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Version: v2.0

Tutorial

This tutorial will walk you through creating a blog application.

Prerequisites​

Ensure you have checked out and set up the boilerplate_server and boilerplate_client repos as per the server README and client README

Data model​

The following data model will be used for this tutorial.

Every blog has a category and a series of blog posts

info

The user model is provided by Rhino.

Create the models and database schema​

Generate the models and database schema for the application using the following commands

rails g model category name:string
rails g model blog user:references title:string published_at:datetime category:references
rails g model blog_post blog:references title:string body:text published:boolean
rails db:migrate
info

These are standard rails commands. See the Rails Guides for more information.

Configure the models​

Update the model code files to extend the associations, validations and Rhino configuration for the model files as highlighted below

Category​

app/models/category.rb
class Category < ApplicationRecord
  has_many :blogs, dependent: :destroy

  # Rhino specific code
  rhino_owner_global

  validates :name, presence: true
end
tip

rhino_owner_global indicates there is no owner for this model. It is a global resource.

Blog​

app/models/blog.rb
class Blog < ApplicationRecord
  belongs_to :user
  belongs_to :category
  has_many :blog_posts, dependent: :destroy

  # Rhino specific code
  rhino_owner_base
  rhino_references [:user, :category]

  validates :title, presence: true
end
tip

rhino_owner_base assigns the owner of this model to "base owner", which is the User by default in Rhino

tip

rhino_references includes the related models in the API response

BlogPost​

app/models/blog_post.rb
class BlogPost < ApplicationRecord
  belongs_to :blog

  # Rhino specific code
  rhino_owner :blog
  rhino_references [:blog]

  validates :title, presence: true
  validates :body, presence: true
end
tip

rhino_owner ownership of this model to another model, in this case the Blog model, which is the User by default in Rhino

Configure the REST API​

Update the Rhino configuration so that Blog, BlogPost, are available through the Rest API

config/initializers/rhino.rb
- config.resources += ['User', 'Account']
+ config.resources += ['User', 'Account', 'Blog', 'BlogPost', "Category"]
warning

If you don't add the models to the config.resources array, they will not be available through the API.

Seed the database​

Rails provides a way to seed the database with data using the db/seeds.rb file. This is useful for testing and development. Create a few categories to use in the blog and a user to login with.

db/seeds.rb
# Generate sample user
User.create!(email: "test@example.com", password: "password")

# Generate sample categories
3.times do
  Category.create!(name: FFaker::Book.unique.genre)
end

And add the seed data to the database

rails db:seed

Restart the application​

Run the server and client

rails s
npm start

Create blogs and blog posts​

Go to http://localhost:3001 in your browser and login to the application with test@example.com and password.

You can now create a new blog and add some blog posts with the automatically generated user interface.