Improved Scaffolding for Ruby on Rails

Let's begin by fixing the order of our columns. Change the app/controllers/player_controller.rb file to look like this:

class PlayerController < ApplicationController
  active_scaffold :player  do |c|
    c.columns = [:name, :squad, :address, 
                 :date_of_birth, 
                 :contact_tel_no, :condition ]

    c.columns[:squad].ui_type = :select
    c.columns[:condition].ui_type = :select
  end
end

In this code, we provide a configuration code block to the activescaffold method where we specify the ordering of the columns, in addition to setting the ui_type associated with the squad and condition data to be :select. This fixes our ordering issue and sets the squad and condition selection mechanism to a standard drop-down list.

Sorting out the date problem requires the creation of a Rails helper method for the players table. Edit the app/helpers/player_helper.rb file, and add the following code:

module PlayerHelper
  def date_of_birth_form_column(record, input_name)
    date_select :record, :date_of_birth, 
                :name => input_name, 
                :start_year => 1990
  end
end

The oddly named date_of_birth_form_column helper method calls the ActiveScaffold-supplied date_select method, which lets us adjust the earliest start date associated with our date_of_birth data. With these changes made, restart the Rails application and reload the browser window. Figure 3 shows the new-and-improved player listing, and Figure 4 shows the final version of our player data-entry form. As I'm sure you'll agree, both screens look the business. Take time to play around with the added functionality that ActiveScaffold has provided for free, including sort-ordering links on each of the column headings.

Figure 3. Improved Player Listing

Figure 4. Improved Player Data-Entry Form

To learn more about Rails, I highly recommend Agile Web Development with Rails by The Pragmatic Programmers (now in its second edition, with a third due soon), as well as O'Reilly Media's Rails Cookbook. To learn more about ActiveScaffold, check out the well-written documentation and code examples available on-line at the ActiveScaffold Web site (see Resources). As I hope this article demonstrates, it doesn't take much to turn an ugly, default Rails application into something you just might want to show off!