modularize_sinatra - modular sinatra app generator

Sinatra is simple, small and fast.

Sinatra is a DSL for quickly creating web applications in Ruby with minimal effort. - sinatra readme

The only downside is that it doesn’t offer you the typical MVC like Rails.

Lot of times Rails is an overkill for a simple application and Sinatra seems like a perfect choice. Since using Sinatra, you could write all your code in a single file, and at one time it becomes really hard to manage the code and you may feel the need of porting it to a framework like Rails. However, you don’t need all the features that comes with Rails. What you need here is some kind of modularization in your application. For this very purpose I created a gem called modularize_sinatra

modularize_sinatra creates a Rails like MVC structure without the overhead.

modularize_sinatra is available on rubygems. For installation and usage instructions please visit modularize_sinatra

What does it do?

It generates the following directory structure, when generated using modularize_sinatra myapp -C user

      .
      |-- Gemfile
      |-- Rakefile
      |-- config
      |   `-- environment.rb
      |-- config.ru
      |-- lib
      |   |-- app.rb
      |   |-- controllers
      |   |   `-- user.rb
      |   `-- views
      |       `-- users
      |           `-- index.erb
      |-- myapp.rb
      |-- public
      |-- script
      |-- spec
      |   |-- controllers
      |   |   `-- user_spec.rb
      |   |-- spec_helper.rb
      |   `-- support
      `-- tmp
  

It generated some usual ruby files like:

• Gemfile - A format for describing gem dependencies for Ruby programs.
• Rakefile - Contains task to run specs.
• config.ru - Rack configuration file.
• config/environment.rb - Here you could load your configuration files. Hint: Could load configuration given in .yml files
• lib contains directories for placing your controllers and views.
• myapp.rb loads all ruby files inside lib, lib/controllers and lib/models.

Note the lib/models in above point. You could create a directory called models in lib directory to place your models and it will also be loaded.

• public - To serve public assets.
• script - You could get rid of this directory. This is just a container to put your scripts.
• spec - Place your specifications inside this. modularize_sinatra integrates rspec for you by default.

Please contribute at modularize_sinatra

Comments and suggestions are most welcome.