Rails Example Application - Substruct (E-Commerce Application)

Sang Shin, sangshinpassion@gmail.com, www.javapassion.com/rubyonrails

Substruct is an E-Commerce application. It supports the following features. The source code is available through Artistic License/GPLv2.

A simple content management system with blogging capabilities

Manage your entire site's content from the web - no html necessary!

A simple shopping cart that's tied into Authorize.net and PayPal (must have an account)
Product and order management

Track your inventory online
View up to the minute sales reports
Integrate with fulfillment houses via XML and web services

A stunning administration interface

Create and maintain content
Create, maintain, void orders
Answer questions from your visitors

In this hands-on lab, you are going to build and run Substruct example Rails application.

Expected duration: 90 minutes (excluding homework)

Software Needed

Before you begin, you need to install the following software on your computer.

Java Standard Development Kit (JDK™) version 6.0 (download)

If you already have installed JDK 5.0 or JDK 6.0, you can skip this.

NetBeans IDE 6.1 (download)

When you install NetBeans IDE, it will ask you which JDK you want to use.
Select All, which includes Ruby module.

MySQL (download)
5542_rails_substruct_app.zip (download)

It contains this document and the lab contents
Download it and unzip in a directory of your choice

OS platforms you can use

Windows
Solaris x86, Solaris Sparc
Linux
Mac OS X

Change Log

May 10th, 2008: Created

Things to do (by Sang Shin)

Add additional exercises
Add more explanation

Lab Exercises

Exercise 1: Build and run "Substruct" sample application (30 minutes)
Homework Exercise

Exercise 1: Build and run "Substruct" sample application

In this exercise, you are going to build Substruct sample application, which is production-quiality E-commerce application.

Open Substruct NetBeans project
Install required GEM's
Create database and populate tables
Run the project

(2.1) Open "Substruct" NetBeans project

1. Open substruct_rel_1-0-a3 NetBeans project.

Select File->Open Project (Ctrl+Shift+O). The Open Project dialog box appears.
Browse down to <LAB_UNZIPPED_DIRECTORY>/rails_substruct_app/solutions directory.

If you unzipped the 5542_rails_substruct_app.zip file under C:\handsonlabs directory under Windows, the directory to which you want to browse down should be C:\handsonlabs\rails_substruct_app\solutions.
If you unzipped the 5542_rails_substruct_app.zip file under $HOME/handsonlabs directory under Solaris/Linux, the directory to which you want to browse down should be $HOME/handsonlabs/rails_substruct_app/solutions.

Select substruct_rel_1-0-a3.
Click Open Project.

Observe that the substruct_rel_1-0-a3 project node appears under Projects tab window.

(2.2) Install required GEM's

In this step, you are going to install the following five required GEM's by the application.

RedCloth
fastercsv
mime-types
mini_magick
ezcrypto

1. Install RedCloth gem.

2. Install fastercsv gem.

3. Install mime-types gem.

4. Install mini_magick gem.

5. Install ezcrypto gem.

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(2.3) Create database and populate tables

1. Refresh the Rake tasks.

2. Create and populate database tables.

3. Verify that the database and tables are created.

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(2.4) Run the project

1. Run the application.

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Summary

In this exercise, you have built and ran a "Substruct" sample application.

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Homework Exercise (for people who are taking Sang Shin's "Ruby on Rails online course")

<tbd>

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