Name

Bigtop::Docs::QuickStart - The fastest ways to Gantry apps with Bigtop

From the Command Line Alone

Suppose you want to keep track of your relatives phone numbers and their children's birthdays. After installing sqlite, Gantry, and Bigtop, type:

    bigtop -n Phone 'family(name,phone,+email)<-child(name,birth_day:date)'
    cd Phone
    ./app.server

We call the definition in the single quotes the 'kickstart,' it's a description of the data model. See Bigtop::ScriptHelp::Style::Kickstart for additional details on the syntax for kickstarts. Here there are two tables. family has name, phone, and optional email columns. child has name and birth_day which is a date.

If you don't have sqlite, you'll need to build your database. If your database engine of choice is PostgreSQL or MySQL, you can follow these instructions...

PostgreSQL

    cd Phone
    createdb app.db -U some_power_user
    psql app.db -U regular_user < docs/schema.postgres
    ./app.server -d Pg -u regular_user -p password

mysql

    cd Phone
    msyqladmin create app.db -u root -p
    mysql -u regular_user -p app.db < docs/schema.mysql
    ./app.server -d mysql -u regular_user -p password

In all cases, once you start "app.server", it will print URLs where you may point your browser to start using the app.

You may choose to put the database connection information in the base config block in your bigtop file. Then you won't need the flags. If you want to use mulitple databases on a regular basis, consider adding a config block named for each database:

    config mydbd {
        dbconn `dbi:mydbd:dbname=somename`;
        dbuser `your_pg_user`;
        dbpass `secret`;
    }

Then you can regenerate once, and switch to the database of your choice with one command line flag:

    bigtop docs/your.bigtop  # do this once
    ./app.server -t mydbd    # repeat on each server start

The rest of your app's config info will still come from the base config block, which you don't need to change.

From a PostgreSQL Database

If you already have a PostgreSQL 8 database called yourdb, and would like a CRUD app for it:

    bigtop -n YourApp -s Pg8Live 'dbi:Pg:dbname=yourdb' user pass
    cd YourApp
    ./app.server -d Pg -n yourdb -u user -p pass

Again, you might want to create a config block for this database as discussed above.