Generate Rails app's from a template
Let’s daydream for a minute. Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of maintaining a full-blown Rails application, you could just maintain some small file (or template) that specified how the Rails generator should behave. Maybe it would look something like this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 | template(:rph) do gem 'RedCloth' gem 'mislav-will_paginate' gem 'ruby-openid' plugin 'rspec', :git => 'git://github.com/dchelimsky/rspec.git' plugin 'rspec-rails', :git => 'git://github.com/dchelimsky/rspec-rails.git' plugin 'restful-authentication', :git => 'git://github.com/technoweenie/restful-authentication.git' plugin 'open_id_authentication', :git => 'git://github.com/rails/open_id_authentication.git' plugin 'hoptoad_notifier', :git => 'git://github.com/thoughtbot/hoptoad_notifier.git' plugin 'navigation_helper', :git => 'git://github.com/rpheath/navigation_helper.git' plugin 'acts_as_lookup', :git => 'git://github.com/rpheath/acts_as_lookup.git' plugin 'input_css', :git => 'git://github.com/rpheath/input_css.git' plugin 'form_assistant', :git => 'git://github.com/rpheath/form_assistant.git' initializer 'hoptoad.rb' do HoptoadNotifier.configure do |config| config.api_key = 'HOPTOAD-KEY' end end initializer 'time_formats.rb' do { :short_date => "%x", :long_date => "%a, %b %d, %Y" }.each do |k, v| ActiveSupport::CoreExtensions::Time::Conversions::DATE_FORMATS.update(k => v) end end generate('authenticated', 'user session') generate('rspec') rake('db:migrate') end |
Then, maybe you could do something like this to use it:
1 | $ rails new_application -m /path/to/rph.rb |
That would be awesome.
Hmmm… but then I’d have to make sure that I always had access to this template, or I’d be up you know what without a paddle. Ideally, I’d like to keep it in a gist or something, and be able to use it the same way:
1 | $ rails new_application -m http://gist.github.com/31759.txt |
Now, I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. We’re no longer daydreaming! This has officially become a reality.
How. Awesome. Is. That.
I’ve just scratched the surface, too. Checkout template_runner.rb to see what else you can do.
Man, I love Rails.