FeatureBox

FeatureBox is a feature request service written using Ruby on Rails framework. It is an open source analog of VoteBox - part of the DropBox

It is designed to be flexible and customizable and intended to be easily integrated into your website. It uses popular gems like CanCan and Devise.

Take a look at the demo here: featurebox.me

Installation

Basic steps

Edit your Gemfile to add a dependency on the feature_box gem.

gem 'feature_box'

Update dependencies

bundle update

Before moving any further you will need to choose the right generator. There are two of them: one for existing app and one for standalone installation.

The main difference is that standalone generator creates a new User model, installs and configures Devise. It is meant to run on a clean rails app and that’s why it is called standalone. Use this generator to test FeatureBox or if your application doesn’t have any User model.

If you installing FeatureBox on existing app you might want to keep existing users and this is situation when you have to use generator for existing application.

Standalone

One simple command will create User model, install Devise, run migrations and everything.

rails g feature_box:standalone

Existing Application

Make sure you have User model in your application. Install Devise on if you haven’t done this yet.

Then install FeatureBox with just one command:

rails g feature_box:existing

If you don’t want to rely on this smart generator script, check Manual Installation part.

Manual Installation

Initializer

Use this generator to create a new initializer in config/initializers/feature_box.rb

rails g feature_box:initializer

Routes

Routing is really easy:

mount FeatureBox::Engine => '/any_path'

Migrations

FeatureBox has a generator for this:

rails g feature_box:migrations

Here is a list of avaliable migrations:

00_create_feature_box_suggestions.rb
01_create_feature_box_categories.rb
02_create_feature_box_comments.rb
03_create_feature_box_votes.rb
04_create_feature_box_users.rb
05_add_devise_to_feature_box_users.rb
06_add_type_to_model_name.rb

Migrations 00..03 are a must.

Install migrations 04 and 05 if you don’t have User model. This is what standalone generator does.

Install migration 06 if you already have a User model in your app. This will add :type column to the model and this is important because Rails STI doesn’t work without this trick. Generator will also ask you for a model name in case it is not User.

Run migrations like you always do:

rake db:migrate

Tweaking Initializer

In case you already use Devise in your app you have to set devise_router_name to :main_app in the initializer:

settings.devise_router_name = :main_app

Make sure you have this line in the initializer:

settings.devise_parent_model = "User"

Other Things You May Want To Install

Views

Use this generator to copy views to your app so you can easily edit them:

rails g feature_box:views

ActionMailer Configuration

It is pretty simple and basically the same as with any other Rails App. More info coming soon.

TODOs

Correct spelling mistakes. I am not a native speaker and it is really hard for me. Conribute, please.
Test coverage. It is really poor at the moment.
AJAX

Contribution

I invite everyone who wants to help me with this project.

Share your ideas and thoughts here: featurebox.me.

Issues Tracker is available here: github.com/petethepig/featurebox/issues.