Camping is a web framework which consistently stays at less than 4kB of code. You can probably view the complete source code on a single page. But, you know, it's so small that, if you think about it, what can it really do?
The idea here is to store a complete fledgling web application in a single file like many small CGIs. But to organize it as a Model-View-Controller application like Rails does. You can then easily move it to Rails once you've got it going.
A Camping Skeleton
A skeletal Camping blog could look like this:
require 'camping'
Camping.goes :Blog
module Blog::Models
class Post < Base; belongs_to :user; end
class Comment < Base; belongs_to :user; end
class User < Base; end
end
module Blog::Controllers
class Index
def get
@posts = Post.find :all
render :index
end
end
end
module Blog::Views
def layout
html do
head { title "My Blog" }
body do
h1 "My Blog"
self << yield
end
end
end
def index
@posts.each do |post|
h1 post.title
end
end
end
Installation
Interested yet? Luckily it's quite easy to install Camping. We'll be using a tool called RubyGems, so if you don't have that installed yet, go grab it! Once that's sorted out, open up a Terminal or Command Line and enter:
gem install camping
Even better, install the Camping Omnibus, a full package of recommended libs:
gem install camping-omnibus --source http://gems.judofyr.net
If not, you should be aware of that Camping itself only depends on Rack, and if you're going to use the views you also need to install markaby, and if you're going to use the database you need activerecord as well.
gem install markaby gem install activerecord
Learning
First of all, you should read the first chapters of The Camping Book. It should hopefully get you started pretty quick. While you're doing that, you should be aware of the reference which contains documentation for all the different parts of Camping.
The wiki is the place for all tiny, useful tricks that we've collected over the years. Don't be afraid to share your own discoveries; the more, the better!
And if there's anything you're wondering about, don't be shy, but rather subscribe to the mailing list and ask there. We also have an IRC channel over at Freenode, so if you feel like chatting with us, you should join #camping @ irc.freenode.net.
Authors
Camping was originally crafted by why the lucky stiff, but is now maintained by the community. This simply means that if we like your patch, it will be applied. Everything is managed through the mailing list, so just subscribe and you can instantly take a part in shaping Camping.