User Microposts

Chapter 9 saw the completion of the REST actions for the Users resource, so the time has finally come to add a second full resource: user microposts. 1 These are short messages associated with a particular user, first seen in larval form in Chapter 2. In this chapter, we will make a full-strength version of the sketch from Section 2.3 by constructing the Micropost data model, associating it with the User model using the has_many and belongs_to methods, and then making the forms and partials needed to manipulate and display the results. In Chapter 11, we’ll complete our tiny Twitter clone by adding the notion of following users in order to receive a feed of their microposts.

                 If you’re using Git for version control, I suggest making a topic branch as usual:

  A Micropost Model

We begin the Microposts resource by creating a Micropost model, which captures the essential characteristics of microposts. What follows builds on the work from Section 2.3; as with the model in that section, our new Micropost model will include data validations and an association with the User model. Unlike that model, the present Micropost model will be fully tested and will also have a default ordering and automatic destruction if its parent user is destroyed.