Introduction
The engines plugin? Huh?
The engines plugin enhances Rails’ own plugin framework, making it simple to share controllers, helpers, models, public assets, routes and migrations in plugins.
It enables plugins to carry whole chunks of functionality into your existing application without affecting any of your existing code. They could also be described as application aspects, or vertical application slices - top-to-bottom units which provide full MVC coverage for a certain, specific application function.
Alternatively, you can use the engines plugin to share the smallest, simplest assets including common migrations, javascripts, stylesheets or images.
See the engines plugin in action
In true Rails style, we’ve got a demo video (Quicktime, 13MB) all pipin’-hot and ready to serve ya! This video refers to an old version of the engines plugin; I hope to upload an updated one soon, highlighting many of the new features. It’s also work noting that it demonstrates the login engine, which has now been deprecated.
If you don’t like video, then head straight over to the engines plugin README.
Installation
See the Download page for info on setting up the main Engines plugin.
More Information
More information can be found all over this site, but in particular you might want to check out the Frequently Asked Questions and the Developer documentation.