Building a Knowledge Base with Rails: Categories and Articles
Building a knowledge base is an essential requirement for many websites, providing an organized collection of information that users can refer to. In this article, we will discuss how to create such a system using Rails, focusing on categories and articles as the main components.
Categories
Categories are used to classify articles and provide a structured organization for the knowledge base. In Rails, we can create a Category
model using the following command:
rails generate model Category name:string
This will generate a migration file that defines the categories
table in the database with a name
field. We can then run the migration to create the table:
rails db:migrate
Once the model and database are set up, we can create, edit, and delete categories through Rails controllers and views.
Articles
Articles contain the actual content of the knowledge base. In Rails, we can create an Article
model with the following command:
rails generate model Article title:string content:text category_id:integer
This will generate a migration file that defines the articles
table with title
, content
, and category_id
fields. The category_id
field establishes a relationship between articles and categories, allowing articles to be associated with specific categories.
We can run the migration to create the articles
table:
rails db:migrate
To display articles, we can create views that list all articles or filter articles by category. By leveraging Rails’ routing and controllers, we can implement features like article search, pagination, and related articles.
Conclusion
In this article, we explored the process of building a knowledge base with Rails, focusing on categories and articles as the main elements. By defining categories and establishing relationships between articles and categories, we can create an organized information architecture that aids users in accessing and retrieving relevant knowledge efficiently.

Image: Example of a knowledge base interface
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