AskUp

AskUp is an application designed to improve learning and retention.

Local configuration

Ruby, rails

• App has been developed thus far using Ruby 2.1.4 and Rails 4.2.0
• You need a Ruby environment (you can use e.g. rbenv or rvm to manage different environments)
• AskUp uses bundler for dependencies, so you'll need to run bundle install in your Ruby environment to ensure all the gems are available that the app uses.

Settings

There are two types of application configuration settings in AskUp.

1. Rails.configuration.askup is defined in application.rb, and other application-wide settings can be found in config/environments/.
2. Secrets are handled by Figaro. Copy application.yml.example to application.yml and edit any settings you need. For deployment to Heroku or running under the production environment you will need at least askup_secret_key_base (used to set the Rails secret key base for the production environment); the others are needed if you plan to use/test different functions of the app, like sending mail for password resets (via Devise; see below).

Mail settings (optional)

Note: You only need to define these if you need to test/use the mail components, e.g. in Devise.

• Mail server settings

    askup_mail_host_username
    askup_mail_host_password
    askup_mail_host_address
    askup_mail_host_domain
    askup_mail_host_port
  

  • You could use e.g. gmail or mailgun for this. If using mailgun, username will be the Default SMTP Login value (e.g. postmaster@sandbox...) in your sandbox domain, and the password will come from that domain's Default Password. (More info on gmail or mailgun setup.)
  • (Note that in development, default settings disable mail delivery.)

• App server settings

    askup_url_options_host
    askup_url_options_protocol
  

  • When Devise sends out emails to reset password, etc, we need to be able to direct the user to the right server. These settings default to localhost:3000 and http for local development, but will need to be the publicly accessible domain and https in production (e.g. the heroku app domain for staging, or askup.net for production).

Database and seed data

• bundle exec rake db:setup to set up your (development) database (this will seed it as well)

Running the production environment locally (optional)

• install postgres
• run postgres (set up agent, or run manually)
• bundle exec rake db:setup RAILS_ENV=production to set up your production database
• bundle exec rake assets:precompile RAILS_ENV=production to ensure your JS and CSS files are compiled
• make sure askup_secret_key_base is defined in your application.yml

Heroku configuration

You can deploy the app to heroku as well. Below is a streamlined list of instructions, based on Heroku's getting started guide.

• local workstation setup
• heroku create
• figaro heroku:set -e production
• git push heroku (my git branch):master
• heroku run rake db:setup
• heroku open