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Ruby Build a Simple Ruby on Rails Application Getting Started with Rails Generate a Rails Application

Tracy Mason
PLUS
Tracy Mason
Courses Plus Student 2,446 Points
Posted by Tracy Mason
Tracy Mason
Courses Plus Student 2,446 Points

Status/statuses?

This may seem like a simple question, but ... why does rails create a project file in the models folder called "status.rb" but if you look at the actual files created, they are called "status*es*"? And then when you want to check out the application, you type status*es*, but when we created it we created using "generate scaffold status ..." Does Rails just know that more than one entry will be included in the status updates?

1 Answer

Maciej Czuchnowski
Maciej Czuchnowski
36,441 Points
Maciej Czuchnowski
Maciej Czuchnowski
36,441 Points

There are some specific conventions in Rails when it comes to singular and plural forms. You will get used to it. I didn't get it at first at all. In general, when you are referring to the model (and usually using the capital letter), you use singular form. And in most other places, you use the plural form. Singular is also conventionally used when you are sure you will refer to the single element (for example, when naming the instance variable in show action).

Tracy Mason
Tracy Mason
Courses Plus Student 2,446 Points
Tracy Mason
Tracy Mason
Courses Plus Student 2,446 Points

ok. So when my files were created, for instance, a file called "test/functional/statuses_controller_test.rb". How did it know to change status to statuses when rails created it? I'd originally created it using "rails generate scaffold status name:string content:text.

Maciej Czuchnowski
Maciej Czuchnowski
36,441 Points
Maciej Czuchnowski
Maciej Czuchnowski
36,441 Points

Rails has a built-in system that pluralizes words correctly (even irregular ones, like 'child'). It does it when generating stuff and you also have a pluralize method that you can use in your views that will display the word given as a second argument as singular or plural, depending on a number that it gets as the first argument. Yes, Rails has some magic in it :). http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/TextHelper.html#method-i-pluralize

Tracy Mason
Tracy Mason
Courses Plus Student 2,446 Points
Tracy Mason
Tracy Mason
Courses Plus Student 2,446 Points

Thank you! I thought maybe I was going crazy there for a minute!