I am looking at rails plugins to help me modularize my application. I have some basic questions that I am confused about.
Can a rails plugin have its own DB? My application is very little traffic, for internal use, so I am fine with the idea of separate sqlite DB's for each plugin. When I do a "rails plugin new" even if I use --full, there is no database.yml generated. If I create one and do a rake db:create, no sqlite db is created.
Is there a good tutorial available for creating a rails plugin with rails 3.2? Most I find are older and use the enginex gem which I think is now built into rails.
Can you run your plugin as a standalone app for testing, i.e. using WEBrick? When I run "rails server" in my plugin directory, it just says "Error: Command not recognized".
I guess that's it, I am just confused on how to begin.
Creating Migrations
The Rails Guide "Getting Started with Engines" instructs you to use 'rails g model post' from the root directory for your engine.
Getting Started with Engines
If you do this, it will create the db/migrate folder for you with the migration inside of it.
$ rails g model post
invoke active_record
create db/migrate/20120517184738_create_my_engine_posts.rb
create app/models/my_engine/post.rb
invoke test_unit
create test/unit/my_engine/post_test.rb
create test/fixtures/my_engine/posts.yml
You can also generate migrations directly just the same, just as you do with a Rails app.
$ rails g migration AddMyEngineTable
invoke active_record
create db/migrate/20120517185241_add_my_engine_table.rb
Running Rails Server
The Rails Guide also states to run 'rails s' from test/dummy, not from the root of your engine directory.
I see that from an ASCIICast on the subject which covered Rails 3.1 RC5 that you used to be able to run 'rails s' from the root directory of your engine/gem. This is no longer the case.
From the Rails issue posted on Github three months ago it appears that they needed to keep the scope of the engine separate from the scope of the dummy app.
Issue #4894: Mountable Engines Rails File
In short run from the engine root:
test/dummy/script/rails s
Related
So starting from Rails 4.1.x there seems to be a recommended way to use rails under the application folder. Instead of the traditional:
rails server
it is recommended by Rails official guide to use
bin/rails server
It looks like the bin/rails is referencing rails with additional stuff. What would be the additional benefits of using bin/rails compared to rails?
A second question is - I was used to use rails server, rails console, etc. rather than bin/rails server, bin/rails console. Without using bin/rails, would I lose anything (like misloading some libs, etc.)?
Thanks.
Put the following line in your bin/rails file: puts "In the bin/rails file"
Now run rails server. You'll likely see that the rails command is executing the bin/rails file.
I'm guessing the official guide suggests using bin/rails for two reasons:
Avoid using another instance of rails if your paths are not set up properly.
Speed - bin/rails seems to be a bit faster than just rails
Im following a rails tutorial, and when im supposed to run the command: 'bin/rails generate model Article'. An error occurs saying that there isnt such a command.
I'm using 'command prompt with ruby on rails' and in the rails project i can find a Bin folder. Am also using windows 7.
Also What is the difference between running only 'rails generate' instead of running 'bin/rails generate'?
Using rails generate is fine if you have no bin stubs (binaries in the root /bin folder of your project). If you do have bin stubs then it's preferred to use them because they may do additional things specific to your project. But even then, it's (probably) fine to just use rails generate still. The other bin stubs may be a little more necessary to use, though (again, if present) because they tend to be shortcuts to e.g. bundle exec rake.
Rails 4.1 ships with bin stubs. That is, when you generate a Rails 4.1 project it generates bin stubs for you. So this is probably why your tutorial mentioned using them -- they're now there by default. But if you're on an older version of Rails that won't help you much.
The big reason Rails 4.1 includes bin stubs is because Rails uses spring by default now. Spring is an application preloader... that makes it so that when you call e.g. bin/rake ... it will load and keep a running rails environment in the background and then, the 2nd time you call bin/rake it will fork from the running environment giving you almost instantaneous response. So this is an example of "additional things specific to your project" that you get from using bin/rake over just rake and bin/rails over just rails.
