So far in this guided tour I’ve ignored the primary purpose of a Rails application — implementing a web database application. Although Track Magic allows you to view and work with your data without using the Rails web interface, it is intended as a supplement to the web interface, not a replacement. Let me show you how Track Magic operation interacts with Rails normal web interface. For this demonstration I’ll continue with the donors table I just created (see Creating a New App).
There is no need to fire up Terminal.app to launch the Mongrel web server from the shell, I simply choose the Start Mongrel from a submenu in the Rails menu.
After a short delay Track Magic lets me know the server is running. (If I don’t want to bother with launching Mongrel at all I can ask Track Magic to start it automatically when I open this Panorama database. See Working with Mongrel for more information.)
Once the server is running I can choose the Index command (from the Open Rails Web Page submenu of the Rails menu) to open Safari and view the application using the Rails web code.
At the bottom of the standard Rails index page is a link for creating a new record in the table.
The browser flps to the new page.
I fill in the blanks and press the Create button to add the new donor.
Since Track Magic is fully integrated with Rails, I can easily bring up this new record in my Panorama data sheet. I simply choose Download Data from Rails from the Rails menu and the new record appears at the bottom of the sheet.
Continue the Tour —> Addresses & Labels