This is the second, and final, post in the series about starting off on a Rails application. In the first post the basis for a “Planets” application was created. I ended up with a database (model) and a functioning mechanism around that database that let me create, edit, and delete records (views). All of that was knitted together into a working application by a controller. However, those views have no validation on them. That means the database is not protected from bad data. I’ll fix that here and then focus a lot on how Rails apps are tested.

Many testers these days will find themselves in Rails shops and, even if that’s not the case, Rails is a good environment within which to build custom test solutions that require a database and a web interface. This is largely because when using Rails, you are using one of the most concise and expressive languages out there: Ruby. I plan to document some of my learning of the Rails ecosystem in two posts.