Application Templates for Rails

Frequently I find myself creating basic rails apps to demonstrate a new feature, or prototype something for a spike test. Every time I created an app, I would run rails new -T, then add RSpec, Cucumber, Haml, possibly Bootstrap, etc.

After the 10^th app in a month, I decided that there must be an easier way. Then I saw this post: http://everydayrails.com/2011/02/28/rails-3-application-templates.html

I started reading up on generators and application templates, then I thought I’d write my own, to see how it works. I pushed my template to GitHub.

Currently the template:

• Switches the layout engine to Haml
• Generates app/controllers/HomeController and adds an index action
• Generates app/views/home/index.html.haml
• Adds root to: 'home#index' to config/routes.rb

During the creation of your app, the template will ask whether or not you want to use these features/gems:

• Add and install RSpec
• Add and install Cucumber
• Add and install twitter-bootstrap-rails (with less), using therubyracer (will fix later)
  • removes /app/views/layouts/application.html.erb
  • creates fluid layout at /app/views/layouts/application.html.haml
• Init and Initial Commit for Git
  • create .gitignore with common rails exclusions
  • git init and git add '.'
  • git commit -a -m "Initial commit."

Check it out and let me know what you think!