Installation

Lesli is a Ruby on Rails gem designed to integrate seamlessly into your application. It keeps its code, database, and assets fully isolated, ensuring it won’t interfere with your main app. This isolation allows you to extend functionality without adding complexity or risking conflicts within your core codebase.

Before You Start: Make sure you have Ruby 3.2.x, Rails 8.0.x and NodeJS 20.x (to work with LesliAssets) installed on your system.

Create a New Rails Application

To get started, generate a fresh Ruby on Rails app. This will serve as the base for integrating Lesli.

rails new LesliApp

Install the Lesli Core

bundle add lesli

Or clone the repository for development

Check that Lesli is correctly installed and accessible by running:

rake lesli:status

This will output the current status of the Lesli framework and confirm that it's properly wired into your application.

Set Up Lesli

After installing the gem, run the Lesli installation generator to configure the required files and routes:

rails generate lesli:install

This command will:

• Generate a new initializer file at config/initializers/lesli.rb where you can customize core Lesli settings and behaviors.
• Mount all Lesli engine routes by injecting the following into your config/routes.rb file:

Rails.application.routes.draw do
    Lesli::Routing.mount
end

Also is going to create a lesli.rb initializer file to customize the Lesli options

Lesli provides a convenient Rake task to set up a fully functional database for development and demo purposes.

Run the following command:

rake lesli:db:dev

This task will:

• Run all database migrations
• Build privileges (if LesliSecurity is installed)
• Import translation files (if LesliBabel is installed)
• Seed demo users and sample data for every installed engine
• Output a summary with the current application status
• You can restart your database to start with a new fresh database

To reset your environment and start from a clean state, run:

rake lesli:db:reset 

This command will drop, create, migrate, and re-seed the database using the same logic as lesli:db:dev, Useful when testing or debugging your development setup.

Start the default Rails development server:

rails s 
rails s --binding=0.0.0.0
rails s --environment=test
rails s --environment=development
RAILS_SERVE_STATIC_FILES=true rails s --environment=production 

Using your favorite web browser, navigate to: http://127.0.0.1:3000/login

You should now see the Lesli welcome page 🎉

Recommendations

To improve your local development experience with Lesli, consider the following:

• Use letter_opener for Local Email Preview

Install the letter_opener gem in your Gemfile under the development group:

group :development do
    gem 'letter_opener'
end

Then configure your config/environments/development.rb:

config.action_mailer.delivery_method = :letter_opener
config.action_mailer.perform_deliveries = true
config.action_mailer.default_url_options = { host: 'localhost', port: 3000 }

This allows you to preview emails in your browser instead of sending them during development.