Rails - Apr 2006 - Creating your own generators

So I''m interested in creating an application specific generator. The 
script/generate command tells me that all I have to do is put a 
generator in my rails_root/generators:

 >  2. Unzip to directory /Users/{username}/.rails/generators/login
 >     to use the generator with all your Rails apps
 >     or to {app_root}/generators/login
 >     to use with this app only.

So I created a generators directory and plop in my generator. Upon 
executing `script/generate {generator_name}` I get:

 > Couldn''t find ''{generator_name}'' generator

What do I need to do differently? Is there any documentation on creating 
generators? I found:

http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/Generators

But it didn''t talk about creating your own generator. A
`script/generate
generator` command would be most helpful for bootstrapping the creation 
process of new generators.

--
John Long
http://wiseheartdesign.com

I have created my own generator in the context of a plugin, and it worked
pretty well. There isn''t a functional difference between the two, so
maybe
you would be willing to go that route.

As I understand it, if you want to create a generator, you follow these
steps. Imagine the generator is going to be called "widget_generator"

1) Create the directory vendor/plugins/widget/generators/widget
2) Create the file
vendor/plugins/widget/generators/widget/widget_generator.rb
3) In that file, put this code:

class WidgetGenerator < Rails::Generator::Base
  def manifest
    record do |m|
      ### generator commands ...
    end
  end
end

Note all the file, directory and class names - they are very important. If
everything worked right, when you type "ruby script/generate" you
should see
"widget_generator" listed. Note that you can also inherit from
NamedBase and
you will get some command line argument support - though I haven''t
explored
that so I can''t speak to it.

Sadly, generators are pretty badly documented. I suggest browsing the Rails
source to see what you can do with them. In your gems installation, the
relevant files are in rails/lib/rails_generator.

If you want to look at a working generator, the plugin I mentioned above can
be downloaded from http://rubyforge.org/projects/realapps-cms/ . Just click
"Files" and get the latest zip. Unzip it into vendor/plugins and then
you
can run it with ''ruby script/generate realapps_cms''.

Hope that helps and good luck!

Justin
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I also highly recommend Chad Fowler''s book, "Rails Recipes."
Chad has
a recipe in the book on creating your own generators.  Plus you get
like 70+ more really cool things all for one low price. :)

Michael

Justin Bailey wrote:
> I have created my own generator in the context of a plugin, and it worked
> pretty well. There isn''t a functional difference between the two,
so maybe
> you would be willing to go that route.
I did try this, and it worked, but it turns out the directory is 
''lib/generators'' not ''generators'' like the
usage guidelines describe.

--
John Long
http://johnwlong.com