Appcelerator Entourage™ Hello World

====== Get Started with Ruby on Rails ====== The following sections will walk you through creating your first Ruby on Rails project injected with Appcelerator Entourage. We will also build a simple sample application to help get you going with Appcelerator Entourage. ===== Prerequisites ===== Before you begin you will need [[http://www.ruby-lang.org/|Ruby]] and [[http://rubyonrails.org/|Ruby on Rails]] installed on your machine. Please visit their respective sites for information on how to install them. Once Rails is ready you will need to download the [[http://appcelerator.org/download|Appcelerator Entourage package for Ruby on Rails]]. Remember where you put this. We are going to unpack it next. ===== Create a new project ===== First we need a Ruby on Rails project we want to add Appcelerator Entourage to. We could use an existing project, but for simplicity we are going to create a new one. From the command line run the following command: rails path/to/your/new/application Then we need to unzip the Appcelerator Entourage package for Ruby on Rails into our new project. The process for this is different if you are on Window or *nix. === *nix === Run the following command: unzip -q -d path/to/your/new/application path/to/entourage-package.zip === Windows === Unpack the archive in Windows Explorer. Select it's entire contents and copy them to the clipboard. Then paste them into your new application directory. === Back to common instructions === On both platforms we will be prompted asking us if we want to over right the routes.rb generated for our new rails application. Because this is a new project, we can replace the default routes.rb with the one that ships with Entourage. If this is an existing project, we would want to say no and hand merge the files. Let's confirm that everything is working correctly. Run the following commands: cd path/to/your/new/application ruby script/server Then go to http://localhost:3000/servicetester.html and try to execute the example echo service that was included. ===== Hello World ===== Let’s start by creating a simple user interface that will test remote messaging. Lets create ./public/hello_world.html and replace the body contents with the following:




  Appcelerator Entourage™ Hello World
  
  



  
  type something
  
     
  

  
  
    You typed: 
    
      nothing yet

You should be able to test out your new application by accessing it at the following url: http://localhost:3000/hello_world.html === User Interface Explanation === There are several basic concepts covered in this example. First, we use the fieldset attribute to link the TEXTAREA with the INPUT button. When a click event is generated by an element with a fieldset, Appcelerator will look for other input elements with the same fieldset value, and it will include their values in the message generated by the click event. This feature is very useful when creating forms. Second, we show how an element can subscribe to a message and set its value based on an attribute in the message payload - in this case the message attribute. Finally, we show an example of how to create a mock service. A mock service is a SCRIPT widget that subscribes to a remote request and responds with a remote response. This is a powerful capability because it enables you to create fully functional user interfaces (UI) without writing a single line of service code. These UIs are also 100% reusable. Once you finish your UI, you can remove your mock services as you create the remote service implementations. We call this Interactive Use Case development. You can learn more about Interactive Use Cases in the Best Practices section of this documentation. === Service === Now we’re ready to implement the service for our Hello World example. First, remove (or comment out) the mock service that you created above. Next, open ./app/services/test_service.rb and create a new service method like the one below:


Service "hello.world.request", :helloWorld, "hello.world.response"

def helloWorld
  {"message"=>params["your_message"]}
end

Again, you should be able to test out your new application by accessing it at the following url: http://localhost:3000/hello_world.html