Been working about a month now on a Ruby on Rails project. The goal of the product is to make a site that can be spun up numerous times as a Saas product. I has to include 

  1. CMS elements
  2. Settings area to change logo, colors etc.
  3. Connect to a remote SOAP API to create cloneable content from and users.
  4. User admin area with Roles
  5. Reporting
  6. Ckeditor that integrates with Paperclip on non-cms pages.
  7. Heroku deployment strategy

It really has been a fun project as I get to see all the great gems out there that make alot of this possible without a ton of custom work. Though unlike other frameworks I have used it is super easy to customize the MVC parts of the gems as needed which has made my work a ton more enjoyable.

Some of the gems used so far

  1. Savon to talk to the SOAP API
  2. Paperclip Gem to manage images with Amazon S3 
  3. Devise to help with authentication and signup
  4. RefineryCMS to provide the highly customizable CMS part to this 
  5. VCR to help mock up the tests 
  6. Ckeditor with Rails and Paperclip Integration 

I am finalizing the VCR test now. I did not do TDD on that part of the project since the IT on the other end where still working out the endpoints in the API. VCR has been a great help there to speed up the tests. And of course RailsCasts.com for going over both Savon and VCR!

 

A demo of the project can be seen here as well.