What is the best way to approach a CMS?

rubyonrails-talk
1

I posted on a question with erb in SQL entries because I've been building a CMS for my own website. I've built them before, but in ColdFusion, and I'm not sure how best to approach it in Rails.

Right now, I have a simple database schema:

  create_table "comments", :force => true do |t|     t.column "post_id", :integer     t.column "created_at", :datetime     t.column "comment", :text   end

  create_table "events", :force => true do |t|     t.column "title", :string     t.column "desc", :text   end

  create_table "pages", :force => true do |t|     t.column "title", :string     t.column "body", :text   end

  create_table "posts", :force => true do |t|     t.column "title", :string     t.column "created_at", :datetime     t.column "body", :text   end

  create_table "users", :force => true do |t|     t.column "name", :string     t.column "hashed_password", :string     t.column "salt", :string   end

The trouble is with pages. Right now, I just have the page load its title and its body, which contains HTML. My problem is I need to have pages with different layouts--in particular layouts that use AJAX to dynamically load content.

I'm starting to think that maybe I'm structuring this incorrectly. I'm just not sure how else to approach structuring the content other than SQL entries. Any suggestions as to how a) I can create different layouts and b) get some layout functionality in my SQL entries?

For example, I'm looking into liquid. That looks promising. But its starting to look unrealistic to load both the content and the layout from a SQL entry.

Thoughts?

Ron

2

Ron wrote:

Right now, I have a simple database schema:

  create_table "comments", :force => true do |t|     t.column "post_id", :integer     t.column "created_at", :datetime     t.column "comment", :text   end

  create_table "events", :force => true do |t|     t.column "title", :string     t.column "desc", :text   end

  create_table "pages", :force => true do |t|     t.column "title", :string     t.column "body", :text   end

  create_table "posts", :force => true do |t|     t.column "title", :string     t.column "created_at", :datetime     t.column "body", :text   end

  create_table "users", :force => true do |t|     t.column "name", :string     t.column "hashed_password", :string     t.column "salt", :string   end

Ron

model Comment: check model Event: check model Post: check model User: check model Page: wtf???

Your architecture looks very sensible but i don't have the foggiest as to why you would need the Page model.. Isn't the main reason you are using rails is to create your pages dynamically? Does page refer to something else? What is page needed for?

Hoping to provide further assistance or at least solve the "page" mystery.. :slight_smile:

ilan

3

Well, Ilan post is for the blog page. The blog page is a separate controller. The pages controller handles the pages, which are basically database entries with a title and a body. I added the page controller because I thought I wanted to have a dedicated controller for the presentation part of the website. I created an admin controller for editing the pages so I could put it behind a login. The pages are generated dynamically, as the content is from the page's SQL entry.

Does that make more sense?

Ron

4

So maybe the best way to approach it is to use posts as a general catch all for text content. Then I could create a few different templates and associate the page with one. It would then fill in the appropriate content.

What do you think?

Ron

5

Ron wrote:

Well, Ilan post is for the blog page. The blog page is a separate controller. The pages controller handles the pages, which are basically database entries with a title and a body. I added the page controller because I thought I wanted to have a dedicated controller for the presentation part of the website. I created an admin controller for editing the pages so I could put it behind a login. The pages are generated dynamically, as the content is from the page's SQL entry.

Does that make more sense?

Ron

On Mar 8, 12:57 pm, Ilan Berci <rails-mailing-l...@andreas-s.net>

Ohhh.. wait a sec, now I get it, you created the "Page" model as you think you needed a Page controller. I think you are absolutely correct that you should delegate out the functionality for the pages to a Page controller but that doesn't mean you need to have a page model.. I think that perhaps you are over engineering it a little.. Rails is very adaptable to sudden design enhancements and modifications so I would start very simple.. Probably something like this

1) User model 2) User controller 3) User views 4) User test cases 5) Post model 6) Post controller 7) Post views 8) Post unit test cases 9) Post functional test cases 10) Post/User integration testing 11) Comment model 12) Comment controller 13) Comment unit test cases 14) Comment functional test cases 15) Modify Post views to have comments attached 16) Integration for tests for point 15 etc..

There is no need to have a heavy up front design, you can just go ahead like Dave Thomas suggests in his Agile book and build up your site little by little. The test cases are really key as they will greatly speed up your development and make your next steps in the design painfully obvious.

My apologies if you already know all this stuff but it sounds like you are coming from a more formal coding convention such as a rup, modified rup, etc.. and rails is much better suited to agile development practices..

hth

ilan