---
goals do
message <<-MARKDOWN
At the core, most database driven web sites are the same. They need to store records and provide a way to do the following:
* **C**reate new records in the database
* **R**ead or show the records in the database
* **U**pdate existing records
* **D**estroy or delete records
Because these 4 actions (CRUD) are so common, Rails includes the scaffold command to make creating them easier.
MARKDOWN
end
steps do
step do
console "rails server -b 0.0.0.0"
cloud9_instruction do
console "rails server -b $IP -p $PORT"
end
end
step do
message "Point your browser to [http://localhost:3000/topics](http://localhost:3000/topics)"
cloud9_instruction do
span ' add "/topics" to the end of the url you are previewing'
end
message 'You should see the "Listing Topics" page with headers for title and description, and a link to add a new topic:'
img src: "img/Seattle_topic_list_page.png", alt: "Screenshot of topic list page"
end
step do
message <<-MARKDOWN
* Click on "New Topic"
* Fill in the form and click "Create Topic"
* You should see a page showing your new topic with a message that your topic was successfully created:
MARKDOWN
img alt: "Screenshot of topic detail page with confirmation message", src: "img/Seattle_topic_created.png"
end
step do
message <<-MARKDOWN
* Click on "Back"
* You should see the topic list again, this time with your new topic listed:

* Try the "show", "edit", and "destroy" links to see what they do
* You've created a basic database-driven web site. Congratulations!
MARKDOWN
end
end
explanation do
message <<-MARKDOWN
How did all those pages get created and hooked together? `rails scaffold` did it for you.
Let's take a closer look at some of the files Rails created:
* `app/models/topic.rb`
* This file contains code for our topic model. If you look at it,
it's nearly blank. Creating, reading, updating, and deleting
records are built into Rails.
* `app/views/topics`
* This folder contains all the views for our topics model. This is
where the code for the forms you used above is stored. Rails
created all of these pages as part of the scaffold.
* If you've written HTML before, many lines in the views should
look familiar. Rails views are HTML with some extra code added
to display data from the database.
* `app/views/topics/index.html.erb`
* This is the code for the page that lists all the topics.
* Index is the name given to the "default" page for a web site or a
section of a web site. When you navigate to
http://localhost:3000/topics the topics index page is what is
sent to your computer.
* `app/views/topics/show.html.erb`
* This is the page you get when you click the "show" link on the
"Listing topics" page.
* `app/views/topics/new.html.erb`
* This is the page you get when you click on "New Topic".
* `app/views/topics/edit.html.erb`
* This is the page you get when you click on "Edit"
* `app/views/topics/_form.html.erb`
* You may have noticed that the page for new topics and the page
to edit topics looked similar. That's because they both use the
code from this file to show a form. This file is called a
partial since it only contains code for part of a page. Partials
always have filenames starting with an underscore character.
* Challenge question: Can you find the line of code in `new.html.erb`
and `edit.html.erb` that makes the form partial appear?
* `app/controllers/topics_controller.rb`
* This is the controller file that Rails created as part of the scaffold
* If you look you'll see a method (a line beginning with
`def`) for each of the views listed above (except
`_form.html.erb`)
MARKDOWN
end
next_step "setting_the_default_page"