Scaffolding question

elricstorm · June 6, 2009, 4:01am

I’m starting to get involved with models in rails and so I need to make
sure I understand exactly what I’m trying to do. Let’s look at a quick
example:

One table that I will be creating is a rushing_offense table for
football. It has the following columns in the tables:

name (string)
games (fixnum)
carries (fixnum)
net (fixnum)
avg (float)
tds (fixnum)
ydspg (float)
wins (fixnum)
losses (fixnum)
ties (fixnum)

When I create the scaffold and setup the hash pairs the migration that
is created appears like this:

class CreateRushingOffenses < ActiveRecord::Migration
def self.up
create_table :rushing_offenses do |t|
t.string :name
t.fixnum :games
t.fixnum :carries
t.fixnum :net
t.float :avg
t.fixnum :tds
t.float :ydspg
t.fixnum :wins
t.fixnum :losses
t.fixnum :ties

  t.timestamps
end

end

def self.down
drop_table :rushing_offenses
end
end

The question I have is regarding the column name. I’ve looked at some
other migration templates (namely those in the authentication system)
and for the users model/migration, it shows something along the lines
of:

class CreateUsers < ActiveRecord::Migration
def self.up
create_table “users”, :force => true do |t|
t.column :login, :string, :limit => 40
t.column :name, :string, :limit => 100,
:default => ‘’, :null => true
t.column :email, :string, :limit => 100
t.column :crypted_password, :string, :limit => 40
t.column :salt, :string, :limit => 40
t.column :created_at, :datetime
t.column :updated_at, :datetime
t.column :remember_token, :string, :limit => 40
t.column :remember_token_expires_at, :datetime

end
add_index :users, :login, :unique => true

end

def self.down
drop_table “users”
end
end

So, should my migration be showing t.column instead of t.type? I’m not
clear on the differences between this or how I would dictate with the
generator that a column should be forced (or even if it’s necessary).

Many thanks in advance.

elricstorm · June 6, 2009, 4:10am

The first scaffold table should look like this: (not what I posted)

class CreateRushingOffenses < ActiveRecord::Migration
def self.up
create_table :rushing_offenses do |t|
t.string :name
t.integer :games
t.integer :carries
t.integer :net
t.float :avg
t.integer :tds
t.float :ydspg
t.integer :wins
t.integer :losses
t.integer :ties

  t.timestamps
end

end

def self.down
drop_table :rushing_offenses
end
end

elricstorm · June 6, 2009, 5:31am

The “integer”, “string” and “float” methods are just shorthands for
the column call using that type.

It’s also the “new way” (new since Rails 2, not that new now) of
writing migrations. And the “timestamps” will create both a created_at
and also an updated_at column.

Maurício Linhares
http://alinhavado.wordpress.com/ (pt-br) |
http://codeshooter.wordpress.com/ (en)

elricstorm · June 6, 2009, 5:47am

If crawling through the NCAA website is something that you want to
automate, as “crawl daily at 12 pm” you can create a rake task in your
Rails application that calls this code and then put the rake task to
be run as a cron job:

#ncaa_crawler.rake at /lib/tasks

rake :ncaa_crawler => :environment do
#here goes the code that gets the NCAA data
#and saves it into the database
end

The :environment thing tells Rake that it should load the rails
application before executing the task, so all objects defined in your
Rails application will be available, like your ActiveRecord models.

This code you have shown should be placed into a class in your
application and be called on this rake task.

MaurÃcio Linhares
http://alinhavado.wordpress.com/ (pt-br) |
http://codeshooter.wordpress.com/ (en)

elricstorm · June 6, 2009, 6:13am

Thanks again Mauricio, I will look into trying this out. Is the rake
task able to be defined periodically by a weekday? For instance, if I
want the job to only pull data on a Monday (is that feasible)?

elricstorm · June 6, 2009, 5:38am

MaurÃcio Linhares wrote:

The “integer”, “string” and “float” methods are just shorthands for
the column call using that type.

