Rails - Record Handling Tricks learned the hard way

- use dynamic model query methods described in: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Base.html
- Story.order("column_ord").find_all_by_state("B").size returns the collection
- Story.order("column_ord").find_by_state("B").size returns only one story
- render(@collection) throws error if said collection is empty, so check <% if @collection then render(@collection) end %>
- assigns[:variablename] is how to get hold of a page object in the controller_test

Ruby: Stringception - a string within a string

good reference on all the various ways to define strings in ruby
http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/Ruby_Strings_-_Creation_and_Basics

So that you can run testing like:

assert_difference( %[Story.count :conditions => 'state = "P"']) do
put :drop, :id => story.to_param, :state => 'P'
end

Where the query string contains a string.

jquery w/ rails : ajax update of drag & drop item

A script added to my html.erb file, at page load it establishes sortable columns, and ajax call to automatically update an item when it is dragged from one column to another:

$(function() {
$(".sortcol").sortable({
connectWith: ".sortcol",
receive: function(event, ui) {
$.ajax({
url: "<%= drop_url() %>",
type: 'PUT',
data: $.param({id : ui.item.attr('id'), state : ui.item.parent().attr('id')}),
success: function(d) { ui.item.effect("pulsate", {} , 500 ) }
})//end get
} //end receive function
}); //end sortable
}); // end function

The drop_url references as routes.rb entry /board/drop to a specific board_controller method. Upon retrospect, I'm thinking this ought to work with the default update method on my :story resource. Note to self, if your update method doesn't update... check that you haven't forgotten your parameter naming conventions. status != state no matter how you write the method to update.

Rails -migrations with column default changes

So wanted to add a default value for a column, but also wanted to do a proper rollback method on the migration. My problem may have been more with SQLite than rails, something about it not liking alter column commands.

Anyway:
change_column :table, :column, :type, default = 'value' did update the schema.

But also needed to add the date
Table.update_all( "column = 'value'", "column IS NULL") to fix unset values.


Didn't find a good syntax to remove the default setting from the schema.