Installing CommunityEngine on Rails 2.1

19Mar

Installing CommunityEngine on Rails 2.1

In a previous post, I talked about why we chose CommunityEngine. And due to the lack of documentation and several issues I faced, I thought it would be useful to go through the installation steps and the handling of some issues.

Requirements

Required gems

Rails 2.1.0
rake 0.8.1
rmagick
hpricot
htmlentities
RedCloth
haml
aws-s3 (if using Amazon S3 for photos)

Notes for Windows users

hpricot:

gem install hpricot ––source http://code.whytheluckystiff.net

rmagick:
1. Download the latest version of rmagick-win32. At the time of writing, it is RMagick-2.6.0-ImageMagick-6.4.3-6-Q8.zip
2. Extract the zipped file and run the installer
3. Install the gem you downloaded:
```
gem install rmagick --local
```
4. Restart Windows

Installation

Create a new Rails app:
```
rails community -d mysql
```

Install the engines plugin:

ruby script/plugin install git://github.com/lazyatom/engines.git

Put the community engine plugin into plugins directory:

git clone --depth 1 git://github.com/bborn/communityengine.git vendor/plugins/community_engine

4. Create the databases:

     rake db:create:all

5. Rename public/index.html to index_backup.html

6. Modify your environment.rb to look like the following:

RAILS_GEM_VERSION = '2.1.0' unless defined? RAILS_GEM_VERSION
require File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), '../vendor/plugins/engines/boot')
Rails::Initializer.run do |config|

#resource_hacks required here to ensure routes like /:login_slug work
config.plugins = [:engines, :community_engine, :white_list, :all]
config.plugin_paths += ["#{RAILS_ROOT}/vendor/plugins/community_engine/engine_plugins"]
...
end
require "#{RAILS
_ROOT}/vendor/plugins/community_engine/engine_config/boot.rb"

7. Modify all environment files ('development.rb', 'test.rb', and 'production.rb') by adding:

       APP_URL = "http://localhost:3000"

8. Modify your routes.rb by adding this after any of your own existing routes, but before the default rails routes:

map.from_plugin :community_engine

      map.connect ':controller/:action/:id'
      map.connect ':controller/:action/:id.:format'

9. Generate the community engine migrations:

      ruby script/generate plugin_migration

10. Migrate the database:

       rake db:migrate

11. Run your tests:

       rake test

12. Run CommunityEngine test:

       rake community_engine:test

13. Start the server:

       ruby script/server

14. Go to /signup to create a new user

15. To set a user as admin:

      rake community_engine:make_admin email=user@foo.com

16.To activate the user, follow the activation link sent in the email (or appeared in the log after creating the user) or use this query:

      update users set activated_at = current_date where id = 1

17. Enjoy!

Common Issues

On Windows, if the app runs without any css and the console shows a warning "Couldn't create the public file structure for plugin 'community_engine'", modify engines.rb,line 147 to be:
```
base_target_dir = File.join(destination, File.dirname(source_files.first).gsub!(source, ""))
    
```
- If you get a warning: DEPRECATION WARNING: You're using the Ruby-based MySQL library that ships with Rails. This library will be REMOVED FROM RAILS 2.2, do this:
```
gem install mysql
```
Customization
Do NOT edit any file of CommunityEngine plugin so you can replace it when updates are available in the future.
You can edit app/config/application.yml to override the default configuration defined in /vendor/plugins/community_engine/engine_config/application.yml.
Any views you create in your app directory will override those in /vendor/plugins/community_engine/app/views.
Creating an identically-named controller in your application's app/controllers directory mixes your code with CommunityEngine's (your code takes precedence).

To mix models code, you must require the CommunityEngine's model first. Otherwise, your model would completely replace CommunityEngine's. For example: app/models/country.rb

require_dependency "#{RAILS_ROOT}/vendor/plugins/community_engine/app/models/country.rb"

class Country < ActiveRecord::Base  
  def self.find_countries
    find(:all, :order => "name")
  end  
end

For more info, check the readme file of CommunityEngine: /vendor/plugins/community_engine/README.markdown

Resources

Home Page: http://www.communityengine.org/
GitHub: http://github.com/bborn/communityengine/tree/master
Documentation: http://www.communityengine.org/documentation.html
Google Group: http://www.communityengine.org/group.html

Written By:

Hatem Mahmoud (www.expressionlab.com)

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