Action Pack

Action Pack -- From request to response

Action Pack is a framework for handling and responding to web requests. It provides mechanisms for routing (mapping request URLs to actions), defining controllers that implement actions, and generating responses. In short, Action Pack provides the controller layer in the MVC paradigm.

It consists of several modules:

• Action Dispatch, which parses information about the web request, handles routing as defined by the user, and does advanced processing related to HTTP such as MIME-type negotiation, decoding parameters in POST, PATCH, or PUT bodies, handling HTTP caching logic, cookies and sessions.

• Action Controller, which provides a base controller class that can be subclassed to implement filters and actions to handle requests. The result of an action is typically content generated from views.

With Rails, users only directly interface with the Action Controller module. Necessary Action Dispatch functionality is activated by default and Action View rendering is implicitly triggered by Action Controller.

AbstractController

AbstractController is a base class in Rails that provides the core functionalities needed for any type of controller, including rendering and layout support, view paths, and callback hooks. AbstractController alone doesn't know how to handle HTTP requests.

ActionController::Base, inherited from AbstractController, is specifically tailored for handling HTTP requests in a web application. It adds functionalities like request and response handling, sessions, cookies, and much more.

The relationship between AbstractController and ActionController is that of a generalisation-specialisation (or base-derived) relationship.

ActionController

Action Controllers are the core of a web request in Rails. They are made up of one or more actions that are executed on request and then either it renders a template or redirects to another action.

An ActionController is made up of one or more actions that are executed on request and then either it renders a template or redirects to another action. An action is defined as a public method on the controller, which will automatically be made accessible to the web-server through Rails Routes.

ApplicationController

By default, only the ApplicationController in a Rails application inherits from ActionController::Base. All other controllers inherit from ApplicationController.

ApplicationController is a central controller class that you define in your Rails application to include shared functionality across all of your controllers. This gives you one class to configure things such as request forgery protection and filtering of sensitive request parameters.

The ApplicationController source code is in a Rails application project folder. % 在 Rails 的source code 文件夾裡面找不到一個 ApplicationController 文件，因為它是被 rails new 生成出一個 app 代碼結構後才產生的。20231219 %

Action

An action is defined as a public method on the controller, which will automatically be made accessible to the web-server through Rails Routes.

Actions, by default, render a template in the app/views directory corresponding to the name of the controller and action after executing code in the action. For example, the index action of the PostsController would render the template app/views/posts/index.html.erb by default after populating the @posts instance variable.

Unlike index, the create action will not render a template. After performing its main purpose (creating a new post), it initiates a redirect instead. This redirect works by returning an external 302 Moved HTTP response that takes the user to the index action. These two methods represent the two basic action archetypes used in Action Controllers: Get-and-show and do-and-redirect. Most actions are variations on these themes.

Requests

For every request, the router determines the value of the controller and action keys. These determine which controller and action are called.

The remaining request parameters, the session (if one is available), and the full request with all the HTTP headers are made available to the action through accessor methods. Then the action is performed.

Parameters

All request parameters, whether they come from a query string in the URL or form data submitted through a POST request are available through the params method which returns a hash.

There are two kinds of parameters possible in a web application.

The first are parameters that are sent as part of the URL, called query string parameters. The query string is everything after "?" in the URL. % I call it "Query parameters" or even "GET parameters". %

The second type of parameter, usually referred to as POST data, comes from an HTML form which has been filled in by the user. It's called POST data because it can only be sent as part of an HTTP POST request. % I call it "POST parameters". %

Rails does not make any distinction between the two kinds of parameters, and both are available in the params hash in your controller.

Sessions

Sessions allow you to store objects in between requests. This is useful for objects that are not yet ready to be persisted, such as a Signup object constructed in a multi-paged process, or objects that don't change much and are needed all the time, such as a User object for a system that requires login.

The session should not be used, however, as a cache for objects where it's likely they could be changed unknowingly. It's usually too much work to keep it all synchronised – something databases already excel at.

By default, sessions are stored in an encrypted browser cookie (see ActionDispatch::Session::CookieStore). Thus the user will not be able to read or edit the session data. However, the user can keep a copy of the cookie even after it has expired, so you should avoid storing sensitive information in cookie-based sessions.

Responses

Each action results in a response, which holds the headers and document to be sent to the browser. The actual response object is generated automatically through the use of renders and redirects and requires no user intervention.

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