EmberAppkitRails

Ember Appkit for the Asset Pipeline

This gem is still pre-1.0 and as such its public API will likely change over the course of heading towards 1.0

Prerequisites

Node.js is required. You can either download the package from the website or run brew install node (for Mac users only).

Installation

Include the gem in your Gemfile

gem 'ember-appkit-rails'

You should not need to specify any additional core Ember dependencies. EmberAppkitRails includes all you need to get going.

Run the bootstrap generator to prepare your application:

rails g ember:bootstrap

Then run your Rails server and visit http://localhost:3000. If you see Welcome to Ember! then you are good to go!

What do you get?

ember-appkit-rails will add the app/ and config/ directories in your Rails application to the asset pipeline. We want you to think of your Ember application files with as much precedence as your Rails application files.

ember-appkit-rails completely removes app/assets/javascripts from the asset loadpath. Any files put into this directory will be ignored during asset compilation. All business logic you need should be added to app/. If you need to add a 3rd party library these should go into vendor/assets/javascripts/.

Resolving

In order for the resolver to work properly Ember application files need to go into the correct directories. For example, models must go into app/models, controllers must go into app/controllers, routes must go into app/routes, etc... The transpiler makes use of the logical path for those files when creating the AMD namespace. The Ember Appkit Resolver relies upon this namespacing for the lookups.

jquery-ujs and turbolinks will be removed from your application.

Any files in the app/ directory that compile to JavaScript will be automatically required.

You must use es6 modules in your application files. ember-appkit-rails handles the transpiling for you via the es6_module_transpiler-rails gem as long as you add the .es6 extension to the end of the file. The generators will create these files for you.

Directory Structure

The following is added to your app/ directory:

• app/components your component files
• app/mixins names Ember mixins
• app/routes route files go here
• app/templates your .hbs files go here
• app/templates/components any component templates go here

The following is added to your config/ directory:

• config/application.js the main loader referenced in your Rails layout view. (replaces app/assets/javascripts/application.js)
• config/adapter.js.erb configure the ember-data adapter. Pre-set for ActiveModelAdapter and will set the API version to Rails.application.config.ember.api_version
• config/router.js your Ember Router. The actual routes will go in app/routes
• config/initializers any files that compile to JavaScript in this directory will be automatically required.
• config/initializers/csrf.js sets up the CSRF token for doing POST requests back to the Rails backend via AJAX.
• config/environment.js the general environment settings object. You should put settings in here that will be common across all environments.
• config/environments/ hold environment specific settings. The correct environment file will be loaded. Name matches value of Rails.env. Settings added to these files will overwrite settings in config/environment.js
• config/environments/development.js development environment settings
• config/environments/production.js production environment settings
• config/environments/test.js test environment settings

The lib/ directory is also mounted into the asset load path. You should use lib/ to write any custom code that does not belong in app/ or config/ but is not 3rd part software.

Any 3rd party software should be put into vendor/assets/javascripts (this may change)

Usage

Generators

Ember Appkit Rails provides the following generators:

• ember:bootstrap

  Initializes Ember Appkit Rails into your project by creating the required files (router.js.es6, ember-app.js.es6, and the directory structure). Also, removes turbolinks from Gemfile and app/views/layouts/application.html.erb. The app/assets/javascripts/ directory from your app is removed.

  The following options are supported:

  • --app-path - This is the root path to be used for your Ember application. Default value: app/.
  • --config-path - This is the root path for your configuration files used by your Ember Application. Default value: config/
  • --app-name - This will be used to name the global variable referencing your application. Default value: App.

• ember:route NAME

  Creates a route using the provided name in app/routes/.

• ember:controller NAME

  Creates a controller using the provided name in app/controllers/.

  The following options are supported:

  • --array - Used to generate an Ember.ArrayController.
  • --object - Used to generate an Ember.ObjectController.

• ember:view NAME

  Creates a view using the provided name in app/views/.

