Rails resource vs Rails scaffold

What’s the difference between a scaffold and resource in Ruby on Rails? Essentially, the only difference is that the views (and associated layout and css file) for index, show, new and edit are created. The output when generating both the scaffold and the resource (with the command line generator) are shown below.

Also, both are created as RESTful resources, which means the “map.resources” line is included in the routes.rb file. This line is shown in the Rails output below.

rails -v
Rails 2.3.3

ruby script/generate resource Resource first_name:string last_name:string
      exists  app/models/
      exists  app/controllers/
      exists  app/helpers/
      create  app/views/resources
      exists  test/functional/
      exists  test/unit/
      create  test/unit/helpers/
  dependency  model
      exists    app/models/
      exists    test/unit/
      exists    test/fixtures/
      create    app/models/resource.rb
      create    test/unit/resource_test.rb
      create    test/fixtures/resources.yml
      create    db/migrate
      create    db/migrate/20091229144907_create_resources.rb
      create  app/controllers/resources_controller.rb
      create  test/functional/resources_controller_test.rb
      create  app/helpers/resources_helper.rb
      create  test/unit/helpers/resources_helper_test.rb
       route  map.resources :resources

This RailsGuides link shows a description for each file produced when generating a resource.

ruby script/generate scaffold Scaffold title:string order:integer
      exists  app/models/
      exists  app/controllers/
      exists  app/helpers/
      create  app/views/scaffolds
      exists  app/views/layouts/
      exists  test/functional/
      exists  test/unit/
      exists  test/unit/helpers/
      exists  public/stylesheets/
      create  app/views/scaffolds/index.html.erb
      create  app/views/scaffolds/show.html.erb
      create  app/views/scaffolds/new.html.erb
      create  app/views/scaffolds/edit.html.erb
      create  app/views/layouts/scaffolds.html.erb
      create  public/stylesheets/scaffold.css
      create  app/controllers/scaffolds_controller.rb
      create  test/functional/scaffolds_controller_test.rb
      create  app/helpers/scaffolds_helper.rb
      create  test/unit/helpers/scaffolds_helper_test.rb
       route  map.resources :scaffolds
  dependency  model
      exists    app/models/
      exists    test/unit/
      exists    test/fixtures/
      create    app/models/scaffold.rb
      create    test/unit/scaffold_test.rb
      create    test/fixtures/scaffolds.yml
      exists    db/migrate
      create    db/migrate/20091229145313_create_scaffolds.rb

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 10:18 AM and is filed under Insights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.