Chrome packager: a simple tool to create chrome packaged applications

Don't you know what a chrome packaged application is? read this first.

Chrome packager brings all the goodness of the Rails asset pipeline but without Rails, this is intended to write pure javascript applications.

What you can do with chrome packager:

• Write your apps as if you were writing it in the Rails asset pipeline
• Write your app with coffescript
• Write your stylesheets using sass
• Write your templates with hamljs(This is fixed now, but in the future you'll be able to use any sprockets compatible template engine)
• Once your app is ready, you can pack it with one command

Installation

Install chrome packager form RubyGems:

gem install chrome_packager

Creating a new application

Once you have installed the gem:

chrome-packager new [your app name]

You'll have the following file structure

-app
  -assets
    -javascripts
      - application.js
    -stylesheets
      - application.css
  -views
    - index.haml
- background.js
- manifest.json
- config.ru
- Gemfile
- Gemfile.lock

Start writing your application, application.js and application.css are manifest files, you can use the sprockets directive processor here, so you can manage your dependencies easily.

You must write your basic html inside the app/views/index.haml file, this is supposed to be a single page application so you don't need more files, all the markup should be inside javascript templates.

You'll also want to modify the manifest.json and background.js file to fix your needs.

Running the application

Chrome packager creates a rack application, you only need to run this command:

rackup

After this, your application should be running in the 9292 port, now you can open it in your browser with the following url:

http://localhost:9292/

Packing

Once you are done with your app or you want to try it as a chrome app, you have to pack it. Run the following command in the root of your app:

chrome-packager pack

This command will compile all your javascripts and css's and will put them in the packaged dir.

After this just follow this instructions and point chrome to your app dir.

TODO

• Compile the index.haml view to html
• Integrate Jasmine
• Every config is fixed now, add way to config the app will be good

Contributing

I made this in one night, so I'm sure there will be bugs, feel free to fork and send a pull request.