At present, this is a brand new, blank Rails application. The specifications (specs, for short) for the application — in other words, the URLs that we need to build — are below. The URLs will look like /flexible/square_root/42, and the page will display the square root of the number at the end.
The difference between these URLs and the ones we’ve seen before is that they are flexible, not literal. So rather than always going to URLs that we, the developers, exactly define in advance; users can visit URLs with parts that they make up — as long as those URLs fit patterns that we allow. Then, we will be able to examine what the users typed in the URL and use that as we craft our response.
In other words, dynamic URLs allow for user input. Let’s make them work, one at a time.
If I visit a URL of the pattern:
/flexible/square/[ANY INTEGER]
I should see the square of the number in the third segment of the path. I should be able to enter any integer in the third segment of the path; but not a decimal number (since if you have a dot in a URL, Rails will interpret what comes after it as a file extension/format).
If I visit http://[YOUR APP DOMAIN]/flexible/square/5, I should see something like:
{"number":42,"square":1764}
Depending on what browser you’re using or whether you’re using something like the JSONView Chrome Extension, you might see something formatted more nicely like:
{
number: 42,
square: 1764
}
To make a path segment flexible, start it off with a colon in your route:
get("/flexible/square/:the_number", { :controller => "application", :action => "flex_square" })
Then, whatever value the user types in that segment of the path will be placed into a special Hash that Rails creates and names params. The value will be stored under the key :the_number, since that’s what we labeled that segment in the route.
In other words, if you now visit http://[YOUR APP DOMAIN]/flexible/square/42, then you will be routed into the flex_square action and along with a Hash called params that looks like this:
{ "the_number" => 42 }
After adding such a route and action, try visiting that URL and watch your server log as you do it.
Now, in our action (in this case, we named the method flex_square) we can .fetch the key "the_number" from the special Hash named params that Rails creates for us containing all user input. Usually we’ll throw the value into a variable, do whatever processing we need on it, and then finally display some output to the user as usual using the render() method.
If I visit a URL of the pattern:
/flexible/square_root/[ANY INTEGER]
I should see the square root of the integer in the third segment of the path.
If I visit http://[YOUR APP DOMAIN]/flexible/square_root/8, I should see something like:
{
number: 8,
square: 2.8284271247461903
}
If I visit a URL of the pattern
/flexible/random/[MIN]/[MAX]
I should see a random number that falls between the integers in the third and fourth segments of the path.
If I visit http://[YOUR APP DOMAIN]/flexible/random/50/100, I should see something like
{
min: 50,
max: 100,
random: 84
}
All of the above should work no matter what integers I type into the flexible segments of the path.
Remember:
params hash.params hash in your actions as you would any Hash; .keys, .fetch, etc.params hash contains for any given request.Now, let’s build something a little more realistic. Restricting to integer inputs is not very useful for most calculations — how would we allow decimal inputs? We’ve seens the technique before when we were using the Google Maps API — query strings. This is the part of the URL that, optionally, comes after the path; it starts with a ? and then has a list of key/value pairs. It’s basically the URL version of a Hash; this:
?sport=hockey&dessert=cookies
is the query string version of this:
{ :sport => "hockey", :dessert => "cookies" }
in Ruby. Try copying the above query string and pasting it onto the end of any functional URL in your app, press return, and watch the server log as you do so. What do you observe?
The information ends up in the params hash automatically! No need to modify the route at all. Interesting…
Use that to build the following endpoints:
http://[YOUR APP DOMAIN]/square/results?input_number=42.42
{
number: 42.42,
square: 1799.4564
}
http://[YOUR APP DOMAIN]/square_root/results?input_number=8.3
{
number: 42.42,
square_root: 2.8809720581775866
}
http://[YOUR APP DOMAIN]/random/results?input_min=3.14&input_max=9.99
{
min: 3.14,
max: 9.99,
random: 5.3403
}
http://[YOUR APP DOMAIN]/payment/results?input_apr=4.35&input_years=30&input_pv=235000
{
purchase_price: 235000,
apr: 4.35,
years: 30,
monthly_payment: 1169.86
}
Use the formula seen in the image located at /public/payment_formula.gif to calculate the monthly payment. Remember to keep your units straight — we want a monthly payment, but the interest rate and term are given in years.