You're going to build a full CRUD application for the Student Website, powered by Sinatra and ActiveRecord.

It's a complex project and we've provided you with the skeleton of the project.

app/
  concerns/
  controllers/
    application_controller.rb
    students_controller.rb
  models/
    student.rb
  views/
    students/
      index.erb
config/
  environment.rb
coverage/
db/
  migrate/
    01_create_students.rb
lib/
  student_scraper.rb
public/
  images/
  css/
spec/
  controllers/
    students_controller.rb
  models/
    student_spec.rb
  requests/
  spec_helper.rb
tmp/
config.ru
Gemfile
Guardfile
Rakefile

It's important that before you start the project, each of you read the codebase as it currently stands. Every file we've given you has comments in it explaining how it works.

Make sure to run bundle install before doing anything.

You can run the test suite with:

rspec

Additionally, you should notice that a coverage report is generated via SimpleCov. open coverage/index.html to see how your test coverage progress as you complete the assignment.

The application is set up to use guard to auto-run the test suite on most file saves. Start guard with:

guard

Start the application with shotgun or rackup.

You need to integrate a scrape class into this project to populate your development database.

Use the [StudentScraper] that's included as a basis for your scrape. It is located in lib/student_scraper.rb. Read it all.

The scrape can be run via running the rake task scrape_students.

rake scrape_students

Try running the scrape immediately (assuming you first followed the instructions above about bundling, migrating, and running the test suite).

You will need to add migrations to create the columns/attributes needed for the scrape class to correctly populate a student's data.

So for instance, the first error you'll see if you run the scrape before migrating:

rake scrape_students
rake aborted!
undefined method profile_image= #<Student @values={:id=>1, :name=> Ian Miller }>

While you could solve this with attr_accessor :profile_image, that will not persist the data to your database. Instead, add a new migration to the db/migrate folder, maybe named 02_add_profile_image_to_students.rb. That file should contain the appropriate migration.

Then you can migrate your database via rake db:migrate.

Now re-run the rake scrape_students task and you should get more errors about the Student table/class not having those attributes.

Go into the lib/student_scraper.rb and find all the missing attributes. Try to build a migration 03_add_student_attributes.rb that gets all the attributes you'll need to add. If you miss a few and you've already run the migrations, you can always rake db:reset to start fresh.

Feel free to write tests to make sure that the student has those attributes but as they are provided by ActiveRecord, they are already tested. We only test code we write (like the future Student#slug method).

When you are done, you should be able to open db/development.sqlite3 and see a populated students table.

The scrape should force you to construct a pretty solid Student ORM class.

The next step is to get a high fidelity version of the current student site. This include the student index, located at the root of the site, and a student profile (show) page.

You'll have to implement two controller actions in the StudentsController. You should write controller specs for these (you'll get a lot of mileage copying the provided ones and modifying as needed).

Iterate over all the students in the Database and display them in the index.erb. For now, don't worry about the frontend that much. What I would do is grab the HTML from the student index and basically comment out all calls to JS/CSS for now, just generate an ugly looking site with the correct HTML that will snap together once you integrate CSS/JS correctly. The student index needs to link, correctly, to each student's profile. The student profiles should be pretty URLs, such as, /students/avi-flombaum

An individual student's profile should be accessible /students/avi-flombaum and you should be using the student's slug to query for the student.

Implementing the student slug behavior might be non-trivial. First, you definitely need a slug column in the database. Second, you need to figure out away to create those slugs based on the student's name before you first insert them into the database. The student_spec.rb suggests a manner, but worse case, modify the student_scraper to just do it brute-force and ignore the slugify! specs.

With the frontend, same rules apply, just grab the HTML from the current site and don't worry about the styles.

You can put the javascript and CSS and images from the live site in public and those will be served as the root of your site. For example:

public/css/style.css
public/javascripts/site.js
public/images/student-profile-pic.jpg

You could link to those assets in HTML via:

<link href='/stylesheets/style.css' media='screen' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>
<script src="/javascripts/site.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<img src="/images/student-profile-pic.jpg">

Obviously you might have to fix references to assets within those, but everything lives in public is at the root of the site.

The next step is to now build a form, accessible at /students/new that will allow you to create a new student.

The form should submit via a POST to /students, take the form data, and save it to the database. That student should appear in the student index. Don't worry how the form looks or how functional it is, if you can't get profile_pic to work, get as much data as you can. This will require building two routes in your StudentsController.

See if you can write specs for the form. Within the students_controller_spec.rb, I'd imagine seeing something like.

context 'POST /students' do
  it 'accepts the form data and creates a student with those attributes' do
    # The `post` Rack::Test method takes a second argument of a POST data hash.
    post '/students', {:name => "Avi Flombaum"}
    expect(Student.find_by(:name => "Avi Flombaum")).to be_a(Student)
  end
end

Build an /students/avi-flombaum/edit that renders a form with their student data pre-filled in. You should be submitting that form to the update action at POST /students/avi-flombaum.

Spec this out too.

Go to town, get 100% coverage, add features, maybe FileUploads through a gem that plays nice with ActiveRecord. Make it as realistic as possible.

We highly recommend you read the entire codebase first.

• Screencasts - Using ActiveRecord with Sinatra

• Screencasts - Configuring ActiveRecord in Sinatra

View this lesson on Learn.co