centresource blog » Daniel Nelson

Javascript Frameworks for Well Architected, Immersive Web Apps (Part II)

Daniel Nelson — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:41:30 +0000

Part II of this video continues by using a demo application to go into detail on how to incorporate Angular.js into Rails 3.1 to build cleanly architected, maintainable web applications with rich user experiences.

Angular.js + Rails: Part 2 from centresource interactive agency on Vimeo.

Javascript Frameworks for Well Architected, Immersive Web Apps (Part I)

Daniel Nelson — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:13:13 +0000

Immersive web applications involve sophisticated interactivity within the browser, connected to models and data persistence on the server. The structure of the application is clearly delimited between client-side and server-side, but the available tools for building web applications have often blurred this distinction. The result is applications that are difficult to design and maintain.

Part I of this video explores the problem and what we are looking for in a solution. Part II (coming soon) goes into detail on a particular solution using Rails 3.1 and Angular.js. Source code for the demo application is available from the Centresource Github account.

Angular.js + Rails: Part 1 from centresource interactive agency on Vimeo.

Setting up a client site on Heroku

Daniel Nelson — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 16:01:38 +0000

Thanks to Josh Crews for
cluing me in on how to set up staging on Heroku last February

First, add heroku to the development group in the Gemfile and bundle install.

If this is a client site, you will want the client to own the
application, so we’ll sign in as the client from the beginning (you
can also use “heroku sharing:transfer” to move an app to another user
later):

$ heroku auth:logout (only if you are already using heroku) $ heroku auth:login Enter your Heroku credentials. Email: client.email@address.com Password: client-password

Then create the production and staging apps:

$ heroku create --stack bamboo-mri-1.9.2 mysitename $ heroku create --stack bamboo-mri-1.9.2 mysitename-staging

Then add yourself and anyone else on your team to the heroku apps:

$ heroku sharing:add your.email@address.com --app mysitename $ heroku sharing:add your.email@address.com --app mysitename-staging $ heroku sharing:add team.member@address.com --app mysitename $ heroku sharing:add team.member@address.com --app mysitename-staging

Now you can sign out as the client and sign back into your own Heroku account:

$ heroku auth:logout $ heroku auth:login Enter your Heroku credentials. Email: your.email@address.com Password: your-password

Next, we need to update project_root/.git/config so that we can deploy
to the production and staging apps. Do this by copying the “heroku”
block to a new “staging” block and updating the url to the name of the
staging app. While you are at it, you might want to change “heroku” to
“production” so that it is consistent with “staging”:

[remote "production"] url = git@heroku.com:mysitename.git fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/heroku/* [remote "staging"] url = git@heroku.com:mysitename-staging.git fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/heroku/*

Now, you can push to staging and production separately:

$ git push staging master $ git push production master

And to push a branch other than master (such as develop) to staging
for a beta reveal:

$ git push staging develop:master

Note that for any Heroku commands, you will need to specify the app:

$ heroku rake db:migrate --app mysitename-staging