RichRC

RichRC (Rich Rails Console) is a customization tool for Rails 3 console.

There are some useful gems which extends function of IRB and makes IRB more convenient. For example, hirb and wirble are excellent gems which makes data more readable. In rails 2, we can simply require gems in IRB.

However, In Rails 3, it's needed to add gems into Gemfile before using them. Sometimes it doesn't make sense to add IRB-extension gems into Gemfile. Maybe not all developers want hirb and wirble, and it's quite annoying to edit files whenever cloning a project.

Inspired from xdite's article, the extra gems cloud be loaded before Bundler.setup is invoked. RichRC mimics the bootstrap process of rails console, run extra code before or after specified event (such as bundler.setup).

Installation

$ gem install richrc hirb wirble

P.S. RichRC loads hirb and wirble by default, but RichRC doesn't have dependency to these gems. If you don't want them, read Customization section.

Quick Start

Though RichRC provides customization, you can simply start with default configuration:

$ cd railsapp
$ richrc # instead of `rails console`

This will automatically:

• Enables wirble gem
• Enables hirb gem
• Makes ActiveRecord log outputted in console

P.S. The original rails console is not affected. If problems occured with RichRC, you can fallback to rails console.

Customization

When running richrc, it try to load configuration file in following sequence:

• .richrc in current directory
• .richrc in user's home directory
• The default configuration file in richrc gem

Run richrc customize to copy default configuration file to .richrc into your current directory:

before(:setup_bundler) do
  # You can load extra gems here.
  require 'irb'

  begin
    gem 'wirble'
    require 'wirble'
    Wirble.init
    Wirble.colorize
  rescue LoadError
    puts "Failed to load wirble"
  end

  begin
    gem 'hirb'
    require 'hirb'
    Hirb.enable
  rescue LoadError
    puts "Failed to load hirb"
  end
end

after(:load_application) do
  ActiveRecord::Base.logger = Logger.new(STDOUT)
end

If you want to load any extra gems, write in before(:setup_bundler) section. After that, the gem loading process is controlled by bundler. If you want to do any setting to rails, Write in after(:load_application) section, which ensures rails and application environment is loaded.

Notice

Loading a gem which conflict with gems (and their dependencies) in Gemfile will cause problem.

Issue Report

Fell free to report issues in Github's issue tracker. If it's an error report, I strongly recommand to write your Gemfile and .richrc in your issue.

License

See MIT-LICENSE file for details.