Fun project for the staff at Syple to experiment with new technologies. A basic web application that manages games played on a traditional Fussball table.
The deployed application can be found at (subject to change): http://fussball-manager.herokuapp.com
The API specification can be found here: http://goo.gl/10EmT
This project uses the Ruby on Rails framework for its backend, and it deploys to Heroku.
To develop this project you will need to setup an environment with Ruby, Rails, Heroku and PostgreSQL. The initial project has been created with Ruby 1.9.2, so it's probably safe to get that version (it's also the version that the Heroku tutorial uses). Links are provided below:
- Ruby/Rails: http://rubyonrails.org/download
- Ruby DevKit (tdm version for Ruby 1.9.*): http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/ (located under the heading Development Kit) and instructions for installing it: https://github.com/oneclick/rubyinstaller/wiki/development-kit
- Heroku Toolbelt: https://toolbelt.heroku.com/
- PostgreSQL: http://www.postgresql.org/download/
In order for the app to run properly, you will need to set up a database and an environment variable. Follow these steps to set up an initial database, which we'll call fussballManager:
- Run the PostgreSQL Admin Console (on windows 8 64-bit its located at: C:\Program Files\Postgres\9.2\bin\pgAdmin3.exe)
- Click on your local database (it should have a red cross on it) and enter your password
- Right-click on Databases and click New Database...
- Type fussballManager in the Name field and click Ok
Now that you have an initial database set up, you have to configure an Environment Variable for Rails to pick it up. Create an Environment Variable with name = DATABASE_URL and value = postgres://username:password@localhost:port/fussballManager, where username is your username, password is your password, and port is the port the database is running on (note that this defaults to 5432 during installation).
Note: The file /config/database.yaml has been configured to connect to a postgres database for the development profile. You can use this file to get Rails to connect to the database instead of using the DATABASE_URL environment variable. Navigate to the file and fill out the missing values, then run the server and it should be all good.
Once your environment is setup you can start developing. First things first, clone the git repo and run the app to make sure it works. You can do this by running the following commands:
git clone https://github.com/iamgarry/FussballManager.gitcd FussballManagerbundle install(This may not be required - or only required once per machine)rails server
This should start the application and make it available at http://localhost:3000.
The Rails framework sets up a project template for us to use, which we will follow as closely as possible. Directories/files of note are listed below:
- app/, db/, log/, etc (every top level directory besides public/) - These dirs contains the bulk of the Rails backend app (the REST endpoints, REST documentations, etc)
- public/ - This dir contains the frontend app (the AngluarJS app, all client code). The idea is to keep this de-coupled from the backend app completely (it's only communication should be through the REST API)
- Gemfile - Ruby's dependency management
- Gemfile.lock - Specifies which gem versions where installed (required for Heroku deployment)
- Procfile - Heroku's deployment file, tells Heroku how to start the app
This section should just be a place where people can put useful links to do with any new technology (Rails, AngluarJS, Heroku)
- Rails command line guide (creating an app, code generation, starting a server, etc): http://guides.rubyonrails.org/command_line.html