being a very early beginner I want to build my first little rails app.
I want to show the users (my co-workers) the menu table of our
catering service.
We can choose between five different dishes, some salads and desserts
every day.
Looking through all the (quite good) tutorials on the Internet I could
not find a similar task - meaning a similar data structure.
Is there anybody who can give me an idea for the data model I shoud
use.
I don’t have any experience with Rails that makes me find a proper
solution. Is there a way to define "Menu[1…n], Salad [1…m], Dessert
[1…i] for each day in an elegant way?
Looking through all the (quite good) tutorials on the Internet I could
not find a similar task - meaning a similar data structure.
Is there anybody who can give me an idea for the data model I shoud
use.
I don’t have any experience with Rails that makes me find a proper
solution. Is there a way to define "Menu[1…n], Salad [1…m], Dessert
[1…i] for each day in an elegant way?
Hi there,
Honestly, one of the best ways for you to map out your data model is
to break down each element in your menu (assuming you have an existing
physical one) to get a clear picture. What does a Menu consist of?
What does a Menu Item consist? Are there different types of menu
items? Does each menu item have a name, description, and price?
Perhaps I helped you out a bit there, but that’s really the best place
to start. Don’t think about the technical relationships until you
answer those types of questions. While doing it, you’ll see that your
data model will evolve organically.
Another tip, start with the easiest thing to model, which my guess
would be the Menu itself (sans-menu items). You can have an empty Menu
with your catering business information to start (name of business,
address, etc…). Then think about what needs to go inside of it and
begin to evolve your data model over time. This is also how you might
consider developing the application. Build it in small pieces and
evolve it as you go. This is one of the things that Rails encourages
you to do.
Keep it simple!
Cheers,
Robby
Robby R.
Chief Evangelist, Partner
PLANET ARGON, LLC
design // development // hosting w/Ruby on Rails
I wanted to establish a “meal” model consisting of title, ingridients,
default price, calories etc.)
and then have some kind of “schedule” with rows “menu 1…5” for each
day.
Then I want to fill the meals database with each schedule until all
the meals are in the database (over the weeks and months meals will
repeat)
then the administrator (me) digitaliezes the schedules by for example
choosing “Soljanka” for Wednsday and “Menu1”.
when the schedule is in the database my co-workers can choose their
meal for each day. - if theay want far in advance.
the night before each day the system shoud generate a list like
"Dear caterer,
plase send us today (05.01.2009) the following meals
1 x Menu 1 (Soljanka)
2 x Menu 3 (Szegediner Gulasch)
best regards
your happy customers"
and send it by email or fax.
That’s all! I don’t want to extend the system further - it shall just
replace the pen-and-paepr solution because sometimes we forget to
collect the orders and send them away.
A funny part would be if we can later harvest data about our
favourites but that’s not part of my current demand for a data
structure.
I chose this very simple task for learning efficient rails
development, I do not intend to become a rails guru - just want to
automate small things in our office.
Christoph
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