Learning Rails: Live Edition

Test Your Knowledge

Quiz

1. How many files does Rails create in response to a single script/generate scaffold request?

2. In REST, how do HTTP GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE map to the “CRUD” of create, read, update, and destroy?

3. What does “idempotent” mean?

4. How do you make sure a result can be bookmarked?

5. Why do four basic REST functions end up making seven different methods in the controller?

6. What does map.resources :people mean?

7. How do you specify responses in different formats?

8. How does an ID value connect to a specific resource?

9. What happens if you send a Rails application a chunk of XML?

Answers

1. Rails creates a lot of files in response to a script/generate scaffold request, though some of them may exist already. It will create index, show, new, and edit view files, as well as one with the name of the object specified. It will also create a model, test, test fixture, migration, controller, test controller, and helper class, and add a route to the routing table. So, the answer is usually 12.

2. GET maps to read. POST maps to create. PUT maps to update. DELETE maps to destroy.

3. Idempotent means that you can call the same method as many times as you want and still get the same result. A GET request should be idempotent, and no matter how many GET requests you make, none of those GET requests will change what is returned on the next call.

4. The easiest way to make sure that something can be bookmarked is to make it consistently accessible through a GET request to a particular URL. (Making this work ...