djch / daybook

👶 Baby's first rails application (yeah it's a bloggy thingo)

Day Book

This is a small Rails 5 project I've started to get familiar with Ruby on Rails. I'm starting slowly and small to get a strong grip on the basics — though I'm sure that won't stop me veering off on more advanced tangents. We'll see where it grows from there.

In its current iteration Day Book is a traditional blog. Authors can publish articles which readers (and the author) can comment on.

Getting Started

Before you set the project up, I recommend setting up your Ruby on Rails development environment according to GoRails' fine instructions, for the platform you're on.

1. Clone this repo — You probably already know how to do this. If not, GitHub.com's help guides are very straightforward. Make sure you're inside the root project folder for the rest of these steps.

2. Install the project dependencies — Ruby packages are called Gems. When you want to manage groups of them, like for a particular project, the bundle comment is used.

   bundle install
   

3. Set up the database — This will be familiar if you used other MVC frameworks. Your development DB will just be SQLite. In a production environment it'll be PostgreSQL.

   rails db:migrate
   

4. Run the test suite — If there's any problems so far, this should find them before you get as far your web browser. If it passes, you're all set to run the project server and start using it.

   rails test
   

Note: System tests require chromedriver in order to run (rails test:system). If you're on MacOS the simplest way to install it is via homebrew with brew install chromedriver.

5. Start your dev server — Rail 5 uses Puma for its development server. This runs in the foreground of your terminal so you'll probably want to open an additional tab while you work.

   rails server
   

All that's left is to open your web browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000/. As you work on the project, the rails server will automatically reload with your changes.