It’s also the “new way” (new since Rails 2, not that new now) of
writing migrations. And the “timestamps” will create both a created_at
and also an updated_at column.

Maurï¿½cio Linhares
http://alinhavado.wordpress.com/ (pt-br) |
http://codeshooter.wordpress.com/ (en)

Thanks Mauricio - I actually like it better than having to do things a
long way. Anything shorter is better, IMO. I appreciate the
explanation.

I have one more question…

I’ve created a ruby program that actually parses raw statistics from the
main NCAA web site, which I want to bring into my own database.

So, using the example above… here’s an example of the parser I created:

#== Scraper Version 1.0

#Created By: Elricstorm

_Special thanks to Soledad Penades for his initial parse idea which I

worked with to create the Scraper program.

His article is located at

http://www.iterasi.net/openviewer.aspx?sqrlitid=wd5wiad-hkgk93aw8zidbw_

require ‘hpricot’
require ‘open-uri’

This class is used to parse and collect data out of an html element

class Scraper
attr_accessor :url, :element_type, :clsname, :childsearch, :doc,
:numrows

Define what the url is, what element type and class name we want to

parse and open the url.
def initialize(url, element_type, clsname, childsearch)
@url = url
@element_type = element_type
@clsname = clsname
@childsearch = childsearch
@doc = Hpricot(open(url))
@numrows = numrows
end

Scrape data based on the type of element, its class name, and define

the child element that contains our data
def scrape_data

@rows = []

(doc/"#{@element_type}.#{@clsname}#{@childsearch}").each do |row|
  cells = []
  (row/"td").each do |cell|

      if (cell/" span.s").length > 0
            values = (cell/"span.s").inner_html.split('<br

/>‘).collect{ |str|
pair = str.strip.split(’=').collect{|val| val.strip}
Hash[pair[0], pair[1]]
}

          if(values.length==1)
            cells << cell.inner_text.strip
          else
            cells << values.strip
          end

      elsif
          cells << cell.inner_text.strip
      end
  end
  @rows << cells
end
@rows.shift # Shifting removes the row containing the <th> table

header elements.
@rows.delete([]) # Remove any empty rows in our array of arrays.
@numrows = @rows.length
end

def clean_celldata
@rows[@numrows-1][0] = 120
end

Print a joined list by row to see our results

def print_values
puts “Number of rows = #{numrows}.”
for i in 0…@numrows-1
puts @rows[i].join(', ')
end
end

This method will be used to further process collected data

def process_values
File.open(“testdata.txt”, “w”) do |f|
for i in 0…@numrows-1
f.puts @rows[i].join(', ')
end
end
puts “Processing completed.”
end
end

In our search we are supplying the website url to parse, the type of

element (ex: table), the class name of that element

and the child element that contains the data we wish to retrieve.

offensive_rushing =
Scraper.new(‘http://web1.ncaa.org/mfb/natlRank.jsp?year=2008&rpt=IA_teamrush&site=org’,
‘table’, ‘statstable’, ‘//tr’)
offensive_rushing.scrape_data
offensive_rushing.clean_celldata
offensive_rushing.print_values
offensive_rushing.process_values

So, the other question I have is how do I tie in the mechanics of a
regular ruby program into rails? For instance, the ruby program I wrote
requires hpricot…

I just need a bit of guidance (I catch on fast)…

Someone can run the program I included to see how it outputs…

elricstorm · June 6, 2009, 6:17am

That’s not really related to the rake task, it’s a cron config (i’m
guessing that you’re on Linux or some kind of OS that has the cron
utility).

You can google about cron and config it the way you want. Then cron
will call your rake task as needed.

Maurício Linhares
http://alinhavado.wordpress.com/ (pt-br) |
http://codeshooter.wordpress.com/ (en)

elricstorm · June 6, 2009, 6:20am

Thanks for the information. I have a dual-developing platform (windows
and linux) but my host is on linux…