QEDServer

You've just come across a great new client-side library that makes building richer client-side apps a breeze. It has support for client-side storage, but you're really interested in using this with an existing server-side web application, so you decide to try it out. Then you realize that to test everything, you need a backend. That means you need to write some server side code, set up a database, and you need to deploy the thing on a web server so that all the AJAX requests work right. And of course, you need to populate that database with dummy data. That's a lot of work just to try out a new framework!

QEDServer solves those pesky problems for you so you can focus on sharpening your front-end skills. In one small package, you get a simple web server that hosts a small "product catalog" web application and a database full of existing products. You can immediately start writing code against its RESTLike API that responds with JSON and XML.

You put your files in the public folder that QEDServer creates, visit http://localhost:8080/index.html in your browser, and you can start coding against this simple backend without worrying about server setup or same-origin-policy issues.

Additionally, QEDServer provides a web interface of its own that you can use to manage the stock data and add your own records.

And if you need a fresh start, just delete the products.sqlite3 file and restart QEDServer. The database will be recreated so you'll have a clean environment again.

Setup and Usage

Visit http://qedserver.napcs.com for more on how to get started!

Customized Builds From Source

If you're reading this far, you're probably interested in getting the source and customizing this to meet your needs.

You'll need JRuby. I recommend using RVM.

Then,

bundle
./start

This will run 'rackup' and load the server at http://localhost:9292. It's quicker to do this during development than it is to build the WAR file.

To run QEDServer under Java, you can generate QEDServer as a war file:

rake war

Then you can install the WAR file on any server you'd like.

Building Standalone QED

To build a cross-platform standalone distribution, build the war and get the sandbox created:

rake war config_jetty install_qed

This creates the sandbox/ folder where you can test things out. Run it with

server.bat

on Windows or

sh server.sh

To zip the whole thing up to make a release, simply use

rake package_jetty

This builds the war, rebuilds a fresh sandbox, and creates the zip file for distribution. It grabs END_USER_README.md and throw it in the archive.

The files

QED Server is just a Sinatra application wrapped by Warbler, so to customize it, just replace the guts. Add your own models, change the routes around, do what you need to do.

• lib/server.rb is the main Sinatra application.
• lib/extensions/ contains extensions to Ruby classes.
• lib/configuration.rb is the code that sets up the database connections and location of the public directory by looking at where the user started up the app.
• lib/seed_data.rb is just a Ruby script that loads data into the database when the server starts.
• lib/views contains the view files for the various pages
• lib/models contains the ActiveRecord models this app uses.
• lib/controllers contains the routes and responders for the main parts of the app
• lib/helpers has all the helper functions used in the views

Contributing

Fork, change, send a pull request. Please, please, please write specs!

Roadmap

• Configuration file to set db location and file location
• Modify startup scripts to accept a port as an option

History

See HISTORY for the change log.

License

QEDServer Copyright (C) 2011 by Brian P. Hogan. See LICENSE for details.

Licenses for Jetty and other Java components are in jetty/LICENSES