Adding Real-Time To Your RESTful Rails App

This repository contains the code for both the Rails app, and the Node app, that accompanies the blog entry "Adding Real-Time To Your RESTful Rails App".

Steps I Took

Below are some of the steps I took, that were not outlined in the above blog entry. Make sure you have Redis installed and running!

rails new rails_realtime --database=postgresql
cd rails_realtime

rake db:create
rails generate scaffold Book title:string num_pages:integer
rake db:migrate

Add gem 'redis' and gem 'pg' to the Gemfile, then run bundle install.

Creating The Node.js App

mkdir realtime
cd realtime
echo 'Real-Time' > README.md

Then create package.json (see realtime/package.json for reference). From the realtime directory run npm install. In your Rails' .gitignore file add /realtime/node_modules to ignore the installed node modules.

The Backbone.js App

The Backbone.js application resides in app/assets/javascripts. application.js specificies the javascript files that comprise the web application and their load order. If you're building a real production app you may want to look into http://requirejs.org/ to manage your dependencies. app.js.coffee is the starting point for the Backbone.js application.

To Start The App

The Rails App: rails s

The Node App (from the realtime folder): node realtime-server.js

Done

Between the Blog, the code in this repository, and the above steps you should hopefully have the information necessary to add real-time to your Rails app!