So I'm working on a new project that seems like a great choice for using the new Engine functionality. It's as engines say, its own little app, w/ its own views and controllers and models. Here's where I'm coming up short.
I create my test application in which I will mount the new engine.
rails new engine_app && cd engine_app
I then create the new engine
rails plugin new my_engine --mountable
I then add the 'gem' to the engine_app's gemfile
gem 'my_engine', :path => './my_engine'
I then mount the engine in engine_app's routes as so
mount MyEngine::Engine, :at => '/my_engine'
I then cd into my_engine's dummy app and run
rails generate model MyModel title:string body:text
Here's where I run into my confusion. From what I understand this is supposed to generate a namespace table (I think it would be my_engine_my_model). The table in the migration file is just my_model.
Secondly how do I run this migration and is the migration file correct in only calling the table :my_model? I have tried running the following but nothing seems to happen, and I've checked the database and the table isn't there.
So to recap, I need to know how to create migrations in the engine, and be able to run them on the parent apps database correctly.
Thanks for any help and guidance.
So all of the tutorials I read didn't specify that you needed to run script/rails generate from within the root level of your engine. I kept seeing references telling me to goto the test/dummy app. After running script/rails generate model [fields] from the root of my engine it created the appropriate model, migration rake task and i was able to run
rake my_engine:install:migrations; rake db:migrate
to run the migrations
You can use the generator with the engine target:
bin/engem ENGINE_NAME rails g GENERATOR
I'm wasting my time here and I can't seem to figure this out..
I have used Cucumber in Rails applications before, and if I'm not mistaken, it generates the features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb file when you run rails g cucumber:install. Right?
I looked this up in a book I was using a while ago to learn Rails and it says so there aswell:
It nevertheless passes because of the features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb
file, which was generated when you ran the rails generate cucumber:install command.
However, when I run it in this application I'm trying to start working on, it does not generate it..
$ rails g cucumber:install
create config/cucumber.yml
create script/cucumber
chmod script/cucumber
create features/step_definitions
create features/support
create features/support/env.rb
exist lib/tasks
create lib/tasks/cucumber.rake
force config/database.yml
No web_steps.rb to be found. Am I losing my mind here?
Thanks.
Which version of cucumber are you using? if it is a recent version, see
https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-rails/blob/f027440965b96b780e84e50dd47203a2838e8d7d/History.md
I am having trouble using script/generate. I am following the tree based navigation tutorial, which says to use script/plugin install git://github.com/rails/acts_as_tree.git or script/generate nifty_layout.
I keep getting:
No such file or directory -- script/plugin
I've tried these variations:
script/generate nifty_layout
rails generate nifty_layout
ruby script/generate nifty_layout
ruby generate nifty_layout
and they all tell me:
-bash: script/generate: No such file or directory
Am I missing something? Total ruby nuby here and I just can't seem to find an answer.
edit: rails 3 on Mac OS X 10.6
Rails 3 is your problem (or rather the cause of). Since rails 3 all of the "script/whatever" commands have been replaced with "rails whatever".
So now you want "rails generate ..." or "rails server" instead.
Be sure to watch version numbers or post dates when looking at tutorials :)
linkage:
Missing script/generate in Rails 3
There is a LOT of out-of-date information on the interwebs for Rails now as a result of it evolving quickly and being so popular. I use the Ruby on Rails Guides as my first stop for information as those pages seem to be the most current.
The rails generate info seems current.
you may try a couple things, first, make sure since you are using rails 3 that you have run 'bundle install'. depending on how you installed rails and which version of bundler you are using, it may not be finding your rails binary to execute the rails generate .. so you may try prefixing it with bundle exec rails g but that is deprecated and you should get a warning if you call it. Also, make sure you are following ryan's instructions for rails 3 (and run bundle install once you add to the gemfile) on his library: https://github.com/ryanb/nifty-generators
As a shortcut to rails server, you can use 'rails s'. Similarly for the console, 'rails c'.