One model or many for a multistep form?

Rails
1

Hey fellas,

I am trying to put together a small app to help my university accept
applications for one of its summer programs. Currently, they send you an
application, you print it, you fill it, scan it, then send it back! We
can’t tolerate this in a world of Rails.

Anyway, so the giant form has personal information section, language
information section (The biggest part, about a page and a half, this
checks
your current level of Arabic), and a track information section that
presents you all tracks and their fees and schedules for you to choose
from. I am putting each section into its own step so the form will
navigate
three steps.

Now, my question is, wouldnt it make more sense to break these into
different models? One “application” model will be too big. For some
reason
I can’t reason about how to do this. What would the other models be?
Does
it make sense to have a “language information” model that belongs to
some
student’s application?

Thanks for your help.

2

Hey folks,

Nobody faced this issue before? I am surprised. Or was my description
not
very clear? In any case I am doing the entire thing in one model then
see
how it works out.

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 11:49 AM, why-el [email protected]
wrote:

presents you all tracks and their fees and schedules for you to choose

–
Mohamed Wael Khobalatte

3

Hey,

you can simply create new actions and put forms there.
If you have steps like
Personal, School

you could just set the attributes of personal in the personal form and
on
the next page you just set the attributes of School.

but i guess you mean wizarding a controller - check this out:

Greetings,
Crispin

Am Freitag, 21. Dezember 2012 16:01:06 UTC+1 schrieb why-el:

4

Hey!

That’s actually a great answer, and thats I what I generally started
doing.
I looked at all the info I have and asked myself: “Which of these sets
of
information would an admin want to manage?”. From there for instance I
thought about making a track model so that admins can easily add/delete
as
many tracks as they want, and so on.

I did however put applicant as belonging to a track and not has one.
This
has always confused me. Any idea why you want with a has_one
relationship
there?

On Sat, Dec 22, 2012 at 1:52 PM, tamouse mailing lists <
[email protected]> wrote:

Now, my question is, wouldnt it make more sense to break these into

Fluency Test might be:
Track might be:
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–
Mohamed Wael Khobalatte

5

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 5:49 AM, why-el [email protected]
wrote:

make sense to have a “language information” model that belongs to some
student’s application?

Generally speaking, Models would correspond to how you would use the
information collected. You might wish to look at generalizing this
application a bit.

so, there might be an “Applicant” model, a “Language Fluency” model,
which might be composed of language “Questions”, a “Fluency Test” and
“Answers” models, and then there seems to be a “Track” model.

Applicant might be:
– Name(s)
– Address
– phone
– email
… etc

has_one: Track
has_one: Fluency Test

Language Fluency might be:
– has_many: Questions

Questions might be:
– belongs_to Lanugage Fluency
– question text

Fluency Test might be:
– belongs_to: Applicant
– has_many: Answers
– date completed
– …

Answers might be:
– belongs_to: Fluency Test
– answer text
– score /* ? */

Track might be:
– title
– fee
– schedule /* (?) (not sure what you meant by schedule) */

anyway, that’s the sort of way I’d approach it.

6

On Sat, Dec 22, 2012 at 1:56 PM, Mohamed Wael Khobalatte
[email protected] wrote:

there?
(Bottom posting…)

putting each section into its own step so the form will navigate three
Generally speaking, Models would correspond to how you would use the
– phone
– belongs_to Lanugage Fluency
– answer text
– score /* ? */

Track might be:
– title
– fee
– schedule /* (?) (not sure what you meant by schedule) */

anyway, that’s the sort of way I’d approach it.

On Sat, Dec 22, 2012 at 1:56 PM, Mohamed Wael Khobalatte
[email protected] wrote:

I did however put applicant as belonging to a track and not has one. This
has always confused me. Any idea why you want with a has_one relationship
there?

Not really understanding your application, and therefore your models,
I just made a guess. It could be possible that you want this to go the
other way, sure, depending on your needs and how you want to manage
things. If Tracks have many Applicants, and an Applicant belongs to a
Track, then yes, reverse the sense of the relationship.