go-on-rails

go-on-rails aims at three scenarios:

1. Integrate some APIs written in Golang to existed Rails app for high performance
2. Use your farmiliar Rails tools to develope and manage a Golang app project
3. Convert a not very complicated Rails app to Golang equivalent

Here's a simple example(tutorial) shows the basic usage of go-on-rails generator, and some real-world examples are coming soon.

Prerequisites

• Rails development environment
• Golang development environment

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'go-on-rails', '~> 0.0.9'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install go-on-rails

Usage

You must have a Rails app or to create one before you can try go-on-rails generator to convert a Rails app to Golang codes.

You can just run the command to convert the application:

rails g gor [dev(elopment) | pro(duction) | test] [-m model_a model_b model_c ...]

Then a directory named "go_app" with Golang codes will be generated under your Rails app root path.

Install the dependent Golang packages:

rails gor:deps

Then change to the go_app directory and run:

go run main.go

You can visit the page in http://localhost:3000 by default.

More command details about go-on-rails generator:

rails g gor --help

What will be generated?

• Go project directory layout (all under the go_app directory, like views, controllers, public)
• A Go data struct corresponding to each activerecord model
• And each struct related CRUD functions/methods like FindModel, UpdateModel, DestroyModle etc. All these models related program files under the go_app/models directory
• We use Gin as the default web framework, but you can change it to anyone that you favor in main.go and controllers programs

And the gem is still under development, so there're a lot of known issues.

Known issues and TODOs

• the generated Golang codes includes the association between models, basic relations like has_many, has_one, belongs_to have been supported
• so some association functions is available
• and the :dependent action is triggered when destroying some related model
• some validation like presense, length restriction and format are supported
• databases specific functions between mysql, postgres are not covered yet
• model callbacks are not available
• sql.NullType not supported yet, so you'd better in the migrations set those columns "not null" with a default value that's consistent with Golang's zero value specification, such as "" default for string and text typed column, and 0 default for int, etc.

Really a lot...

Golang dependencies by default

• github.com/jmoiron/sqlx: an extension on the standard database/sql database API library
• github.com/mattn/go-sqlite3: a SQLite driver
• github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql: a MySQL driver
• github.com/lib/pq: a PostgreSQL driver
• github.com/asaskevich/govalidator: for the struct validation
• gopkg.in/gin-gonic/gin.v1: a HTTP web framework

Acknowledgement

When I had the idea to convert Rails app or build Golang app with Rails tools, I searched github and found the project: https://github.com/t-k/ar2gostruct. And from ar2gostruct I copied some codes on handling data structure convertion and models association, it make my idea come true faster than I imagined.

Contributing

There're two branches at present: master and dev.

The dev branch has a whole Rails environment for development: models, seeds for testing, and under go_app directory there's a file named modles_test.go used to test generated Golang codes.

• Fork the project switch to branch dev.
• Make your feature addition or bug fix.
• Add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
• Commit, do not mess with Rakefile or version (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
• Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

License

See the LICENSE file.