Sunday
Jul122009
Big Old Rails Template
Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 6:10AM
A few people have asked me about the Rails application template that I've put together recently. For those who are interested, it's now available for review and download as a gist. To use it, just specify the -m switch when creating a Rails application:
[sourcecode language='ruby']
rails new_app_name -m lark_template.rb
[/sourcecode]
I should warn you of two things. First, it's a pretty heavyweight template, sticking a lot of stuff into the new application. This suits me, because I have a lot of things I use in just about every application, but it may not suit you. Second, Rails templates are not one-size-fits-all; you'd be better off treating this as a starting point to steal from than a finished template to use (though if you want to use it, feel free).
Here's a list of what this template sets up:
Coding Tools
Database Tools
Deployment Tools
External Services
Testing Tools
[sourcecode language='ruby']
rails new_app_name -m lark_template.rb
[/sourcecode]
I should warn you of two things. First, it's a pretty heavyweight template, sticking a lot of stuff into the new application. This suits me, because I have a lot of things I use in just about every application, but it may not suit you. Second, Rails templates are not one-size-fits-all; you'd be better off treating this as a starting point to steal from than a finished template to use (though if you want to use it, feel free).
Here's a list of what this template sets up:
Coding Tools
- Authlogic for user authentication, including password resets, anonymous_only, authenticated_only, admin_only application helpers
- World's simplest authorization system: manage multiple string roles on users with User#add_role, User#remove_role, User#clear_roles, and User#has_role?
- Date formats: :us, :us_with_time, :short_day, :long_day
- live-validations for client-side JavaScript data entry validation. Add :live_validations => true to form_for declarations to hook this up.
- Paperclip for attachment management
- /pages/css_test will show most CSS styles in action
- Searchlogic for magic named scopes and search forms - http://rdoc.info/projects/binarylogic/searchlogic. Includes attribute_equals, attribute_does_not_equal, attribute_begins_with, attribute_like, attribute_ends_with, attribute_greater_than, attribute_null, attribute_blank etc. etc.
- Stringex for extra string functionality - acts_as_url, String#to_ascii, String#to_html, String#to_url, String#remove_formatting, String.random
- US State application helpers
- will-paginate for pagination
Database Tools
- Hooked up for PostgreSQL
- admin-data plugin for administrative UI. http://localhost:3000/admin_data will get you to the application's data. On production, only admin can view data, no one can edit (modify config/initializers/admin_data.rb to adjust this)
- db-populate for seed data
Deployment Tools
- fast_remote_cache strategy for deployment
- rubiadhstrano for deployment recipes; automatically uses multiple targets, so: cap production deploy for deployment to production
- superdeploy for additional Capistrano tasks. cap -T for full list.
External Services
- Exceptional for error tracking. Go to /pages/kaboom to test after finishing Exceptional setup.
- New Relic for performance tracking
Testing Tools
- Shoulda and Test::Unit for testing
- Mocha for mocking
- Object Daddy for factories
- Generated code is already covered by tests
- parallel-test for faster testing. rake test:parallel:prepare[2] to set up two test databases. rake test:parallel[2] to distribute tests across two cores
- rack-bug for request/response/perf analysis. http://localhost:3000/__rack_bug__/bookmarklet.html to add bookmarklet to browser.
- shmacros for additional Shoulda macros: should_accept_nested_attributes_for, should_act_as_taggable_on, should_callback, should_delegate, more
- More extra shoulda macros: should_have_before_filter, should_have_after_filter
- metric-fu for static code analysis. rake metrics:all, configure in Rakefile
- inaction-mailer is installed for development environment, so mails sent during dev will end up as files in /tmp/sent_mails
Reader Comments (5)
Hey Mike,
Nice recipe. You weren't kidding about the size :-)
For those interested in this recipe, but would like to customize it a bit further, take a look at beet: http://jackdempsey.github.com/beet I believe you linked to it the other day. It has some recipes built in, like authlogic, but could certainly benefit from some of these as well.
Thanks mike! I have been playing with some of the other metaframeworks out there, but I like your approach.
Mike,
I'll bite, what the heck is "rubiadhstrano". Google comes up with virtually nothing.
My bad, spelling mistake!
http://github.com/rubaidh/rubaidhstrano/tree/master
I must be a total moron for *just* realizing that BigOldRailsTemplate = BORT!