I'm starting research on what I'd need in order to build a user-level plugin system (like Wordpress plugins) for a Rails app, so I'd appreciate some general pointers/advice. By user-level plugin I mean a package a user can extract into a folder and have it show up on an admin interface, allowing them to add some extra configuration and then activate it.
What is the best way to go about doing this? Is there any other opensource project that does this already? What does Rails itself already offer for programmer-level plugins that could be leveraged? Any Rails plugins that could help me with this?
A plugin would have to be able to:
run its own migrations (with this? it's undocumented)
have access to my models (plugins already do)
have entry points for adding content to views (can be done with content_for and yield)
replace entire views or partials (how?)
provide its own admin and user-facing views (how?)
create its own routes (or maybe just announce its presence and let me create the routes for it, to avoid plugins stepping on each other's toes)
Anything else I'm missing?
Also, is there a way to limit which tables/actions the plugin has access to concerning migrations and models, and also limit their access to routes (maybe letting them include, but not remove routes)?
P.S.: I'll try to keep this updated, compiling stuff I figure out and relevant answers so as to have a sort of guide for others.
You might want to check out mephisto, it's a blogging software built with ruby on rails and has add-on plugin support. Not sure if it works how you are thinking of, but might give you some good insights. The source can be found on GitHub.
You should look at deface gem. It allows to customize rails views, adding content via hooks and replacing whole views/partials. Spree is using this gem so you can look also at spree. Beside views they also have other solutions for customizing application so you can find more answers to your questions.
Related
I'm building a social network and have been using the gem community_engine but have been having trouble implementing the large amount of customization that I need for my app. I figure this will make it easier for me to override and add methods, as well as help me to better understand and learn from the code since I will be able to actually see all of it in action.
So far in my attempt I downloaded the source code, added the default bin directory and config files that were missing, as well ass all the gem dependencies.
What else do I need to do to get the app to work? I realize that there may still be a lot and that it might not be easy to explain, but at the very least is there any sort of documentation out there that might help me understand how to convert the gem to a Rails application?
Heres the community_engine repo: https://github.com/bborn/communityengine
Because this idea may draw some criticism, I'll add that I was originally building the app without any huge plugins accept for devise however I'm running out of time to finish this.
More stuff I've tried:
Moving files to a new rails app, got server to run but encountered many seemingly random errors, fixed a few but more just seem to pop up that I cant figure out:
I also took a look at http://guides.rubyonrails.org/plugins.html but this gem seems to go beyond that.
I would suggest that you clone the gem and begin copying files from the gem into your a new Rails application.
The engine gem probably has a similar structure to a Rails application, so you should be able to move the files from the corresponding folder to the same folder in your Rails root folder.
You may need to move gem files out of modules, change namespaces etc. Relevant folders to look at files you'll want to include might include app/ config/ db/, any gem dependencies in Gemfile or the gemspec file, as well as spec/ or test/.
Beyond that I think there's no silver bullet answer to your question, you're just going to have to work through problems until you have this up and running, and perhaps ask subsequent questions if you hit on an obstacle that you don't get beyond.
I think what you're looking for is a way to hook your Rails Engine into a rails app. The Hooking Into an Application section of the Getting Started with Rails Engines guide should be exactly what you're looking for.
Here are two additional resources on Rails Engines.
A Guide to Rails Engines in the Wild
Rails::Engine - Ruby on Rails API
As we create more Rails applications, I find myself routinely adjusting the project generated by rails new ... in exactly the same ways: adding rspec, capybara + capybara-webkit support, adjusting config/application.rb to our tastes, including several gems we came to love.
I had a look at suspenders, it's a good starting point, but some of their choices differ from ours. Plus it's flexible in places where we don't really want any choice. In fact we'd rather have a couple project boilerplates sharing some customizations and each adding some unique extra's.
What are the options for streamlining/automating a project "bootstrap"? How could we organize a set of boilerplates and let them evolve as our preferences change (not adding options, but changing which made choices are hardcoded)?
I'm thinking in the direction of scripting what I normally do manually starting from rails new, editing the Gemfile, config/application.rb etc, but may be there is a cleaner (future versions compatible) approach or tool?
I really like using the Rails Composer gem/tool for this.
At the basic level when you run Rails Composer it will ask you a series of questions about what gems/configuration options you'd like your new Rails app to have. Then generates your app for you.
I like the "ask me for what I want" approach because different Rails projects may need different things: Postgres vs MySQL, Bootstrap vs Zurb Foundation, etc. 90% of these are usually the same, but it's the 10% difference that gets me.
At the more advanced level, Rails Composer shows you how to use Rails templates to create your own standard modifications, or you could fork Rails Composer to add the options you want (maybe sending a PR back to the project if it's something useful?)
At the expert level, Rails Composer has "starter apps": just pick one of those and go, choices already made for you. Depending on your needs this might be just the kind of thing you're looking for -- digging into how these "starter" apps are created and making one yourself.