  The following options are supported:

  • --without-template - Used to prevent creating a template for the generated view.

• ember:component NAME

  Creates a component in app/components/ and a template in app/templates/components/.

• ember:template NAME

  Creates a template using the provided name in app/templates/.

• ember:model NAME [ATTRIBUTES]

  Creates a model using the provided name in app/models/.

  Accepts a list of a attributes to setup on the generated model.

• ember:resource NAME

  Creates a route, controller, and template for the provided name.

  The following options are supported:

  • --array - Used to generate an Ember.ArrayController.
  • --object - Used to generate an Ember.ObjectController.
  • --skip-route - When present a route will not be generated.

• ember:scaffold NAME [ATTRIBUTES]

  Creates the following:

  • Model of type name with the attributes provided
  • edit, index, new, show routes and templates
  • Injected the named resource into router.js.es6 along with the correct nested routes.

• ember:helper NAME

  Creates a helper using the provided name in app/helpers/.

Rails Generators

The regular Rails generators resource and scaffold can also generate the matching ember templates if you provide the --ember switch to the command:

rails g resource post title:string --ember

The default behavior of the following Rails generators have been modified:

• scaffold NAME [ATTRIBUTES]

  • Will generate a controller with only json response types.
  • Controller and route are namespaced under api/vX where X = the values of ::Rails.application.config.ember.api_version

Configuration

Environments

The bootstrap will add environment specific files to config/environemnts that are only loaded in those environments. In these files the correct versions of Ember, Ember Data, and Handlebars are required. Any configuration settings you want passed into the creation of your Ember app should be added to the config object:

config.LOG_TRANSITIONS = true

The window.config option is mixed into your application. Likewise, any other environment specific settings should be made in these files.

API Versioning

Ember Data expect to work with a namespace of api/vX where X is the current version of the backend API. To update this value you can override the the value of config.ember.api_version in config/application.rb.

The routing to the API endpoints in your application need to match api/vX. For example, you can do the following in config/routes.rb

namespace :api do
  namespace :v1 do
    resources :users
    resources :documents
  end
end

Then the controller files need to be under app/controllers/api/v1 and the classes should be namespaced properly:

class Api::V1::UsersController < ApplicationController
  ...
end

Using the rails scaffold generator will automatically inject resource route into the correct versioned api namespace.

Asset Path

The default file asset path for eak-rails files is app/. The generators will write files to that directory by default instead of app/assets/javascripts. To change this you'll have to modify the configuration:

config.ember.paths.app = 'app/assets/javascripts'

Adding this to your config/application.rb file will generate your assets into app/assets/javascripts instead of app/

AMD Module Namespacing

The default AMD namespace is app. Modify this in your config/application.rb

config.ember.namespaces.app = 'ember'

The AMD namespace for the router is config/ you can change this in your config/application.rb file as well:

config.ember.namespaces.config = 'ember_config'

Custom Ember Builds

By default Ember Appkit Rails will serve up the proper builds of Ember, Ember Data, and Handlebars depending upon the environment from their gems. However, you can add custom builds of each library to your project to override the default builds. The files you add must match a particular file name to override properly:

Environment	Ember	Ember Data	Handlebars
development	ember.js	ember-data.js	handlebars.js
test	ember.js	ember-data.js	handlebars.js
production	ember.prod.js	ember-data.prod.js	handlebars.runtime.js

For example, if you wanted to build a new copy of Ember.js you should add the files ember.js and ember.prod.js to vendor/assets/javascripts. The file of the same name will override the copy in the gem.

Authors

• Brian Cardarella
• Alex Navasardyan
• Robert Jackson

A lot of the "real work" was done by Stefan Penner with the original Ember Appkit project.

We are very thankful for the many contributors

Versioning

This gem follows Semantic Versioning

Want to help?

Please do! We are always looking to improve this gem.

Legal

DockYard, LLC © 2013

@dockyard

Licensed under the MIT license