Question

I am trying to develop a forum with altered_beast for 2.3.3. I am presently working with Rails 2.3.4. I would like to know how altered beast works. It seems be an entire project on its own, so how should i go about setting it up.

Another error that I encounter when i use it as an application (which seems wrong to me) is a mysql error which says i need to upgrade to rails 2.3.3 (but im using 2.3.4).

And im unable to run it as a plugin either.

I would appreciate any form of help with altered_beasts and suggestions for integrating with other plugins.

Would you recommend I use something other than altered_beast to integrate with an existing application for the forum feature.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

altered_beast is not a plugin, but rather a standalone rails application.

Typically when you want to run an application for an older version of Rails,
you can use rubygems to install the older version alongside your current version. On linux, you would run:

sudo gem install rails --version=2.3.3

Since they’re so close, you could probably get away with running it on 2.3.4 by editing config/environment.rb. Find the line like the one below and alter the version number.

RAILS_GEM_VERSION = '2.3.4' unless defined? RAILS_GEM_VERSION

Of course, with either of these options, you’ll end up with a separate server running, which you could put on a subdomain. Since forums like this involve views, database migrations, plugins, etc., you won’t see this sort of thing as a plugin. You’ll have to decide if you want to integrate the forum into your current rails app or run it separately.

Your best option for integrating it with your site is to take all the files from that application and merge them into yours.