README

== Welcome to the Basic Authenticated App Plugin

This application is meant to be the starting point for new Ruby on Rails applications with a nice basic theme. 
It consists of already implemented basic functionality so that the developer can focus on solving the actual problem.

It includes:
- Generic look and feel
- Open id authentication
- User management with roles and privileges
- Support for complex scripts
- Multilingual interfase

== Getting Started

1. Build a new a application:

rails blue_app


2. Install the plugin:

script/plugin install -e https://ndlb.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/ndlb/portal/ror/plugins/basic_engine/trunk

(if the project is in a svn repository you may want to use -x instead of -e)

3. Install the dependent plugins:

rake basic_engine:install_dependencies

4. Copy migrations and public files from all plugins:

rake basic_engine:deploy_dependencies

5. The next step is updating the config/database.yml file to setup the database correctly.

At this point, you DON'T need to go to your database manager to create such db's. We will do that next within rails.
Just make sure that the user and password we specify in database.yml WILL have access to such db's. For instance,
in my development machine the rubyuser mysql account have full privileges on %_development. This way I know the rubyuser
account will be able to access any new development db even if it doesn't exist yet!

This may be quite obvious, but I will say it anyway. DON'T commit the user and password for the production db.
Remember this is a public repository and if you do, you are giving everybody access to such db.

6. Now lets create the databases from rails. To create the development db simply run (if you want to do this on the
production db, simply add RAILS_ENV=production to all of the next statements):

rake db:create

5. Create the rest of the tables by running the migration:

rake db:migrate

6. Create a home for the application

script/generate controller home index

add this home as your root path in config/routes.rb:

map.root :controller => 'home', :action => 'index'

Delete the default index.html, application controller and helper (or copy content of application controller and helper
in basic engine if you plan to use):

rm public/index.html
rm app/controllers/application_controller.rb
rm app/helpers/application_helper.rb

7. Now we have to update the roles and privileges. If you see the first migration under db/migrate/001_create_users.rb
you will notice that only one user has been created (user 'root', password 'rootdude'). He is a system administrator,
but for now a system administrator ONLY has privileges to update roles. So run the server:

script/server

And browse to http://localhost:3000

Next login with user 'root', password 'rootdude'

8. Browse to http://localhost:3000/roles

Select system administrator -> edit. Under available roles, click "select all" and the ">" button and then save changes.
Notice that now you have a lot more links on the right side navigation. As you create new controllers it is a good idea
that you create roles for the various kinds of expected users that will change data (end users that are just visiting
won't need an account) and when you create new users associate them with the respective roles, i.e. don't make everybody
a system administrator!

9. Start developing!

== Tips

- Try to make all of your controllers RESTful. This will facilitate providing web-services to other applications
- To restrict access to a controller, make it inherit from AclController instead of ApplicationController. Only
  people with the role that has the privileges for each action of that controller will be able to access it. See
  app/controllers/acl_controller.rb for more information.
- See app/helpers/application_helper.rb. There is where you define the side column links, stylesheets and javascript
  to be used by all controllers in the application. You can override any of the three by redefining its method on the
  controller's helper.


Plugins used:

annotate_models:        http://repo.pragprog.com/svn/Public/plugins/annotate_models
authenticated_system:   https://ndlb.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/ndlb/portal/ror/plugins/authenticated_system/trunk
basic_engine:           https://ndlb.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/ndlb/portal/ror/plugins/basic_engine/trunk
complex_scripts:        http://ndlb.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/ndlb/portal/ror/plugins/complex_scripts/trunk
globalize2:             git://github.com/joshmh/globalize2.git
in_place_editing:       http://dev.rubyonrails.org/svn/rails/plugins/in_place_editing
open_id_authentication: git://github.com/rails/open_id_authentication.git
restful-authentication: git://github.com/technoweenie/restful-authentication.git