The App Scrolls for creating and transforming Rails apps
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The App Scrolls is a magical tool to generate new Rails and modify existing Rails applications (coming) to include your favourite, powerful magic. Authentication, testing, persistence, javascript, css, deployment, and templating - there's a magical scroll for you.
- Follow on twitter @appscrolls
An example application that was built by the App Scrolls is at https://github.com/drnic/mydemoapp. The generated README shows all the scrolls that were included.
Installation
Installation is simple:
gem install appscrolls
Usage
The primary usage of the appscrolls
gem is to utilize its interactive terminal command to build a new Rails application. To get started, you can simply run the command thusly:
appscrolls new APP_NAME
scrolls new APP_NAME
Where APP_NAME
is the directory in which you wish to create the app (it mirrors the Rails creation syntax). You will then be guided through the scroll selection process and subsequently the Rails app generator will automatically run with the template and all appropriate command line options included.
To transform an existing Rails app, you ... wait, that's not implemented yet. But since the "apply template" feature of rails new APP_NAME -m template.rb
is implemented in Thor, I mean, how hard could it be?*
Available Scrolls
The current available scrolls grouped by category:
- administration: active_admin, rails_admin
- assets: jquery, prototype
- deployment: eycloud, eycloud_recipes_on_deploy, git, github, passenger, thin, unicorn
- persistence: mysql, postgresql, redis, sqlite3
- stylesheet: twitter_bootstrap
- templating: simple_form
- testing: capybara, cucumber, rspec, test_unit
- worker: delayed_job, resque
- other: env_yaml, guard, rails_basics, split
Specifying Scrolls
If you wish to skip the interactive scroll selector, you may provide instead a list of scrolls with the -s
or --scrolls
option:
scrolls new APP_NAME -s twitter_bootstrap mysql resque
scrolls new APP_NAME --scrolls postgresql github eycloud
This will automatically generate a Rails template with the provided scrolls and begin the app generator.
Listing Scrolls
You can also print out a simple list of scrolls:
scrolls list
Or print out a list of scrolls for a specific category:
scrolls list persistence
Deployment Support
Web applications are boring if they aren't running proudly on the internet. The App Scrolls make this automatic for your favourite providers!
Engine Yard
Scroll: eycloud
Example:
scrolls new mydemoapp -s twitter_bootstrap unicorn postgresql resque github eycloud
The created application above will be automatically stored in a git private/public repository on GitHub and then deployed to Engine Yard Cloud.
When deploying to Engine Yard Cloud you will need to choose:
unicorn
orpassenger
for your app servermysql
orpostgresql
for your SQL DB
When choosing from the following scrolls, your Engine Yard Cloud environment will be automatically upgraded/configured with Chef recipes.
resque
- add utility instances calledresque
for workers [see readme for more information]redis
- add a utility calledredis
to have a dedicated redis DB; else it is run on your DB master or Solo instancedelayed_job
- add utility instances calleddelayed_job
ordj
for workers [see readme for more information]
Note: Resque is recommended instead of Delayed Job. Soon, Sidekiq will be recommended over both, and
Please open an Issue if you want an alternate option (puma
or thin
; or mongodb
)
Heroku
The App Scrolls needs a Heroku Master to support Heroku for the App Scrolls.
There is some initial work in the current scrolls and the archived/unsupported scrolls
CloudFoundry
The App Scrolls needs a CloudFoundry Master to support CloudFoundry for the App Scrolls.
Authoring Scrolls of Magical Mystery
Create new scrolls using:
rake new NAME=scroll-name
Submitting a scroll is actually a very straightforward process. Scrolls are made of up template code and YAML back-matter stored in a ruby file. The __END__
parsing convention is used so that each scroll is actually a valid, parseable Ruby file. The structure of a scroll looks something like this:
gem 'supergem'
after_bundler do
generate "supergem:install"
end
__END__
category: templating
name: SuperGem
description: Installs SuperGem which is useful for things
author: mbleigh
It's really that simple. The gem has RSpec tests that automatically validate each scroll in the repository, so you should run rake spec
as a basic sanity check before submitting a pull request. Note that these don't verify that your scroll code itself works, just that App Scrolls could properly parse and understand your scroll file.
History
This project is an old fashioned fork of Michael Bleigh's Rails Wizard. A new name, new project, and new purpose.
This project wouldn't exist without Michael having created Rails Wizard during Rails Rumble and maintaining and upgrading it for a long time. Sadly support dropped off, several recipes did not work with Rails 3.1+,
Dr Nic originally worked on Rails Wizard to provide Engine Yard Cloud support, his employer and his favourite hosting platform. He also merged in a lot of recipes from other forks, and added new recipes for modern projects.
Support for Engine Yard Cloud meant integration with Chef Recipes. This meant confusing language - Rails Wizard Recipes and Chef Recipes. He decided that wizards don't use recipes - they use scrolls. Alchemists use recipes. And screw alchemists and their dinky potions. Recipes became Scrolls.
Future
- Automatically setup Continuous Integration for new applications - branches "jenkins"
- Interactive mode is a wizard by categories "pick A, B, C or none"
- Apply scrolls to existing Rails applications - branch "apply_scrolls"*
- Scrolls work or fail fast on Heroku
- Scrolls work or fail fast on CloudFoundry
- Scrolls generate their own README - branch "readmes"
- 3rd party services/add-ons enabled within deployment platform or directly with service
- Padrino / Sinatra applications
- Non-Ruby applications (Lithium for PHP, etc)
Missing scrolls
- MongoDB - branch "mongodb"
- OmniAuth - branch "omniauth"
- Sidekiq - branch "sidekiq"
How hard could it be?
*
'How hard could it be to transform applications?' - pretty hard. Scrolls need to be aware of the current code base, rather than merely the list of other scrolls being used to create a new app. Scrolls also need to know about versions of Rails rather than just latest rails.
Thanks
ASCII banner - http://www.network-science.de/ascii/ using 'smslant' font.
License
App Scrolls and its scrolls are distributed under the MIT License. See MIT_LICENSE for the actual words.