README

Caboose Sample App
==================

This is a sample application containing a bunch of useful plugins and code to help you get started quicker.  
It is intended to be an example of "better practices", but with the intention of ultimately being
"best practice" through collaboration and iterative improvement.

NOTE : this requires at least rails 2.0PR

The application implements many of the basic and advanced features I find myself using in every new project:

  - a user model with a few extra fields (last login, timezones)
  - restful authentication.
  - full timezone support
  - basic views implemented with Yahoo! YUI CSS grids.
  - behavioral testing with rspec, including good example of mocking in controller specs.
  - exception notification
  - nested resources (user/assets)
  - polymorphic asset model
  - basic authorization
  - around_filters
  
Please note, however, that much of the code is targeted at an intermediate/advanced level, so if you
don't understand the code, don't fret.

INSTALL:

  Quickstart: 
    Install Ruby, RubyGems, Rails with all its dependencies, a database package (MySQL, Postgresql, sqlite etc) and the appropriate bindings.
      You will need the latest versions of all of these.  If you already have a working stack you might try
        gem update --system
        gem update rails

    Install a few required gems: tzinfo, tztime, rspec
    Create config/database.yml; if you don't know how to do this, then you probably won't learn anything from this app.
    Import the database with rake db:migrate
    

  It's strongly advised that you check out the stable version of any caboose sample app (it will have tags/v00x where x is a number).
  You can do this with piston (jfgi) if you want to keep up to date.  Once a version is released, we aim to back-port bugfixes to
  stable, but new features will go into the next version.

TODO:

  Sample controllers and models
  More useful plugins
  Good examples of ajax
  Better list of requirements
  Update to Rails 2.0
  
TODONE:

  x Polymorphic Image model using attachment_fu