Rails - Jul 2013 - Laying out the flow of an application - where to start?

I have a question regarding where to start with a particular app I''m 
building. Hoping someone can set me on the right path. The scenario is 
pretty straight forward.

This is the hierarchy of info:

States
Towns

Each state has many Towns

Each town has the following pages associated with it.

   - profile
      - geography
      - population
      - demographics
   - leaders
   - budget
   - history
   - recycling
   - maps

Part of my issue, due to lack of experience, is really where to start.
I''m
trying to learn what I should be doing first when starting a new project. 
I''m not sure exactly what should be models. I think my biggest
confusion,
is how to handle the subpages. I want the RESTful urls to be 
www.example.com/state/town/profile/geography and so on.

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Hi all, first post! I have a question regarding where to start with a
particular app I''m building. Hoping someone can set me on the right
path. The scenario is pretty straight forward.
This is the hierarchy of info:

States
Towns

Each state has many Towns

Each town has the following pages

profile
  - geography
  - population
  - demographics
leaders
budget
history
recycling
maps

Part of my issue, due to lack of experience, is really where to start.
My main confusion is how to associate the pages to correlate with each
state and town and how I would build the main navigation. The routing
and url structure I would like is
www.example.com/state/town/profile/geography. I have gone through many
of the normal tutorials, but I can seem to get a breakthrough mentally
on this.

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On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 11:25 AM, Chris Sciolla
<csciolla1-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Part of my issue, due to lack of experience, is really where to start.
I''m
> trying to learn what I should be doing first when starting a new project.
> I''m not sure exactly what should be models. I think my biggest
confusion, is
> how to handle the subpages. I want the RESTful urls to be
> www.example.com/state/town/profile/geography and so on.
If you have this structure in mind, why not write a test for that and
go from there? e.g. an rspec request test like

    it "responds to /california/idyllwild/profile/geography" do
      get "/california/idyllwild/profile/geography"
      response.status.should be(200)
    end

(You could use cucumber or some other framework, of course.)

Start with some reasonable model name - Town, Place, Location -
and see how that fits as you add tests describing what the app does.

HTH,
-- 
Hassan Schroeder ------------------------
hassan.schroeder-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org
http://about.me/hassanschroeder
twitter: @hassan

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On Jul 17, 2013, at 11:45 AM, Chris Sciolla
<lists-fsXkhYbjdPsEEoCn2XhGlw@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Hi all, first post! I have a question regarding where to start with a
> particular app I''m building. Hoping someone can set me on the
right
> path. The scenario is pretty straight forward.
> This is the hierarchy of info:
> 
> States
> Towns
> 
> Each state has many Towns
> 
> Each town has the following pages
> 
> profile
>  - geography
>  - population
>  - demographics
> leaders
> budget
> history
> recycling
> maps
> 
> Part of my issue, due to lack of experience, is really where to start.
> My main confusion is how to associate the pages to correlate with each
> state and town and how I would build the main navigation. The routing
> and url structure I would like is
> www.example.com/state/town/profile/geography. I have gone through many
> of the normal tutorials, but I can seem to get a breakthrough mentally
> on this.
Very first place I always start is "What problem does this solve for
whom?" and then start to ask "What tasks do they need to do? What
problems do they have in performing those tasks? How can I make something that
will help them do what they need to do?" Write user-centered stories of use
cases. These become your early acceptance tests. When you have all that, the
tasks and stories should lead to a navigation structure that will make sense to
the user.

If you think you have all this information already, present it here and give us
something to go on. Right now, you just have a collection of models, and we
don''t have a clue why.

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@tamouse_m, thank for your insight. Those are great questions and I''ll 
be sure to note them. So here are the best answers I have. In this 
particular situation, users are visiting static pages of information. 
There are no real dynamic tasks involved, just browsing pages and 
subpages.

In this case, a user will visit www.example.com. This root page lists 
all states included in the database. The user will click on a state, and 
that page will list all the towns, within that state, that are in the 
database. Next the user clicks a specific town link. On this particular 
page, there is a main navigation with each of the pages I originally 
listed in a navbar. Profiles has three subpages. In each of these pages, 
there is static HTML, that differs for each town, for viewing purposes 
only. So it''s fair to assume that these pages and subpages exist for 
each town. Nothing dynamic. On top of this, I would like a simple admin 
are where I can add new states, pages, and information to the 
pages/subpages as well.

This is easily handled by something like WordPress, because it''s a 
simple CMS tool. However, I want to use this particular example to learn 
more about RoR. Hopefully I''ve clearly stated the tasks involved in the
ux.

