TheatreBase

Brief:

A database-driven site that provides listings for theatrical productions, playtexts and associated data.

Ruby on Rails rebuild following original version written in PHP and SQL with MySQL database.

Site overview:

Productions

Title
Material (i.e. The Seagull (play))
Playtext (i.e. The Seagull (2012))
Dates (preview / press night / booking until / final performance)
Theatre
Class (professional / amateur / drama school)
Touring (legs / overview)
Collections (segments / overview)
Plays in repertory with
Previous/subsequent runs
Production version (world premiere; return; West End transfer, etc.)
Text version (new; revival; new adaptation; abridged text, etc.)
Category (play; musical; monologue; opera; ballet, etc.)
Genre (Shakespearean tragedy; Ancient Greek; farce; Restoration comedy; In-yer-face theatre, etc.)
Features (all male cast (if unconventional); modernised setting; site specific; Spanish language, etc.)
Themes (global warming; regicide; insomnia, etc.)
Setting: time, location & place (Easter 1962, bedsit, Knightsbridge)
Writers (company & people, inc. source material)
Producers (company & people)
Performers (company & people) and corresponding characters portrayed
Understudies (company & people) and corresponding characters portrayed
Musicians(company & people)
Creative team (company & people)
Production team (company & people)
Season (i.e. David Hare season (Sheffield Theatres))
Festival (i.e. RSC Complete Works Festival)
Course (i.e. Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA): 3 Year Acting (2006-09))
Reviews (critic, publication and URL link to online review)
Awards

Playtexts

Title
Material (i.e. The Seagull (play))
Text version (i.e. original text; new translation; abridged text, etc.)
Year written
Collections (segments / overview / collected works)
Writers (company & people, inc. source material)
Contributors (company & people) (in relation to publication of text)
Category (play; musical; monologue, etc.)
Genre (Shakespearean tragedy; Ancient Greek; farce; Restoration comedy; In-yer-face theatre, etc.)
Features (modernised setting; site specific; Spanish language, etc.)
Themes (global warming; regicide; insomnia, etc.)
Setting: time, location & place (Easter 1962, bedsit, Knightsbridge)
Cast required
Characters
Licensors
Productions of the playtext listings
Awards (for the playtext and productions of the playtext)

Theatre

Name
Building location
Type (West End; fringe; regional; studio, etc.)
Theatre owners
Subtheatres (i.e. National Theatre: Olivier Theatre / Royal Court Theatre: Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, etc.)
Capacity
Opening/closing dates
Production listings

Awards

Award grantor (i.e. Laurence Olivier Awards)
Award ceremony (i.e. grantor and year: Laurence Olivier Awards 2015)
Award categories (specifically within ceremony and history of a given award category)
Category nominees: productions; playtexts; companies; people
Ceremony venue and date

Company

Name (trading and registered)
Base location
Company type (i.e. subsidised theatre; commercial theatre; literary agency)
Company members and corresponding roles
Production and playtext listings (in various roles)
Awards
Clients represented (as agency)
Drama school courses coordinated
Theatre owned

People

Name
Sex
Ethnicity
Place of origin
Profession within the industry
Production and playtext listings (in various roles)
Awards
Representation (agency and agent) / Clients represented (as agent)
Drama school courses coordinated / as staff / as student

Character

Name
Sex
Age / range
Description
Ethnicity
Place of origin
Profession
Attributes (physical and characteristics)
Abilities
Playtexts in which character appears
Productions in which character has been portrayed

Drama school course

Course type (3 Year Acting; 2 Year Directing, etc.)
Course start/end dates
Course coordinators (company & people)
Course staff
Students
Production listings

Season

Name
Production listings

Festival

Name
Production listings

Material

Name
Format (play; operetta; musical; novel; screenplay, etc.; encompasses material when used as source material)
Production and playtext listings

Production version

Description
Production and playtext listings

Text version

Description
Production and playtext listings

Genre

Description
Related genres (i.e. Shakespearean history -> Shakespearean theatre, Elizabethan theatre)
Production and playtext listings

Feature

Description
Production and playtext listings

Theme

Description
Broader themes (i.e. Normandy landings -> World War II, World War, War)
Production and playtext listings

Setting: Location

Name
Related locations (i.e. Derbyshire -> England, UK, Europe)
Sunsequently/previously (i.e. Constantinople subsequently Istanbul)
Production and playtext listings
Person and character listings (originated from location)
Theatre and company listings (based at location)

Setting: Place

Name
Related places (i.e. Airport cafe -> Airport, Cafe)
Production and playtext listings

Setting: Time

Description
Date(s)
Related times (i.e. 1993 -> 1990s, 20th Century)
Production and playtext listings

Ethnicity

Description
Related ethnicities (i.e. Rutul -> Russian; Han -> Chinese; Yoruba -> African)
Person and character listings

Profession

Description
Related professions (i.e. King of England -> King, Royalty; Literary agent -> Agent)
Person and character listings

Attributes

Description
Related attributes (i.e. Pentecostal -> Protestant Christian, Christian)
Character listings

Abilities

Description
Character listings

Technologies used:

Ruby: dynamic, reflective, object-oriented, general-purpose programming language
Ruby on Rails: model–view–controller (MVC) framework, providing default structures for a database, a web service, and web pages. It encourages and facilitates the use of web standards such as JSON or XML for data transfer, and HTML, CSS and JavaScript for display and user interfacing
Active Record: the M in MVC - the model - which is the layer of the system responsible for representing business data and logic; facilitates the creation and use of business objects whose data requires persistent storage to a database
PostgreSQL database: open source database

Testing:

RSpec: Behaviour Driven Development for Ruby
Capybara: library written in the Ruby programming language which makes it easy to simulate how a user interacts with your application
Poltergeist: PhantomJS driver for Capybara; allows you to run your Capybara tests on a headless WebKit browser, provided by PhantomJS
SimpleCov: code coverage for Ruby 1.9+ with a powerful configuration library and automatic merging of coverage across test suites
Selenium WebDriver: browser automation for tests; accepts commands and sends them to a browser, implemented through a browser-specific browser driver, which sends commands to a browser, and retrieves results

ChromeDriver

ChromeDriver: runs WebDriver tests on Chrome browser (Firefox is Selenium's default browser); add below to respective files:-

Gemfile: gem 'chromedriver-helper', '~> 1.0'

spec/rails_helper (remove: register_driver :poltergeist method):

require 'show_me_the_cookies'

Capybara.register_driver :chrome do |app|
  Capybara::Selenium::Driver.new(app, browser: :chrome)
end
Capybara.javascript_driver = :chrome
ShowMeTheCookies.register_adapter(:chrome, ShowMeTheCookies::Selenium)

Tests also require page.execute_script 'window.close();' at end of within_window method

N.B. Tests fail on Travis CI so only usefully applied locally

Site setup

Run server using: $ rails s and visit homepage: localhost:3000

Testing setup

Run RSpec from root directory: $ rspec
Open coverage report in browser: $ open coverage/index.html

Links:

GitHub (andygout): TheatreBase PHP: original version of site written in PHP and SQL with MySQL database

Active Record Associations

andygout/theatrebase_rails