#148 Custom App Generators (revised)

Feb 03, 2013 | 10 minutes | Tools

Learn how to customize the Rails app generator to fit your preference. This episode shows how to do this using .railsrc file, app templates, app builders, RailsWizard, and AppScrolls.

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kobaltz almost 12 years ago

Good information, but most of these steps are almost hard coded into my brain already. However, I do see where it can be useful for creating templates for certain configurations with twitter-bootstrap, cancan, sorcery/devise, user model, etc. with the most commonly used gems.

Though, usually it only takes a few minutes to do this stuff now.

Didn't know about the appscrolls. Does seem useful.

kobaltz almost 12 years ago

I take back what I said. It is more of a time saver than I had originally thought. I've posted the below generator.

https://github.com/kobaltz/app_template_generator

It creates
- Twitter Bootstrap
- Sorcery :remember_me and :reset_password
- CanCan 2.0
- Simple_Form

Ran a few successful tests. Definitely cuts out the BS in the setting up of base app and gets into the fun part. Almost reminds me of the yii demo app or asp.net mvc template app.

Huge time saver and less running around to find the old scripts for the authentication reset password stuff!

Erwin Boskma almost 12 years ago

You can work around the issue with running bundle install multiple times with the --skip-bundle-option for the rails-command and calling bundle_command('install') from the leftovers-method:

          app_builder.rb
        
class AppBuilder < Rails::AppBuilder
  def test
    @generator.gem 'rspec-rails', group: [:test, :development]
  end

  def leftovers
    bundle_command('install')
    generate 'rspec:install'
  end
end

          terminal
        
rails new foo --skip-bundle -b app_builder.rb

It isn't the most elegant solution, but it saves a little time by calling bundler only once. It would be nice if you could modify the options-variable in the AppBase-class

Robert Dober almost 12 years ago

Erwin's solution is a nice one and scales better than mine. However mine is a little bit easier on the fingers as it does not require the --skip-bundle option.

          ruby
        
  def test
    @generator.gem 'rspec-rails', group: [:test, :development]
    at_exit do
      generate 'rspec:install'
    end
  end

Erwin Boskma almost 12 years ago

I've looked into the at_exit callback, and thought of this:

          app_builder.rb
        
class AppBuilder < Rails::AppBuilder
  def initialize(generator)
    super(generator)

    at_exit do
      postprocess
    end
  end
  def test
    gem_group :test, :development do
      gem 'rspec-rails'
    end

  end

  def postprocess
    generate 'rspec:install'
  end
end

This way, you have a single method for postprocessing which is called after bundler.

Robert Dober almost 12 years ago

@Ryan I hope we are not abusing the comment space with this.
@Erwin it would surely be nice to have a postprocess method, but my real issue with at_exit was that I need to know when the
callbacks are registered.
Thus it might be a good idea to have the postprocess inside Rails::AppBuilder and let Rails::AppBuilder expose some
register_* methods like register_first, register_last etc.
Another possibility would be, that a register method returns the registered block, which later can be used to specify dependencies. Voilà an example:

          ruby
        
class AppBuilder < Rails::Appbuilder
   def initialize
     # ...
     @rspec = register do
       generate 'rspec:install'
     end
   end

   #...
     register after: @rspec do
       generate 'I:Do:Not:Know:What' # ;)
     end
   
end

Wari Wahab almost 12 years ago

There's http://drone.bz and Rails Composer as well, which are nice to use.

Huỳnh Kiến Thành almost 12 years ago

Thanks, this is very useful site.

Christiane Valejo almost 7 years ago

Really well thought the system
Not easy to start with but then a real holiday

Richard almost 12 years ago

Great Railscast, though I felt Rails Composer was sorely missing; seems like it's becoming the de-facto solution for this kind of thing.

Denis almost 12 years ago

Thunderbolt Labs article Why we don't use a Rails template

Canet about 7 years ago

;-)

Peter Sankauskas almost 12 years ago

I agree Richard, I only use Rails Composer when starting a new Rails app.

Barry Hopwood over 11 years ago

Rails 4.0.0.beta1 seems to have dropped the 'new -b' option for using app builders. Does anyone know if this will be the case in production, or is it just a case of 'work in progress' ?

kobaltz over 11 years ago

I am finding this to be the case as well. Have you found any work arounds?

Candice Clings about 8 years ago

This is one of my favorite topic which I always want to learn more and more. Good to see this much interesting article and i delighted so much to know more facts about this.

jamespolcan almost 8 years ago

Here you mentioned few great info and thanks for sharing with us.

mmbasha almost 8 years ago

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TanaMongeau over 7 years ago

Perfect for my preference. I love being super emotional and over dramatic and in this situation, I sprung to my keyboard and started to type in and got right to adding to my property.

Pierre GD about 7 years ago

Thanks for this