If you’re just learning Ruby on Rails, you may be confused as to when to generate individual models, resources or scaffolding, and what files are created by each command.
Say you want to generate a Test model with a name. You could either generate the model individually, generate resources, or generate scaffolding, as follows:
rails g model Test name:text
rails g resource Test name:text
rails g scaffold Test name:text
What’s the difference between each of the above?
Entering rails g model Test name:text in your command line will generate the following:
(1) A model file test.rb in your models directory:
class Test < ActiveRecord::Base end
(2) A migration file timestamp_create_tests.rb in your db/migrate directory:
class CreateTests < ActiveRecord::Migration def change create_table :tests do |t| t.text :name t.timestamps end end end
Entering rails g resource Test name:text in your command line will generate the following:
(1) A model file test.rb in your models directory:
class Test < ActiveRecord::Base end
(2) A migration file timestamp_create_tests.rb in your db/migrate directory:
class CreateTests < ActiveRecord::Migration def change create_table :tests do |t| t.text :name t.timestamps end end end
(3) a tests_controller.rb file in your controllers directory. This controller will be an empty shell:
class TestsController < ApplicationController end
(4) resources :tests routes in your routes.rb file.
Entering rails g scaffold Test name:text in your command line will generate the following:
(1) A model file test.rb in your models directory:
class Test < ActiveRecord::Base end
(2) A migration file timestamp_create_tests.rb in your db/migrate directory:
class CreateTests < ActiveRecord::Migration def change create_table :tests do |t| t.text :name t.timestamps end end end
(3) A tests_controller.rb file in your controllers directory. When a scaffold is generated, seven public methods and two private methods will be added to your controller:
(4) resources :tests routes in your routes.rb file.
(5) Seven corresponding view files in your views directory: (a) _form.html.erb, (b) edit.html.erb, (c) index.html.erb, (d) index.json.jbuilder, (e) new.html.erb, (f) show.html.erb and (g) show.json.jbuilder. Each view will contain html and embedded ruby.