Boiler is a base Rails 2.2 application originally copied from Bort. Bort is developed and maintained by Fudge Studios, Jim Neath and Matt Hall. Boiler is currently developed and maintained by Vertis.
- Download and unzip Boiler
- Edit the database.yml and the settings.yml files
- Changed the default password in the boiler migration
- Edit the REST_AUTH_SITE_KEY in each of the environment files
- Rake db:migrate
- Say thanks to the bort guys
Bort came with quite a few plugins to get you off to a strong start. Boiler has taken the majority of these plugins and added a few. The most notible change is that Boiler is set to use Hoptoad rather than Exception Notifier
RESTful Authentication is already setup. The routes are setup, along with the mailers and observers.
Forgotten password comes setup, so you don’t have to mess around setting it up with every project.
The AASM plugin comes pre-installed. RESTful Authentication is also setup to use user activation.
User roles are provided by Role Requirement by Tim Harper. A default
admin role is predefined along with a default admin user. See the migrations for the admin login details.
Boiler has Open ID integrated with RESTful Authentication. Clearly this is because its parent Bort also had it.
We use will_paginate in pretty much every project we use, so Boiler comes with it pre-installed.
You should be testing your code, so Boiler comes with Rspec and Rspec-rails already installed so you’re
ready to roll.
You don’t want your applications to crash and burn so Hoptoad Notifier is already installed to let
you know when everything goes to shit. Be sure to set your key in ’config/initializers/hoptoad.rb
Packages up your css/javascript so you’re not sending 143 files down to the user at the same time. Reduces
load times and saves you bandwidth.
Paperclip has been added for all your attaching needs
The routes for RESful Auth and the forgot password stuff are already sorted for you.
There is a settings.yml file that contains site-wide stuff. The site name, url and admin email are all used
in the RESTful Auth mailers, so you don’t need to worry about editing them.
The database.yml defaults to sqlite3 but also contains the settings for MySQL in comments so you can switch
over easily.
Boiler comes ready to rock capistrano. The recipe that is setup is based on using git and passenger. It’s ready
to go with multistage deployments. It deploys to the production config by default, so if you don’t need it
you can ignore it. Just update config/deploy/production.rb with your deployment settings.
More info on capistrano-ext/multistage deployments can be found here: http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2007/7/23/capistrano-multistage
NOTE The is a known issue between rails 2.2.2 and capistrano-ext that will stop ‘rake gems’ from working properly. You can either
download the patch or wait till rails 2.2.3 comes out.
Boiler comes with additional rake tasks to help you get started. The Limerick Rake plugin from the crowd at "ThoughtBot:http://www.thoughtbot.com has
been included, as has ar-backup – to help you backup and move your databases.
Boiler (like Bort) is setup to use the database to store sessions by default.
- password and password_confirmation are set up to be filtered
- there is a default application layout file (This has been improved to be more friendly till it can be replaced)
- a page title helper has been added
- index.html is already deleted
- rails.png is already deleted
- a few changes have been made to the default views
- a default css file with blank selectors for common rails elements
Bort put together by people at Fudge