Seeing a Rails App Develop From Looking at Git Changes

I’m deep diving into Ruby on Rails this week. One of the things I find interesting is how the scaffolding creates new parts of a Rails app. This is a helpful tool for understanding the stack so I’m stepping through it looking at the changes made which we can see better with git.

Below is a step by step view of the files created when developing a new Rails App. 

Stepping Through Rails and Watching Git Changes

rails new appName

  • git status => All code related to Ruby on Rails

appName => bundle update

  • git status => No changes

appName => bundle install

  • git status => No changes

appName => bin/rails generate controller name_of_controller

  • git status =>
    • app/assets/javascripts/ian.coffee
    • app/assets/stylesheets/ian.scss
    • app/controllers/ian_controller.rb
    • app/helpers/ian_helper.rb
    • test/controllers/ian_controller_test.rb

Note: git changes do NOT note that when generating a new controller, Rails also generates an empty views folder. This is an important thing to be aware of as your view templates will go here related to your new controller.

appName => bin/rails generate model name_of_model title:string body:text slug:string

  • git status =>
    • app/models/tree.rb
    • db/migrate/
    • test/fixtures/trees.yml
    • test/models/tree_test.rb

Creates the new files needed to maintain a model, it’s test data and test process.

appName => bin/rails db:migrate

  • git status =>
    • db/schema.rb

This process specifically reflects your new model’s functionality with the database.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.