A simplistic, modular-MVC style Sinatra boilerplate for rapid application prototyping. A blazingly fast way to get your app up and running in no time (most batteries included). Deployment to Heroku is painless too, that helps.

The is a starting point and is by no means a complete application. You should be able to use this to kick the fire for your own applications relatively fast. We use this over at Wixel for fast prototyping.

I assume you have Git installed and understand how to use it via the command line. HTML5 Boilerplate has been included by default to help you speed up your front-end creation.

• Ruby 1.9.2 and up
• Rubygems
• Git
• Bundler

$ git clone https://github.com/Wixel/Frank-Sinatra.git <your app name>
$ cd <your app name>

To check your dependencies and install, type:

$ bundle check
$ bundle install

This will install all the dependencies and create the Gemfile.lock file. This process could take some time to complete.

When running locally, a sqlite3 database file will be created in the /db directory.

To start up your application using shotgun, type:

$ shotgun

The shotgun command will dynamically load and reload your application code when you change things. You can now access your app at: http://localhost:9393

To start up your application using rackup, type:

$ rackup

The rackup command will load your app once and not reload each time you change code. You can access your app at: http://localhost:9292

You can also start your app using Foreman as follows:

$ foreman start

You can now access your app at http://localhost:5000

• Rack
• Sinatra 1.4.3
• Builder
• Sqlite3
• BSON
• Sinatra-flash
• Logger
• Pony
• Omniauth
• Mime-types
• Fog
• Will Paginate
• Data Mapper
• Awesome Print
• Shotgun
• Foreman
• Cucumber
• Resque

Feel free to add and remove from your Gemfile as needed.

Before running your application successfully, you will need to do the following:

1. Create a session cookie secret (app.rb - line 13):

   $ use Rack::Session::Cookie, :secret => "random string here"

2. Define your database and runtime settings:

   File: config/database.yaml File: config/development.yaml File: config/production.yaml

Your database defaults to sqlite3 until you manually change the Adapter setting in database.yaml

You can use any database abstraction layer, but we prefer DataMapper and we'll use it by default in Frank-Sinatra.

If you've come this far, DataMapper should already be installed along side your project (bundle install).

You define models in the models directory. We've created one called user.rb for demonstration purposes.

Read more about DataMapper in their excellent documentation.

Here's an example of a very simple User model (yes, it's that simple):

class User
	include DataMapper::Resource
    property :id, Serial
    property :name, String
    property :email, Text
    property :password, Text    
    property :created_at, DateTime
end

You probably need to install MySQL. You can try one of the following options:

With MacPorts:

$ sudo port install mysql5

With RPM:

$ sudo yum install mysql-devel

With Homebrew:

$ brew install mysql

If you have chosen PostgreSQL as your database backend and you use OS-X, I highly recommend that you take a look at PostgresApp.

Uncomment the gem dm-postgres-adapter line in your Gemfile and set your database access credentials in config/database.yaml.

You also need to change the adapter setting to adapter:postgres in the above mentioned database config.

Your controllers are simply extending your base App class. Controllers do not reserve specific urls segments.

Best practice is to prepend your mount-point with the logical controller->url namespace as follows:

auth.rb mounts to '/auth/ using:

class App < Sinatra::Base	
	get '/auth/login' do
		erb :login
	end
	post '/auth/login' do
		# Perform login action
	end
end

Going to http://host/auth/login renders controllers -> auth.rb

Helpers are simple Sinatra Helpers defined in external files for separation.

Views are simple Sinatra views. You can use any rendering engine as per usual.

Sign up for your Heroku account (if you don't have one already).

Then go ahead and install the Heroku Toolbelt, a CLI tool used to manage your applications.

Log in to your Heroku account via the CLI toolbelt:

$ heroku login
Enter your Heroku credentials.
Email: [email protected]
Password:
Could not find an existing public key.
Would you like to generate one? [Yn] 
Generating new SSH public key
Uploading ssh public key /Users/adam/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

$ heroku create
Creating blazing-galaxy-997... done, stack is cedar
http://blazing-galaxy-997.herokuapp.com/ | [email protected]:blazing-galaxy-997.git
Git remote heroku added

$ git push heroku master

Counting objects: 6, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (5/5), done.
Writing objects: 100% (6/6), 660 bytes, done.
Total 6 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)

-----> Heroku receiving push
-----> Ruby app detected
-----> Installing dependencies using Bundler version 1.1
       Checking for unresolved dependencies.
       Unresolved dependencies detected.
       Running: bundle install --without development:test --path vendor/bundle --deployment
       Fetching source index for https://rubygems.org/
       Installing rack (1.2.2)
       Installing tilt (1.3)
       Installing sinatra (1.1.0)
       Using bundler (1.1)
       Your bundle is complete! It was installed into ./vendor/bundle
-----> Discovering process types
       Procfile declares types -> web
       Default types for Ruby  -> console, rake
-----> Compiled slug size is 6.3MB
-----> Launching... done, v4
       http://blazing-galaxy-997.herokuapp.com deployed to Heroku

To [email protected]:blazing-galaxy-997.git
 * [new branch]      master -> master

$ heroku open

$ heroku logs

You can find more info on the official Heroku Dev Center page.

• Integrating test coverage or a template to build test from
• Wire up some of the other Gems to show how they can be used