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On 19 July 2013 15:15, Chris Sciolla
<lists-fsXkhYbjdPsEEoCn2XhGlw@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> @tamouse_m, thank for your insight. Those are great questions and
I''ll
> be sure to note them. So here are the best answers I have. In this
> particular situation, users are visiting static pages of information.
> There are no real dynamic tasks involved, just browsing pages and
> subpages.
>
> In this case, a user will visit www.example.com. This root page lists
> all states included in the database. The user will click on a state, and
> that page will list all the towns, within that state, that are in the
> database. Next the user clicks a specific town link. On this particular
> page, there is a main navigation with each of the pages I originally
> listed in a navbar. Profiles has three subpages. In each of these pages,
> there is static HTML, that differs for each town, for viewing purposes
> only. So it''s fair to assume that these pages and subpages exist
for
> each town. Nothing dynamic. On top of this, I would like a simple admin
> are where I can add new states, pages, and information to the
> pages/subpages as well.
That all looks ok, so what is the question that you are asking?

I presume you have already worked right through a good tutorial on
rails, such as railstutorial.org, which is free to use online.  If not
then do so and you will understand the basics of Rails.

Colin

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I guess I just need to wrap my head around associations. That''s what
I''ve been reading more about and it seems like it''s taking me
down the
right path. What I''m still confused about, is how to separate the admin
side from the user side. I know there are gems for this, but I want to
understand the logic behind the way it works.

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I think when you say "static" html for the pages, you really want 
dynamically generated content. You need a simple template which presents 
the requested information with links up and down the chain.

The first thing you need to do, particularly if you have data to start 
off with, is sort out the database structure.

Once you''ve got your database links mapped, you know the page order as 
well: You start with an index which may or may not contain a search 
function.

The index contains, for example, rows of dynamically generated data and 
links. In this case, States. Each state links to another template 
populated with dynamically generated content: towns.

Once you plan the Model, the View should be obvious. After that you just 
need to start with the default view (index) in the Controller, and then 
you can let the database links guide your way through the different 
sub-pages.

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On Jul 19, 2013, at 8:41 AM, chris sc
<lists-fsXkhYbjdPsEEoCn2XhGlw@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> I guess I just need to wrap my head around associations. That''s
what
> I''ve been reading more about and it seems like it''s
taking me down the
> right path. What I''m still confused about, is how to separate the
admin
> side from the user side. I know there are gems for this, but I want to
> understand the logic behind the way it works.
> 
What I''d suggest in the latter case is a good long look at
active_admin; not necessarily to use, as you say, but to understand how one
implements such a thing. After you''ve perused it, you might decide
it''s okay to use, or roll your own (as you say this is primarily a
learning project).



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On Jul 19, 2013, at 7:15 AM, Chris Sciolla
<lists-fsXkhYbjdPsEEoCn2XhGlw@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> @tamouse_m, thank for your insight. Those are great questions and
I''ll
> be sure to note them. So here are the best answers I have. In this 
> particular situation, users are visiting static pages of information. 
> There are no real dynamic tasks involved, just browsing pages and 
> subpages.
> 
> In this case, a user will visit www.example.com. This root page lists 
> all states included in the database. The user will click on a state, and 
> that page will list all the towns, within that state, that are in the 
> database. Next the user clicks a specific town link. On this particular 
> page, there is a main navigation with each of the pages I originally 
> listed in a navbar. Profiles has three subpages. In each of these pages, 
> there is static HTML, that differs for each town, for viewing purposes 
> only. So it''s fair to assume that these pages and subpages exist
for
> each town. Nothing dynamic. On top of this, I would like a simple admin 
> are where I can add new states, pages, and information to the 
> pages/subpages as well.
> 
> This is easily handled by something like WordPress, because it''s a
> simple CMS tool. However, I want to use this particular example to learn 
> more about RoR. Hopefully I''ve clearly stated the tasks involved
in the
> ux.
I''m still unclear *why* a user would be browsing these pages. What
information are they looking for? What question does this information answer for
them? What sorts of things will they be able to do once they have this info?

The steps you list are necessary to outline, for sure, but why do you want/need
to put your user through them to get at the information they are seeking? That
is the important question to answer early, I think. If you think about it,
drilling down can be a very slow exercise for users, especially if they have a
slow network connection and have to wait for page loads, etc., even if your app
is serving up largely static data. Think about how your user is going to see
this and get right down the bone on what they need to see, and not put
operations in their way if not needed. I think, perhaps, you''ve spent
quite a bit of time thinking about how to organize the data, which is a good
thing, really, but not necessarily enough time yet thinking about how the user
would be best served in accessing it, which can be completely different than how
it''s persisted in the backend.





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