Models

You can use a hobo generator to create a model

ruby script/generate hobo_model <model_name>

where should be the singular model_name instead of the class name ModelName or the plural model_names.

If the model is going to have views it needs a controller and you can create both model and controller at the same time by

ruby script/generate hobo_model_resource <model_name>

This creates a bunch of stuff

D:\workspace\TryHobo>ruby script\generate hobo_model_resource my_model
      exists  app/models/
      exists  app/controllers/
      exists  app/helpers/
      create  app/views/my_models
      exists  test/functional/
      exists  test/unit/
  dependency  hobo_model
      exists    app/models/
      exists    test/unit/
      exists    test/fixtures/
      create    app/models/my_model.rb
      create    test/unit/my_model_test.rb
      create    test/fixtures/my_models.yml
      create  app/controllers/my_models_controller.rb
      create  test/functional/my_models_controller_test.rb
      create  app/helpers/my_models_helper.rb

D:\workspace\TryHobo>cd app

D:\workspace\TryHobo\app>cd models

D:\workspace\TryHobo\app\models>dir
 Volume in drive D is DATA
 Volume Serial Number is 1440-4E18

 Directory of D:\workspace\TryHobo\app\models

10/13/2008  03:02 PM    <DIR>          .
10/13/2008  03:02 PM    <DIR>          ..
10/09/2008  02:30 PM               202 guest.rb
10/13/2008  03:02 PM               377 my_model.rb
10/09/2008  02:45 PM               444 project.rb
10/09/2008  02:46 PM             1,712 user.rb
10/09/2008  02:30 PM               440 user_mailer.rb
               6 File(s)          3,668 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  176,363,552,768 bytes free

D:\workspace\TryHobo\app\models>

Let us look at my_model.rb

class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base

  hobo_model # Don't put anything above this

  fields do
    timestamps
  end


  # --- Hobo Permissions --- #

  def creatable_by?(user)
    user.administrator?
  end

  def updatable_by?(user, new)
    user.administrator?
  end

  def deletable_by?(user)
    user.administrator?
  end

  def viewable_by?(user, field)
    true
  end

end

Fields are defined here

  fields do
    name :string
    timestamps
  end

“name” is a good field to define in the model because if you define it, later you can reference a model with “this” and the convention will be to use the name field when creating links to the model record. Also <model>.to_s will return the name field value.

Here are some examples of different field definitions

  fields do
    name            :string
    required_string :string, :required
    unique_string   :string, :unique
    in_use          :boolean, :default => false
    status          enum_string(:new, :selected, :hidden), :default => :new    
    comments        :text, :limit=>2000
    publish_date    :date
    dt              :datetime
    amount          :decimal, :precision => 8, :scale => 2 
    cycle_length    :integer
    timestamps
  end

a boolean field will be stored as a tinyint(1) where 0=false and 1=true if using MySQL


enum_string lets you define static coded strings, this example will store the values “new”, “selected”, or “hidden” into a field named “status”


the amount field is defined as a fixed decimal number with 6 places before the decimal and 2 places after.


timestamps declares two :datetime fields updated_at and created_at which are automatically set to the current datetime when adding or updating records