Before I start the process of building something from scratch I was curious if anyone else had come across a way of providing a first-time configuration wizard for a Rails application that allows the user (sysadmin) to configure aspects of the application such as the ActiveRecord configuration and the ActionMailer setup (SMTP, sender etc).
We'd like to provide a clean easy way for new installs to get setup, rather than asking clients to edit files, or run scripts on the command line.
Essentially you should be able to download the application, extract it, start it, and when you access it via the browser you're guided through the initial setup steps.
My question isn't so much around how to do this, but more has anyone already done this. My quick search for gems, plugins etc around this idea didn't turn up much.
Edit/Clarification
To clarify the scenario - this is to support "shrink-wrapped" products that are downloaded and installed on-premises by the customer's sys admin.
The first time they access our application after deploying it behind their firewall we want a friendly way of configuring the specific settings for their install, such as database etc.
An example of such a process is JIRA's setup wizard:
https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Running+the+Setup+Wizard
This isn't for reating new rails applications, or systemising our development process.
I like Rails Templater a lot. It is a command line tool to build a rails app. It asks you questions like "Would you like to use rspec? Pry instead of IRB?"
I have created a fork that adds authentication, twitter bootstrap and backbone.js and some other options. It is pretty easy to hack on if you have specific needs. I use it all the time and I would hate not having it.
It is of course a command line app and not usable via the browser but maybe it will still fit your needs. Or the codebase could be integrated into a client web application.
Update after comment
You may be able to bootstrap a sqlite database so the app can boot, then just using a form or a wizard to set up something that writes your database.yml and other configs, maybe by means of thor (makes appending/replacing text in files simple and is part of rails). You would need to somehow restart the rails app and migrate the database. You could keep the pg or mysql2 gem (or both) in your Gemfile or again use thor to edit them from your wizard/form.
I also recommend using rails_config as Michael suggested. With the above solution.
If I had more time to think about the problem, I may come up with something cleaner but this is how I would do it if I had to right now.
http://railswizard.org/ lets you select which gems to use. It's a very innovative use of the ui and the isotope gem to select the components. Similarly another viewpoint is this top 10 list: http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/10-must-have-ruby-gems
You'll never find a definitive list of gems as need change from person to person and over time, e.g. which database your company uses and which is the 'current' best authentication gem are both variable.
For configuration specific settings you can make the configuration less of a chore by using practices that reduce it. For example the database.yml file is usually one of the 'must be edited locally' files. Our approach for this to to exclude database.yml from source control by putting its name in our .gitignore file. We add an database.yml.example file which we copy locally to database.yml and in that file we use anchors (&) and references (*) as detailed here: http://blog.geekdaily.org/2010/08/advanced-yaml-tricking-out-your-databaseyml.html
More options for configuring other variables for each environment: http://kpumuk.info/ruby-on-rails/flexible-application-configuration-in-ruby-on-rails/
The rails config gem may also help you as detailed here: How to define custom configuration variables in rails
I have a number of view helpers I use on almost every project, a set of useful rake tasks, minor extensions to active record, extensions to some gems (inherited_resources).
I'm wondering, what would be a good way to manage these 'snippets'? I wouldn't want to manage a gem for each snippet, or even a gem for each 'type' of snippet. Would it suffice to bundle this into a personal gem? Maybe add the option to specify which helpers/extensions to include in the project?
I could use a 'template' application which I could bundle with this code, but the problem here is if I update a snippet on one project, I want to be able to rollout that update on all projects with minimal effort (i.e. bundle update).
With your requirements, I would bundle it all in a base-zenph-gem and use it in every one o your projects, as it is the best way to have synchronized code over different projects.
Also, make a good documentation for it, as if anyone inherits one of those projects would love to know what is going on.
Instead of a gem with Rails you can create an engine which contains reusable functionality, then you can specify the use of the engine within your applications.
You can read more about it in the Rails documentation: Rails Engines
I am relatively new to Rails and recently found a couple of useful gems like authlogic that will help in getting the project up and about really fast. However, I have been wondering where to place the model, view, and controller files that are dependent on the plugin, but are core concepts of my project.
For example, is it better to place the User, Role, Session, etc.. models and related controllers with the plugin inside the vendor/ directory, or should I place them inside the root model/, view/, and controllers/ directories respectively?
Even models/views/controllers dependent on plugins should be kept in the app/model, app/view, and app/controllers directories along with your other code.
The "structural" reason is that the bulk of all those files will still be specific to your application. You will probably end up adding fields to the user, or adding has_many statements to your User model, etc. You want all that code with the rest of your core application code in the app directory.
The "functional" reason is that vender/plugins is only for the code specifically relating to that plugin and is treated differently during development. For instance, when you add a new plugin, it is not auto-loaded in development mode. So if your core files were there, they would not be auto reloaded even in development mode.
Anything you write should be in the standard directories. Use vendor for vendor-provided code.
Just as a heads up it is very hard to go wrong watching railscasts on topics you are new to.
Ryan Bates has two covering authlogic and authlogic with OpenID and in anticipation of your next step after authentication- authorization: He has some covering access control as well: Declarative Authorization, and CanCan.