Rails App Template
I start a lot of projects. More than I’d like to admit. I finish and deploy very few, but I like cranking out the first iteration of an app in a weekend. Sometimes I do it just to learn some new feature, or try out an architecture idea. I don’t like to do this in the context of whatever existing app I’m working on, because I don’t want any baggage of whatever I was thinking last week. Last week is too long ago.
I’ve had this technique validated by my former boss Ward Cunningham. He (famously) worked with Kent Beck at Tektronix and they were research partners. During this time, they came up with lots of really great ideas, design patterns, and methodologies. And the technique they used for exploration went something like this (paraphrased from Ward):
Kent and I would get to work in the morning, and we’d just start writing code. If it went well, we might right code all morning and maybe all day. If it went really well, we’d work on the same project all week and get something great out. Usually these ideas then got turned over to other teams to keep working on.
But usually, these ideas didn’t work out very well. So we’d stop at lunch, throw it all away, and work on whatever we were supposed to be working on.
The next morning, we would both show up and Kent would usually say “I have an idea on that thing we were working on yesterday” and off we’d go.
Great things came out of this, TDD, some notable design patterns, and really XP.
The thing that holds me back from doing this more, is that frankly, it’s a pain in the ass to get all the basics in a rails app installed. Just to do anything, I usually like to have Rspec, rspec-rails, cucumber, authlogic, jquery, 960gs, and a handful of other plugins and libraries installed. They all need to be configured, databases need to be set up, etc.
Worst of all, most things need authentication, you know, so that you can actually have users. That means you need sign up, login, activation, password resets, emails, the list goes on.
Where am I going with this? Well, the ability to generate rails apps via custom templates was added in Rails 2.2. So I took it upon myself to stop shaving small yaks every time I wanted to hack on a new project and shave a big one. I present, the science department rails template.
rails my_app -d postgresql -m http://github.com/BJClark/rails-templates/blob/d8889e1c771847f75641503e478c130e959e1686/scidept.rb
Run this little command, answer 3 questions, change 1 line of code, and run
rake spec && rake features
You now have a fully implemented and tested, rails/rspec/cucumber/authlogic/resource_controller/lesscss/jquery/960gs app, with signup, login, and password resets, checked into git and ready to hack.
Hack, fork, and profit!
BJ Clark is a maker living in Portland, OR. He enjoys Ruby on Rails, agile, user centered design, and really good Belgian style beer.
As Keanu would say, “Whoa.”
I’ve been working on something similar, though not nearly as thorough. Are you using rails’ template feature or something else?
My “template.rb” file:
http://gist.github.com/160441
ps. looks like we travel in similar circles. My new boss has worked with (or knows) Cunningham & Beck as well!
S. A. Braford
3 Aug 09 at 2:24 am
So far I have nothing but grief — and I shouldn’t even be spending time on this. It just sounded so enticing! Well, if you can help:
sudo rails cccc -m http://github.com/BJClark/rails-templates/raw/d8889e1c771847f75641503e478c130e959e1686/scidept.rb
create
create app/controllers
create app/helpers
create app/models
create app/views/layouts
create config/environments
create config/initializers
create config/locales
create db
create doc
create lib
create lib/tasks
create log
create public/images
create public/javascripts
create public/stylesheets
create script/performance
create test/fixtures
create test/functional
create test/integration
create test/performance
create test/unit
create vendor
create vendor/plugins
create tmp/sessions
create tmp/sockets
create tmp/cache
create tmp/pids
create Rakefile
create README
create app/controllers/application_controller.rb
create app/helpers/application_helper.rb
create config/database.yml
create config/routes.rb
create config/locales/en.yml
create config/initializers/backtrace_silencers.rb
create config/initializers/inflections.rb
create config/initializers/mime_types.rb
create config/initializers/new_rails_defaults.rb
create config/initializers/session_store.rb
create config/environment.rb
create config/boot.rb
create config/environments/production.rb
create config/environments/development.rb
create config/environments/test.rb
create script/about
create script/console
create script/dbconsole
create script/destroy
create script/generate
create script/runner
create script/server
create script/plugin
create script/performance/benchmarker
create script/performance/profiler
create test/test_helper.rb
create test/performance/browsing_test.rb
create public/404.html
create public/422.html
create public/500.html
create public/index.html
create public/favicon.ico
create public/robots.txt
create public/images/rails.png
create public/javascripts/prototype.js
create public/javascripts/effects.js
create public/javascripts/dragdrop.js
create public/javascripts/controls.js
create public/javascripts/application.js
create doc/README_FOR_APP
create log/server.log
create log/production.log
create log/development.log
create log/test.log
applying template: http://github.com/BJClark/rails-templates/raw/d8889e1c771847f75641503e478c130e959e1686/scidept.rb
executing echo TODO > README from /home/deploy/www/www.trackingplace.com/app/cccc
gem rspec
gem rspec-rails
gem cucumber
gem webrat
gem nakajima-fixjour
gem bmabey-email_spec
gem binarylogic-authlogic
gem giraffesoft-resource_controller
gem less
rake gems:install
rake aborted!
