WebZone port to Rails

I have been using a product called WebZone since 2001. I built it to do what I want and have extended for me. It supports other users and sharing data with them but primarily it has always been for me.

Its primary goal is to allow me to collect information in one place and organize it. It does this with good support for drag and drop into the browser, JavaScript scriptlets that can add the current page to your WebZone account and the ability drag your information around your WebZone to relate it in anyway that you want.

WebZone on Java

At 5 years old it needs some serious re-writing. When I started it I was just getting into test first so it doesn't have many tests. It has no mock data so continuous testing is out.

Since Rails is getting so much press I have decided to try it our there.

Phase One. Allow a rails app to read and navigate a WebZone database.

Phase Two. Add edit feature.

Phase Three. Add delete feature.

Phase Four. Add create feature.

We are in Phase three and it is now deployed to

WebZone on Rails

So far so good.

The basic app was easy to create but I needed some ActiveRecord help from the XP Cincinnati team to get the database interface working nicely. Thanks to Jim Weirich.

With that part working, putting the rhtml files together to display the data was a snap.

A continuing problem is getting the controller tests working. So I am doing as much unit testing as possible but not being able to test the controller level is a serious problem. I am getting the error:

Exception: No url can be generated for the hash
 {:targetId=>"1", :controller=>"read", :action=>"item", :targetType=>"TableText"}
generated_code/routing/generation.rb:5:in `generate_default_path'
.../action_controller/routing.rb:419:in `send'
.../action_controller/routing.rb:419:in `generate_path'
.../action_controller/routing.rb:415:in `generate'
.../action_controller/routing.rb:602:in `extra_keys'
.../action_controller/test_process.rb:86:in `assign_parameters'
.../action_controller/test_process.rb:295:in `process'
.../action_controller/test_process.rb:307:in `get'
webzone3/test/functional/read_controller_test.rb:20:in `test_item'