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:
http://actionpack.rubyonrails.org (website, wiki)
http://actionpack.rubyonrails.org (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] http://www.basecamphq.com/
/ David Heinemeier Hansson
How does Action Pack work?
···
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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[http://activerecord.rubyonrails.org] (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[http://www.instiki.org], 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
http://www.rubyonrails.org.
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[http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/userGuide/dev_tiles.html])
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 = "http://somewhere"
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(
"http://somewhere/clients/", 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 http://test/weblog/display/5
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