can’t activate , already activated rspec-1.2.8
edit:// removed the full stack trace
marfarma
4 Aug 09 at 6:37 am
Could you try changing the template to use rspec 1.2.8? It looks like that’s already installed and messing things up.
BJ Clark
4 Aug 09 at 9:57 am
Please delete my previous comment.
It was inappropriate of me to dump the entire run log on you.
Thanks for posting the template — and I’ll work my way through my errors over time.
Marfarma
4 Aug 09 at 10:52 am
Didn’t see your reply.
I’ll try that.
Thanks
Marfarma
4 Aug 09 at 10:53 am
I can’t seem to let this go. I’ve abandoned my attempt to convert this template to sqlite — and gone so far as to install postgresql, so I could try the un-hacked one. However, I must not have it configured the same way you do, as I’m getting this:
executing createuser -s /var/lib/postgresql/cccd from /var/lib/postgresql/cccd
rake db:create
FATAL: role “cccd” does not exist
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:950:in `initialize’
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:950:in `connect’
when I run it.
Help!
marfarma
5 Aug 09 at 11:36 pm
I’m tracking this down — wanted to say that the login tuning rails has superuser priv. From the shell the create user command succeeds.
Don’t understand why the same thing run from inside a rails session would fail.
Any ideas welcome.
Marfarma
6 Aug 09 at 11:19 am
Try creating a user for Postgresql that is the same as the name of your project. That’s how I usually do it. I can look at extending this to use a specified user.
BJ Clark
6 Aug 09 at 2:52 pm
Ok – I managed to get it to run clean.
Needed to replace self.root with @root.split(‘/’).last
Then it choaked on the scaffold_resource … “-s”,”–skip-migration”
I had to lose the -s and switch the double dash in front of skip-migration to a single dash. I can’t figure out why that was a problem, but perhaps it’s related to rails 2.33 or rspec 1.2.8
Now to move on to the final step, where I can run the tests and see if it actually works.
Marfarma
6 Aug 09 at 4:14 pm
Well, the specs pass, as all but two features do.
These are the two failing features:
Failing Scenarios:
cucumber features/authentication.feature:6 # Scenario: Signing Up
cucumber features/authentication.feature:27 # Scenario: Scenario: Resetting my password
In each case, the failure is the same:
“When I open the email # features/step_definitions/email_steps.rb:30
Could not find email . “
marfarma
6 Aug 09 at 11:37 pm
OK – further information about the options on the scaffold line — seems to be related to the cucumber / rspec issue described here: http://wiki.github.com/aslakhellesoy/cucumber/troubleshooting The error does seem to run through the rspec code.
I’ll comment rspec out of the environment, and try that scaffod build again — and see what I get.
marfarma
7 Aug 09 at 10:15 pm
OK – now we’re cooking with gas!!
rspec was parsing the options — so had to comment out the rspec and rspec-rails plugins, and UPGRADE the cucumber version, which no longer requires rspec.
Then I could restore the scaffold_resource code with it’s original options.
Further, the less gem needed a higher version than specified in the template, as well. I won’t be surprised if several other gems or plugins won’t need a higher version. Of course, once I get it all tested and completely working, I’ll lock the versions down again. Serves me right for running Rails 2.33.
There ought to be a way to specify the Rails version a given template is compatible with …..
marfarma
8 Aug 09 at 11:14 am
Yes, there should be!
I haven’t upgraded to 2.3.3 yet, so I’m glad to hear you’ve got it working. When you get the right versions going, can you let me know and I’ll see if I can duplicate it on my machine with those new versions?
Thanks for working this out, and I’m sorry for not replying, I’ve been on vacation.
BJ Clark
13 Aug 09 at 9:49 pm