Features

• every piece of content is a node. every node may have arbitrary sub-nodes
  • nodes may be nested in other nodes
  • some nodes are meant to be child nodes, for instance table. others are meant to be a collection of nodes, for instance post
• multiple different layouts à la http://www.primarycss.com/, but without presentations classes in the markup
  • themes specify arbitray layouts
  • each layout has an arbitrary number of (top-level) regions
    • each region will be exposed to the site admin to populate with content (either widgets and nodes)
• specify any public page as the home page

Inspiration

• administration
  • http://docs.harmonyapp.com/managing-content/
  • http://www.amaxus.com/ - has some good ideas
  • http://codex.wordpress.org/Administration_Panels
• nodes and taxonomy
  • http://drupal.org/getting-started/before/terminology

Dependencies

System

• git
• mongodb
  • optional bson_ext
• ruby (developed with 1.9.2)
  • rvm (http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/) is the recommended way to install ruby

RubyGems

• rails 3 (technically you should not have to install this system-wide, but it will make things easier if you do: [sudo] gem install rails)
• bundler (handles installing everything else)

Getting Started

1. clone the project
   • type cd ~/code
   • type git clone -o github git://github.com/ravinggenius/scratch_pad.git
     • this will create a directory called scratch_pad (feel free to rename it)
2. change into the project directory
3. type bundle install
   • this will make sure every dependency in Gemfile is resolved and available
4. start hacking!
   • if you have rails 3 installed system-wide, you can run rails to see available commands, otherwise use script/rails

A nice looking introduction to Ruby and MongoDB can be found on GitHub: http://github.com/chicagoruby/MongoDB_Koans

To run tests for custom extensions, use RAILS_ENV=test rake test:custom. Currently there is no way to avoid manually setting the environment

Coding Standards

• tests are good and should remain passing at least to the extent that they were
• 2 spaces indents
  • technically ruby doesn't care about indentation or whether spaces or tabs are used
    • however 2 space indents are the de facto standard that nearly every rubyist on the planet follows
  • sass requires space-based indentation (no tabs!), and 2 spaces seems to be the norm
  • scss doesn't care about about indentation (it uses { and }), but indenting really helps with readability
• style selectors should be one per line
  • (optionally) unless there are many selectors for the declared style
• ruby def statements should wrap arguments with parentheses
  • parentheses should be left off if no arguments are accepted