec.rb:18

This test will not pass unless student names are displayed as a list in the view.

Possible resource link

I think it would save future students some time wondering how to build resourceful routes if they had this link:

http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html

It's a great read. Just a thought :)

RE-EDIT: student_index_spec.rb

`describe 'Multiple students are shown' do
it 'on the index page' do
Student.create!(first_name: "Daenerys", last_name: "Targaryen")
Student.create!(first_name: "Lindsey", last_name: "Stirling")

visit "/students"

expect(page).to have_content(/(?=.*Daenerys)(?=.*Lindsey).*/)

end`

Okay! So changing "expect(page).to have_content(/(?=.*Daenerys)|(?=.Lindsey)./)"
to: "expect(page).to have_content(/(?=.*Daenerys)(?=.Targaryen)./)"
is Not the answer. I'm sorry.
What I found though was that that line of code is missing a ' | '; so:
"expect(page).to have_content(/(?=.*Daenerys)|(?=.Lindsey)./)".

Sorry. For the mix up. The test passed this way, and it makes more since adding this ' | ' instead of changing the name. So this way it checks for both names.

-Alex

Instructions Do Not Match or Pass RSPEC

Current Instruction: Map an index.html.erb view file to the student controller and iterate over the list of students returned from the index action in the controller

Correction: students.html.erb

Confusing instructions.

Instructions call for placing the index.html.erb file within a view/students folder, but Capybara tests expect it to be placed in a student folder (singular).

assert_text error

tests used to have assert_text('Daenerys', 'Lindsey')

but I was getting this error:

Failures:

  1) Multiple students are shown on the index page
     Failure/Error: assert_text('Daenerys', 'Lindsey')
     
     ArgumentError:
       Daenerys is not a valid type for a text query

until we made this change:

assert_text('Daenerys Targaryen') assert_text('Lindsey Stirling')

student_index_spec.rb

describe 'Multiple students are shown' do
it 'on the index page' do
Student.create!(first_name: "Daenerys", last_name: "Targaryen")
Student.create!(first_name: "Lindsey", last_name: "Stirling")

visit "/students"

expect(page).to have_content(/(?=.*Daenerys)(?=.*Lindsey).*/)

end
end

I--------------I
I believe that the line:
'expect(page).to have_content(/(?=.*Daenerys)(?=.Lindsey)./)'
should maybe be:
'expect(page).to have_content(/(?=.*Daenerys)(?=.Targaryen)./) .

That was the only way I was able to pass the test. Unless I'm wrong. Then I have no idea what I did..

-Alex