Capstone: A Complete, Working Flexible-Routing Site

Sam opens the site. Phusion Passenger's Apache module is handling the request directly, embedded in the same Apache process that's always run this domain. RAILS_MASTER_KEY on the server decrypts config/credentials.yml.enc at boot.

At the login form, Sam enters the legacy admin credential. AdminUser#authenticate — from has_secure_password — verifies it against the stored bcrypt hash, functionally compatible across the $2a$/$2y$ version-tag difference for an ordinary password. A successful login quietly regenerates the hash under Ruby's own $2a$ tag.

Through the hand-built admin interface, Sam creates programming, then general-purpose-languages, then java, then fundamentals, then chapter-1 — five real levels deep. Each save triggers the before_save :compute_full_path callback from Chapter 2, recomputing that page's own path from its new parent.

Visiting the full five-segment path, Chapter 3's get '*path' glob route resolves it in one line, Chapter 4's layout and breadcrumb_for helper render the page with its ancestry, and Chapter 5's Propshaft-served dark theme applies with no build step involved.

Sam edits the Chapter 1 page's title. Chapter 8's update_title action and Strong Parameters handle the submission — but this time, Chapter 9's before_action :require_admin is in place, checking session[:admin_user_id] before the action runs at all. Logged out, the identical request would now redirect to the login page instead.

Sam decides fundamentals belongs under a different parent. Chapter 10's move_to updates fundamentals' own full_path first, then update_descendant_paths! recurses down and updates chapter-1's path too — the real payment of the cascade cost Chapter 2 deliberately deferred at the very start of the course.

Sam tries to delete java, which still has fundamentals beneath it. Chapter 2's dependent: :restrict_with_error refuses the operation, and Chapter 10's destroy action reads the resulting page.errors directly — no exception-handling code needed, the genuine ergonomic payoff of the same application-level design that was named as a real limitation back in Chapter 2.

Sam visits the kanji page. Chapter 7's resolution holds: Ruby's own character-aware String methods never risked corrupting the multi-byte character, and the database's utf8mb4 encoding — defaulted automatically by rails new --database=mysql since Rails 5.2 — stores it correctly with no manual configuration ever needed.

Sam checks the server log while loading the breadcrumb-heavy Chapter 1 page. Chapter 6's .includes() is doing its job — batched queries instead of one per tree level, the same fix every sibling course's own database chapter applied to the identical deliberately-planted problem.

Sam confirms assets:precompile's output is being served correctly, and that Passenger is spawning Rails processes cleanly under Apache — the last confirmation in a series that's now rebuilt the same real site four separate times.