modularize_sinatra - modular sinatra app

generator
July 23, 2013

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 doesnt 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 dont 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.