Sinatra Skeleton

This is the basic setup for a barebones Sinatra app to get you started. The first things I usually want to do are set up the app structure and ORM -- in most cases, DataMapper. Then, of course, who wants to write plain-ol' Javascript anymore? I also like to set up Sprockets, which is the same asset solution used in Rails.

Grabbing the source

To get started, you can download the latest source and just include it in your existing or new repo.

Running the app

This Sinatra app uses thin for a web server, so all you have to do is:

$ bundle && rackup

This will install all required gems in your Gemfile, then start the server on port 9292.

Using assets

Set up your JS and CSS files (as CoffeeScript and SASS files, respectively) in the assets/ folder. Then, you can link to them in the following manner:

/assets/javascripts/application.js.coffee -> /assets/application.js
/assets/stylesheets/application.css.scss  -> /assets/application.css

In production, this is:

/assets/javascripts/application.js.coffee -> /assets/application.min.js
/assets/stylesheets/application.css.scss  -> /assets/application.min.css

NOTE: Currently assets are not minified in production.

Precompiling assets

Assets will automatically precompile when you push to Heroku. However, if you want to do this manually in your development environment, use:

$ bundle exec rake assets:precompile

NOTE: Currently assets are not minified by this script.

Pushing to Heroku

I don't include a deployment strategy here. For most people, they'll either be using Heroku, or will want to roll their own deployment. Here's how you can easily push to Heroku.

$ heroku create
$ git push heroku master
$ heroku open