ESaaS Recipes : New Rails app setup

Throughout the book we recommend several tools for developing, testing, deploying, and monitoring the code quality of your app. In this section, we pull together in one place a step-by-step list for creating a new app that takes advantage of all these tools.
This section will only make sense after you have read all the referenced sections, so use it as a reference and don’t worry if you don’t understand all the steps now. Many steps are annotated with the section number(s) from Engineering Software as a Service in which the tool or concept is first introduced.

Set up the app

If you’re doing this as a team, one person should do this

Run rails -v to ensure you’re running the desired version of Rails. If not, run gem install rails -v x.x.x with x.x.x set to the version you want; 4.2.9 for example.
Run rails new appname -T to create the new app. -T skips creating the test subdirectory used by the Test::Unit testing framework, since we recommend using RSpec instead.
cd appname to navigate into your new app’s root directory. From now on, all shell commands should be issued from this directory.
Edit the Gemfile to lock the versions of Ruby and Rails, for example:

# in Gemfile:
ruby '2.2.2'    # Ruby version you're running
rails '4.2.1'  # Rails version for this app

If you ended up changing the version(s) already present in the Gemfile, run bundle install --without production to make sure you have compatible versions of Rails and other gems.

Make sure your app runs by executing rails server -p $PORT -b $IP and visiting the app’s root URI. You should see the Rails welcome page. (If not using Cloud9, just use rails server.)
git init to set up your app’s root directory as a GitHub repo. (\ref{sec:git}, Screencast \ref{sc:gitbasics})

Connect your app to GitHub, CodeClimate, Travis CI, and Heroku

Create a GitHub repo via GitHub’s web interface, and do the initial commit and push of your new app’s repo. (\ref{sec:intro_github})
Point CodeClimate at your app’s GitHub repo. (\ref{sec:metrics}) Add a CodeClimate badge to your repo’s README.md (``splash page’’) so you can always see the latest CodeClimate results.
Point your Travis CI account it at your app’s GitHub repo (\ref{sec:ci}). Add a Travis CI badge to README.md to see the latest status of running tests.
Set up a Pivotal Tracker project to track user stories and velocity. (\ref{sec:points})
Make the changes necessary to your Gemfile for deploying to production on Heroku. (\ref{sec:Heroku})

# make sure references to sqlite3 gem ONLY appear in dev/test groups
group :development, :test do
  gem 'sqlite3'
end 

# make sure the following gems are in your production group:
group :production do
  gem 'pg'              # use PostgreSQL in production (Heroku)
  gem 'rails_12factor'  # Heroku-specific production settings
end

Run bundle install --without production if you’ve changed your Gemfile. Commit the changes to Gemfile and Gemfile.lock. On future changes to the Gemfile, you can just say bundle with no arguments, since Bundler will remember the option to skip production gems.
Run heroku apps:create appname to create your new app on Heroku
Run git push heroku master to ensure the app deploys correctly.

Set up your testing environment

Add support in your Gemfile for Cucumber, RSpec, interactive debugging, code coverage, factories, local metric collection (optional), and (if you plan to use JavaScript in your app) Jasmine:

group :development, :test do
  gem 'jasmine-rails' # if you plan to use JavaScript/CoffeeScript
end
# setup Cucumber, RSpec, Guard support
group :test do
  gem 'rspec-rails'
  gem 'guard-rspec'
  gem 'simplecov', :require => false
  gem 'cucumber-rails', :require => false
  gem 'cucumber-rails-training-wheels' # basic imperative step defs
  gem 'database_cleaner' # required by Cucumber
  gem 'factory_girl_rails' # if using FactoryGirl
  gem 'metric_fu'        # collect code metrics
end

(See Section \ref{sec:testing_ajax} for additional gems to support fixtures and AJAX stubbing in your JavaScript tests.)

Run bundle, since you’ve changed your Gemfile. Commit the changes to Gemfile and Gemfile.lock.
If all is well, create the subdirectories and files used by RSpec, Cucumber, Jasmine, and if you’re using them, the basic Cucumber imperative steps:

rails generate rspec:install
rails generate cucumber:install
rails generate cucumber_rails_training_wheels:install
rails generate jasmine_rails:install
bundle exec guard init rspec

If you’re using SimpleCov, which we recommend, place the following lines at the top of spec\slash{spec_helper.rb} to enable it:

# at TOP of spec/rails_helper.rb:
require 'simplecov'
SimpleCov.start

If you’re using FactoryGirl to manage factories (\ref{sec:fixtures}), add its setup code:

# For RSpec, create this file as spec/support/factory_girl.rb
RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.include FactoryGirl::Syntax::Methods
end

# For Cucumber, add at the end of features/support/env.rb:
World(FactoryGirl::Syntax::Methods)

git add and then commit any files created or modified by these steps.
Ensure Heroku deployment still works: git push heroku master

Create the first migration

You’re now ready to create and apply the first migration, (\ref{sec:rails_databases}), then re-deploy to Heroku and apply the migration in production (heroku run rake db:migrate).

Add other useful Gems

Some that we recommend include:

railroady draws diagrams of your class relationships such as has-many, belongs-to, and so on (\ref{sec:associations})
omniauth adds portable third-party authentication (\ref{sec:authentication})
devise adds user self-signup pages, and optionally works with omniauth

ESaaS Recipes Code snippets and process help for ESaaS students

New Rails app setup

Set up the app

Connect your app to GitHub, CodeClimate, Travis CI, and Heroku

Set up your testing environment

Create the first migration

Add other useful Gems