README

Introduction

This Rails 4.1.7 app sets up the basic code for a skeleton app:

• There some basic models, each meant to do somethign interesting:
  • Task: It borrows code from a standard scaffold structure. It showcases a simple association - belongs_to :owner, class_name: "User"
  • Location: It showcases geocoding.
• Devise and Cancan are set up:
  • Devise uses User as the model for authentication; no other config changes are made for Devise other than those in the default gem. Devise views are installed.
  • CanCan uses a simple authentication using the Task => User association
• Views (for Task) use HAML
• Controllers use strong parameters
• The layout puts notice and alert at the top of the page, and a float:right element to accommodate the user session (logged-in/out) state.
• The application layout uses Twitter Bootstrap CSS.
• Forms use Formtastic Bootstrap.
• The app has Capistrano installed with some basic defaults that assist in making deployments to a remote folder via SSH, like sym-linking to an existing database, to the database config file so that credentials are not stored in the SCS, etc.
• Rails Admin: The app now has Rails Admin installed. Note that installation was done by following the basic steps, and that the Devise lines in config/initializers/rails_admin.rb are uncommented.

Usage

Before you run your app, you have to prepare the baseline code as follows:

• At the very least, copy config\database.yml.sample to config\database.yml. You might want to also change the db or its creds.

• Change the app (class) name - there's a convenient shell script (change_app_name.sh) in the project root that does that using sed - you have to uncomment the line at the top of the script that sets your app name.

• Run migrations. Optionally, seed the database if you wish.

• Check the routes file and remove the latter half, after the comment that says that that part is probably not useful.

• Remove the Resque rake task if you aren't going to be using Resque.

• If you're going to deploy your app using the Capistrano config in it:

  • Change the config information in config\deploy.rb - the app name and its location
  • Change the domain name in config\deploy\production.rb
  • Set up a shared folder in your deployment where you store your config\database.yml file

• The locale file has the site's title, and the phrase that's in the Bootstrap navbar - you might want to change it.

• You might want to delete some models (Task, Location, etc.), their corresponding tests and migrations, and the corresponding routes. Also, you might want to get rid of the Google Maps API assets in app\assets\javascripts\gmaps. Remember to remove them from your repository, not just the filesystem. Here's a helpful list of git rm commands you might want to consider running:

    git rm spec/models/*
    git rm spec/features/*
    git rm spec/controllers/*
    
    cd app/models/
    git rm category.rb location.rb task*
    cd ../../app/controllers
    git rm locations_controller.rb tasks_controller.rb categories_controller.rb
    cd ../app/views/
    git rm -r locations/ tasks/	
  

  cd ../db/migrate git rm task location categor cd ../../

Security

The code attempts to be secure - it passes all Brakeman tests, as of Apr 2014. Particularly, it:

• moves config/database.yml to config\database.yml.sample in the repo and ignores the former, so that you are forced to set credentials in a non-committed file, and
• avoids using the stored session secret in production - in production, you have to store the secret token in the environment variable RAILS_SECRET_TOKEN.

  • If your production environment is Heroku, add this variable in Heroku like this:

    heroku config:add RAILS_SECRET_TOKEN=a-128-character-token-no-spaces-though-you-generated-as-a-secret
    

  • In development, the secret token is enabled in config/initializers/secret_token.rb. The app also uses the dotenv-rails gem to utilize a .env file in the app root as an alternate method if you don't even want to share your development secret token in your repo. You have to create the .env file and add the RAILS_SECRET_TOKEN variable to it, if you are using this method.

Testing

The app also has some basic tests but I've stopped trying to run them in a long, long, time. Real developers don't test their code; they just have an unbounded, and completely unfounded, faith in their infallibility.

• It uses RSpec - rails g rspec:install has already been run for you.
• It uses Capybara.
• Unit tests for users and tasks - check that users can be created, and that tasks cannot be created when a user is not logged in.
• Integration tests: None so far

Resque

If you are going to use Resque, here are some things worth knowing about how it works:

• This app has the resque gem, as well as resque-web for the web interface and resque-scheduler. Consequently, it has a Procfile that lets you run all three tasks (your app, resque's worker queues, and resque scheduler's scheduling) by running foreman

Heroku

You have to uncomment the rails_12factor gem in the Gemfile, if you are going to deploy this to Heroku. The checked-in Gemfile doesn't include it.

Coming Soon!

I am not sure I'll add these gems - their configuration changes a lot, imo, and these are not necessarily "commonly" used. But you might hold your breath a bit...

• Paperclip with S3: This can get complicated - first you should have a model for files that belongs_to Imageable, and build the appropriate polymorphic migration for the files model; then you configure S3 with credentials in your appropriate config file (bucket, S3 keys); then you configure your path, and add a paperclip.rb initializer optionally that adds an interpolates method to customize your URL.
• Elastic Search

How Did The App Get Here?

If you are trying to do this from scratch, note that the following rails and rake commands are essential to getting the app to its current state, after your bundle is installed (though you also have to change the code obviously).

This list is unfortunately not complete - it's pretty hard to keep the list of migrations up-to-date. :(

rails new baseline_rails_install
rails generate model User admin:boolean age:integer
rails generate model Task title:string owner_id:integer
rails generate scaffold Location lat:float long:float name:string address:string	

These generate files, so you don't have to re-run them, but they are here for the sake of the record. This list too is probably incomplete:

# Devise
rails generate devise User
rails generate devise:views

# CanCan
rails g cancan:ability

# For rspec tests folders
rails generate rspec:install

# For formtastic
rails generate formtastic:install

# For Bootstrap Rails
rails generate bootstrap:install less

# For Rails Admin
rails g rails_admin:install

# There's probably stuff for geocoding, gmaps4rails, and doorkeeper ... not sure if that's the case.

Addenda

• Upgrade to Formtastic Bootstrap 3 requires custom change to Formtastic Bootstrap code