Why views present data in Ruby on Rails - See It in Action

Why Views Present Data in Rails

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple Rails web app that shows a list of books. The data about books is stored in the controller, but you want to display it nicely on a web page.

🎯 Goal: Learn how views in Rails present data passed from the controller to show it on a web page.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of books data in the controller

Set a variable in the controller to hold the books

Use the view template to loop through the books and display their titles

Add a heading in the view to label the list

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Web apps often separate data logic (controller) from display logic (view) to keep code clean and manageable.

💼 Career

Understanding how views present data is essential for building user interfaces in Rails web development jobs.

1

DATA SETUP: Create a list of books in the controller

In the BooksController, create a variable called @books and set it to an array with these exact strings: 'The Hobbit', '1984', 'Brave New World'.

Ruby on Rails

class BooksController < ApplicationController
  def index
    # Create @books array with 'The Hobbit', '1984', 'Brave New World'
  end
end

Need a hint?

Use @books = [ ... ] inside the index method.

2

CONFIGURATION: Prepare the view template

Create a file called index.html.erb in the app/views/books/ folder. Inside it, add a heading with <h1>Book List</h1>.

Ruby on Rails

Book List

Need a hint?

Use an <h1> tag with the text 'Book List'.

3

CORE LOGIC: Display the books in the view

In index.html.erb, below the heading, add a <ul> list. Use <% @books.each do |book| %> to loop through @books. Inside the loop, add <li><%= book %></li>. Close the loop with <% end %>.

Ruby on Rails

Book List

   -->

Need a hint?

Use ERB tags to loop and display each book inside <li> tags.

4

COMPLETION: Confirm the view renders the book list

Ensure the BooksController#index action renders the index.html.erb view that shows the heading and the list of books.

Ruby on Rails

# Confirm the controller action and view are connected properly
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Make sure the controller and view code are present together to show the data.