Pliny

Opinionated template Sinatra app for writing excellent APIs in Ruby.

It bundles some of the patterns we like to develop these apps:

Config: ENV wrapper for explicit defining what config vars are mandatory and optional
Endpoints: the Sinatra equivalent of a Rails Controller
Initializers: tiny files to configure libraries/etc (equivalent of Rails)
Mediators: plain ruby classes to manipulate models
Models: very thin wrappers around the database

And gems/helpers to tie these together and support operations:

CORS middleware to allow JS developers to consume your API
Rollbar for tracking exceptions
Log helper that logs in data format to stdout
Mediators to help encapsulate more complex interactions
Rspec for lean and fast testing
Puma as the web server, configured for optimal performance on Heroku
Rack-test to test the API endpoints
Request IDs
RequestStore, thread safe option to store data with the current request
Sequel for ORM
Sequel-PG because we don't like mysql
Versioning to allow versioning your API in the HTTP Accept header

Getting started

First make sure the following is installed:

Postgres
- The uuid-ossp module for Postgres

Then install the gem:

$ gem install pliny

And initialize a new app:

$ pliny-new myapp
$ cd myapp && bin/setup

Pliny also bundles some generators to help you get started:

$ bundle exec pliny-generate model artist
created model file ./lib/models/artist.rb
created migration ./db/migrate/1408995997_create_artists.rb
created test ./spec/models/artist_spec.rb

$ bundle exec pliny-generate mediator artists/creator
created mediator file ./lib/mediators/artists/creator.rb
created test ./spec/mediators/artists/creator_spec.rb

$ bundle exec pliny-generate endpoint artists
created endpoint file ./lib/endpoints/artists.rb
add the following to lib/routes.rb:
  mount Endpoints::Artists
created test ./spec/endpoints/artists_spec.rb
created test ./spec/acceptance/artists_spec.rb

$ bundle exec pliny-generate migration fix_something
created migration ./db/migrate/1395873228_fix_something.rb

$ bundle exec pliny-generate schema artists
created schema file ./schema/schemata/artist.yaml
rebuilt ./schema/schema.json

To test your application:

$ bundle exec rake

Or to run a single test suite:

$ bundle exec rspec spec/acceptance/artists_spec.rb

Generators

$ bundle exec pliny-generate

Commands:
  pliny-generate endpoint NAME    # Generates an endpoint
  pliny-generate help [COMMAND]   # Describe available commands or one specific command
  pliny-generate mediator NAME    # Generates a mediator
  pliny-generate migration NAME   # Generates a migration
  pliny-generate model NAME       # Generates a model
  pliny-generate scaffold NAME    # Generates a scaffold of endpoint, model, schema and serializer
  pliny-generate schema NAME      # Generates a schema
  pliny-generate serializer NAME  # Generates a serializer

Rake tasks

Pliny comes with several rake tasks:

rake db:create        # Create the database
rake db:drop          # Drop the database
rake db:migrate       # Run database migrations
rake db:nuke          # Nuke the database (drop all tables)
rake db:reset         # Reset the database
rake db:rollback      # Rollback the database
rake db:schema:dump   # Dump the database schema
rake db:schema:load   # Load the database schema
rake db:schema:merge  # Merges migrations into schema and removes them
rake db:seed          # Seed the database with data
rake db:setup         # Setup the database
rake schema           # Rebuild schema.json

Commands

And provides the following commands:

$ foreman start                             # Starts server
$ foreman run bin/console                   # IRB/Pry console
$ foreman run bin/run 'puts "hello world"'  # Run automated code

(hint: don't forget foreman run in development)

Development

Run tests:

$ bundle install
$ rake