Halen

Halen is a very simple wiki that stores its wiki pages in a Git repository. It features:

 * Textfile formatting
 * Gliffy diagram integration.
 * Disqus Comments
 * Google Analytics

Install

    rake gems # show the needed gems; install any that are missing

Note that you cannot use the main Grit package, but must use mine; it contains an enhancement that isn’t in the main repo. Also note that, as of now, the Gliffy Ruby Client Library isn’t official, so you must use mine. Once it’s blessed, I’ll switch the requirements.

Configuration

1. Configure your database as per normal with Rails.
2. Create a new git repository for your content:

    mkdir /path/to/your/git/repo
    cd /path/to/your/git/repo
    mkdir wiki
    echo "h1. This is the Main Page" > wiki/MainPage
    touch stop_words
    git init
    git add .
    git commit -m 'initial commit'
   

3. Configure halen. config/config.yml.example should be renamed config/config.yml and should contain placeholder for these options:
   git_root
   Full path to the Git repository that contains your content (see below)
   wiki_name
   Public-facing name of your wiki
   stop_words
   Set to `stop_words` (unless you have a burning desire to change it; change the file in your content repo, too)
   wiki_description
   A longer description of your wiki; this will show up in all HTML
   wiki_keywords
   A few short keywords for your wiki; this shows up in all HTML
   gliffy_account_id
   Gliffy account ID, if using Gliffy
   gliffy_consumer_key
   Gliffy consumer key, if using Gliffy
   gliffy_consumer_secret
   Gliffy consumer secret, if using Gliffy
   gliffy_description
   Description of your app, for Gliffy tracking
   gliffy_username
   Your Gliffy username, if using Gliffy
   gliffy_folder
   The folder in your Gliffy account where diagrams will live for this wiki
   copyright_holder
   The name of the owner of the copyright
   copyright_name
   Name of your copyright license
   copyright_link
   Link to you copyright license
   copyright_image
   Link to an image describing your copyright statement
   disqus_name
   the short name of your Disqus account for the site
   contact_email
   Email address for the contact link
4. Run migrations
5. Create an account for yourself. Currently, account creation is not enabled, as I wanted this for my own devices only. So, accounts must be created manually.
6. Start ‘er up.
7. When editing pages:
   • [w:WikiName(nicer name)] or just [w:WikiName] will create links to new pages. Click on them prompts for creation (if logged in).
   • gliffy. 1768557 | center | M adds a Gliffy diagram. The first "param" is the id from Gliffy, the second controls the alignment (left, center, right) and the final is the size (T, S, M, L).

Why?

I wanted to learn Rails from inception to deployment, and I wanted to do something that wasn’t just a vanilla CRUD application. I also didn’t want to get wrapped up in design or complexity. So, I figured that a wiki that had some cool features and used Git for content would be just the thing.

This is the result. I probably denied myself some ActiveRecord knowledge by using Git (though AR is used for the user info), but this was still pretty fun and I think I learned a lot.