Rails 4 Starter Template

This Rails 4 Starter Template is meant as a foundation upon which Rails applications can be built quickly and sustainably. It uses the following technologies:

• Deploy: Mina
• HTML Server: Nginx
• Rails Server: Puma

Usage

Copy and run in terminal (or see below for command explanations):

git remote add template git@github.com:JumpStartGeorgia/Starter-Template.git
git remote set-url template no_push --push
git fetch template
git merge template/master

1. Add the Starter Template to your Rails project as a remote repository called "template": git remote add template git@github.com:JumpStartGeorgia/Starter-Template.git
2. Disable push connection to template repository: git remote set-url template no_push --push
3. Run git fetch template to update local copy of template repository.
4. Run git merge template/master to merge in changes from the template repository into your current branch. If you have committed changes to your project since the last time you merged in the template repository (or if this is your first time merging in the repository), you may have to resolve merge conflicts in your code.
5. Repeat steps #3 and #4 every so often in order to incorporate changes in the template repository.

Using Mina

Setup

Add your stage-specific deploy variables to the files in config/deploy.

Deploy

1. Run mina setup

• The default stage is set to staging, so this command is equivalent to the command mina staging setup

2. Run mina rails:edit_env and add your project secrets
3. Run mina deploy first_deploy=true --verbose

• If you get the error “Host key verification failed” when mina tries to clone the git repository, you may have to add your repository’s host to known_hosts on your server. You can run one of these two commands on the server to fix that (works for github):
  • ssh-keyscan -H github.com >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts
    • Adds github to user’s known hosts
  • ssh-keyscan -H github.com >> etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts
    • Adds github to known hosts for all users

4. Run mina post_setup sudo_user=<username>, where <username> is a user with sudo permissions on your server. You will need to enter the user’s password a number of times to execute the sudo commands.
5. Deploy further changes with mina deploy or mina deploy --verbose
6. Repeat these steps for your other stages, simply by inserting the stage name into the command after mina. Examples:

• mina setup --> mina production setup
• mina deploy precompile=true --verbose --> mina production deploy precompile=true --verbose

Options (mina deploy )

[precompile=true] forces precompile assets [verbose=true] outputs more information (default is quieter and prettier)

Commands

Run mina -T for a list of mina's commands. phantomjs_highcharts:start|stop|reload|restart|status delayed_job:start|stop|status|setup

Precompile Assets Method

Unlike in the standard Mina deploy, assets are precompiled locally and rsynced up to the server in this starter-template. The method is as follows:

1. Determine whether to precompile the assets a. If the flag 'precompile=true' is set, then precompile assets b. Use git to view difference in the assets files between the commit on the server and the commit on the local machine. If there is a difference, precompile assets c. If cannot determine the commit on the server, show error and ask user to run deploy with 'precompile=true' d. If git diff gives an error, precompile assets
2. If not precompiling assets, skip to step 3. Otherwise... a. precompile assets locally b. sync tmp/assets on server with local precompiled assets
3. During deploy, copy assets from tmp/assets to current/public/assets

Puma Jungle (Controlling Multiple Puma Apps)

Setting up the Puma Jungle on the server allows you to run commands such as start, stop, status, etc. for multiple puma apps at one time. You can also configure it to restart all apps whenever the server reboots.

In order to setup the jungle, follow these steps. You may have to modify the default scripts to work on your server; if things don't work out of the box, try consulting this guide.

If your primary puma jungle script is stored at the default location /etc/init.d/puma, here are some commands you can use (you may have to run with sudo):

• /etc/init.d/puma start
• /etc/init.d/puma stop
• /etc/init.d/puma status
• /etc/init.d/puma restart

This starter template provides access to the puma jungle through mina commands, such as mina puma:jungle:start. Run mina -T puma:jungle to see all these commands.

Prepare before deploy

Highchart standalone server

Highchart standalone server is a phantomjs server for generating highchart images based on input options via highcharts-convert.js script. Server itself will be triggered on deploy. First if any font is used while generating images system should know about it so we need to install it #, there is two options to install system wide or user wide choose one that better fits to app logic:

Prepare fonts

Replace

• :type with font type ex: ttf = truetype, otf = opentype
• :family font family ex: fira
• :ext ttf|otf or any other

1. System scope

• Create folder
  sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/fonts/:type/:family
• Copy fonts to folder
  sudo cp ~/folder-containing-font-files/*.:ext /usr/share/fonts/:type/:family
• Refresh font cache ( if command is not found install it sudo apt-get install fontconfig )
  sudo fc-cache -f -v
• (optional) To see installed fonts
  fc-list

2. Use System scope was not working on dev - *** User scope

• Create folder
  mkdir -p ~/.fonts/:type/:family
• Copy fonts to folder
  cp ~/folder-containing-font-files/*.:ext ~/.fonts/:type/:family
• Refresh font cache ( if command is not found install it sudo apt-get install fontconfig )
  fc-cache -f -v
• (optional) To see installed fonts
  fc-list
  

######For current project Fira Sans Regular is required in user scope:

  mkdir -p ~/.fonts/opentype/fira
  cp ~/firasans_r.otf ~/.fonts/opentype/fira
  fc-cache -f -v
  fc-list

Prepare phantomjs binary file (guide)

Current project uses phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64, so next commands will download, unzip and create symbolic links.

  cd /usr/local/share
  sudo wget https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
  sudo tar xjf phantomjs-1.9.7-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
  sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/ /usr/local/share/phantomjs
  sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/phantomjs/bin/phantomjs /usr/local/bin/phantomjs

Prepare highchart server conversion script

All scripts related to current project are in lib/phantomjs-highchart-pin folder. It has converstion script, phantomjs-highchart-pin.conf that is used as upstart configuration file for phantomjs and assets folder with all scripts to generate images. So you need to copy that folder to remote server.

    sudo ln -s /home/user/app/current/lib/phantomjs-highchart-pin/phantomjs-highchart-pin.service /etc/systemd/system/phantomjs-highchart-pin.service
    systemd-analyze verify phantomjs-highchart-pin.service

    systemctl daemon-reload # if file was updated

  cp lib/phantomjs-highchart-pin to remote server
  sudo mv remote/phantomjs-highchart-pin/phantomjs-highchart-pin.conf /etc/init/
  sudo mv remote/phantomjs-highchart-pin /usr/local/share/phantomjs-highchart-pin/

######For testing purpose you can call phantomjs with options and it will stdout in terminal, phantomjs should be in path and in case of example call it should be executed from highcharts-convert.js folder with json file prepared. Everything in options should be properly escaped otherwise it will not generate anything and there would be no output (weak debug ability).

  phantomjs highcharts-convert.js -host 127.0.0.1 -port 3003
  curl -XPOST http://localhost:3003 -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d @opts.json

Notes

• While uploading excel file make sure they have mime type: 'application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet', if file was resaved in ubuntu its mime type is 'application/zip' ( on ubuntu you can check it with - file --mime-type -b 2016-1.xlsx)
• After seed call rake mongoid_slug:set